One of the things I want to do with GNU Radio and the USRP is video transmissions over radio. For this purpose I need a way to read video sources – including files, webcams and other video capture devices – and to display or save it on the other end.
I suppose the right way to do this is to create specific signal sources and sinks for GNU Radio. This can be done either by “direct access”, i.e. read the UVC device directly, or by using a higher level library like libvlc or the ffmpeg libraries (libav*). The latter has indeed been used for audio and the code is available from the Comprehensive GNU Radio Archive (CGRAN) under Mediatools.
For this experiment, however, I decided to try something simpler that that I can try and conclude within an evening: Use VLC as capture and playback applications and connect to GNU Radio using either the TCP or UDP interfaces.