This project uses opencv to read webcams and compressed video input under matlab. Matlab on linux and macosx platforms can't read compressed video. Provided you have opencv installed you can read any file opencv can, webcam streams included. Read divx, h264,mjpeg, mpeg, wmv and several other compressed formats in matlab on linux and macosx.

Update - April 7, 2010: A faster version available!

Recently some "old" code has been fixed removing a deallocation bug and speeding up the opening of big files. Hint: On ubuntu until version 8.10 unstripped version of ffmpeg(libavcodec,libavformat packages) conflict with opencv. This is a known bug, however if you compiled opencv yourself, once the cmake build is finished you can replace libavcodec and libavformat binaries with their unstripped version allowing a wider range of codecs to be read.

Please send me feedback at lorenzo.seidenari@gmail.com for any issue.