The V4L2 framework is responsible for capturing video frames at the video device node, typically representing a DMA channel, and making those video frames available to user space. The framework consists of multiple sub-components that provide certain functionality.
Before video frames can be captured, the buffer type and pixel format need to be set using the VIDOC_S_FMT ioctl. On success the driver can program the hardware, allocate resources, and generally prepare for data exchange. Optionally, you can set additional control parameters on V4L devices and sub-devices. The V4L2 control framework provides ioctls for many commonly used, standard controls such as brightness and contrast.
The videobuf2 API implements three basic buffer types but only physically contiguous memory is supported in this driver because of the hardware capabilities of the Frame Buffer Write IP. Videobuf2 provides a kernel internal API for buffer allocation and management as well as a userspace facing API. VIDIOC_QUERYCAP and VIDIOC_REQBUFS ioctls are used to determine the I/O mode and memory type. In this design, the streaming I/O mode in combination with the DMABUF memory type is used.
DMABUF is dedicated to sharing DMA buffers between different devices, such as V4L devices or other video-related devices such as a DRM display device (see the GStreamer Pipeline Control section). In DMABUF, buffers are allocated by a driver on behalf of an application. These buffers are exported to the application as file descriptors.
For capture applications, it is customary to queue a number of empty buffers using the VIDIOC_QBUF ioctl. The application waits until a filled buffer can be de-queued with the VIDIOC_DQBUF ioctl and re-queues the buffer when the data is no longer needed. To start and stop capturing applications, the VIDIOC_STREAMON and VIDIOC_STREAMOFF ioctls are used.
The ioctls for buffer management, format and stream control are implemented inside the v4l2src plugin and the application developer does not need to know the implementation details.