The V4L2 event interface provides means for user to get immediately notified on certain conditions taking place on a device. This might include start of frame or loss of signal events, for example.

To receive events, the events the user is interested in first must be subscribed using the VIDIOC_SUBSCRIBE_EVENT ioctl. Once an event is subscribed, the events of subscribed types are dequeueable using the VIDIOC_DQEVENT ioctl. Events may be unsubscribed using VIDIOC_UNSUBSCRIBE_EVENT ioctl. The special event type V4L2_EVENT_ALL may be used to unsubscribe all the events the driver supports.

The event subscriptions and event queues are specific to file handles. Subscribing an event on one file handle does not affect other file handles.

The information on dequeueable events is obtained by using select or poll system calls on video devices. The V4L2 events use POLLPRI events on poll system call and exceptions on select system call.