The Firehouse

Linksys has always been notoriously unfriendly to non-Windows media formats in their video cameras, such as the wireless WVC54G. This camera by default streams in MPEG-4, which cannot be watched with Safari or Firefox, thus making the thing a Windows/IE-only proposition. Until now.

I’ve found a commented out code in the “Image” settings page of the camera, which allows changing the stream format to MJPEG, which can be shown by Firefox:
<br />
<tr>
<td bgcolor=”#9292da” class=”sp”>Image Type: </td>
<td>MPEG-4</p>
<select name=”videotype” size=”1″ onChange=”typeChange()”>
<option value=”mpeg4″>MPEG-4</option><br />
<option value=”mjpeg”>Motion JPEG (MJPEG)</option><br />
</select>
</td>
<p>

Now, why would Linksys disable such a simple setting, which would make its camera compatible with a much larger audience? Who knows.

In any case, the trick to changing the camera to MJPEG is to paste this URL into your browser (after you have logged into the camera’s config pages):

http://X.X.X.X/adm/file.cgi?h_videotype=mjpeg&this_file= image.htm&next_file=image.htm&todo=save& message=&video_file=image.cgi%3Fnext_file%3D main_fs.htm

but replacing the X.X.X.X with your own camera’s IP address. Once MJPEG has been enabled, you can change the resolution and other settings using the web-based options. To change back to MPEG-4, just replace mjpeg with mpeg4 in the URL. Note that I’m using the latest firmware (2.11), this may not work with older versions.