Recording Video with Python

[googlemike at hotpop.com]

Is there a video module so that I can write a Linux Python script to
record video coming over USB video cams?

What about these side-thoughts:

* What about recording multiple streams over multiple USB ports? (Think
in the context of a security system.)

* What about lossy compression?

* What about recording only time slices?

* How would you provide real-time video to a security guard, but then
only write time-sliced, lossy compression to disk, saving disk space
yet providing something very suitable for a security guard to watch
live?