VLC, framedropping and input fps

[kozz]

Using a webcam whose main-kernel driver currently sets the cam at resolution 640x480, 30fps, yuy2 stream.

While the picture is excellent, it's plagued by select-timeout frame-freezes every 10 seconds or so, each lasting a fraction of a second up to 2 seconds.

Driver patches enable other res and framerates for the cam, but they haven't worked on my pc. Dumping the video to a yuv stream with VLC doesn't exorcise the freeze-frames either. So I must use the kernel driver (2.6.31, gspca-ov534) which doesn't enable any v4l2 controls at all.

I use a pretty old pc, I think the freeze-frames are probably from a lack of processing power. I know I'll have to upgrade soon, but in the meantime, barring reducing the input framerate, is there a custom way to instruct VLC to simply discard every other frame of the stream? Right now it has to drop maybe 5 percent of the frames, at most, but it ruins the video because those dropped frames occur in long streaks. Could instructing it to drop half of them allow it to process the other half smoothly, effectively producing a non-ruined 15fps capture? Is there a way to do that with vlc?