V4L2 is the official Linux Kernel API to handle capture devices like camera sensors, video decoders or FPGAs feeding video frames to the SoC. The video frames can be component, composite, HDMI, SDI, or frames from other video encoding standards.

The V4L2 framework defines the API the Linux camera driver supports in order to be V4L2 compliant. The Linux kernel uses the camera driver to initialize the hardware and produce video frames. Each of these functions has a specific implication to the camera sensor. Often the driver interacts with the camera sensor, receiver chip or FPGA by reading and writing I2C or SPI registers.

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