What webcam for Kubuntu?

[doctordruidphd]

Re: What webcam for Kubuntu?

Any value of quirks over 7 produces a green video screen.
No noticeable change in performance with values less than 7.
No change in audio situation.

Edit:
cheese still has a framerate of about 0.5, and crashes the mouse.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: What webcam for Kubuntu?

Problem with Skype solved: I forgot to remove *blessed* pulseaudio.
Now skype (but not cheese) is perfect.
Unfortunately, this solution means I lose all audio from 32bit applications (such as downloaded firefox).

[GreyGeek]

Re: What webcam for Kubuntu?

Did you run
sudo alsaconf
and run the "digital" slider to the top (it it shows one)?
and, check the capture button and run its slider to the top?

[doctordruidphd]

Re: What webcam for Kubuntu?

Where did you get alsaconf?
I do have alsamixer, (kmix works, too, once pulse is gone) and the camera is listed as a separate device. Yes, I did run the slider all the way up there.
What I can't figure out how to do is hear my own audio. I did hear it through the skype test call, but I can't figure out how to patch it through to the headphones.

[GreyGeek]

Re: What webcam for Kubuntu?

Opps! My 70 year old memory failed me again...
I should have typed alsamixer.

My old Gateway had the sound routing problem. In the mixer settings was an "LFE/Center" combo box, IIRC... I had to set it to "Mixer out" to get sound. To switch the sound from the speakers to the headphones I had to set either "Front" or "Back" to "Mixer Out".

[doctordruidphd]

Re: What webcam for Kubuntu?

Another question:

I am trying to capture audio/video.

Streamer seems to work for video:

streamer -c /dev/video0 -t 00:00:30 -s 352x240 -o junk.avi -f jpeg

will capture a 30 second video to junk.avi.
But no audio. I can't figure out what the audio device is, there is no /dev/dsp.
Alsamixer says the sound card is: 0x46d:0x81d (its USB listing), but there is nothing in /dev that looks appropriate. I have to specify an audio device to record.

[GreyGeek]

Re: What webcam for Kubuntu?

Did you have a PCM slider? Is it set near the top and not muted?

[doctordruidphd]

Re: What webcam for Kubuntu?

Did you have a PCM slider? Is it set near the top and not muted?

Yes it's up all the way.
streamer, mencoder, etc expect to be told what device to use for input. They don't accept the USB notation.
I also see in Skype that it considers the mic to be (hw:1,0), but that's not a legitimate device number for things like streamer.

[GreyGeek]

Re: What webcam for Kubuntu?

Since you've removed pulseaudio and now rely on alsa, did you install oss-compat, for "preventing common '/dev/dsp not found' errors".

[doctordruidphd]

Re: What webcam for Kubuntu?

did you install oss-compat

Yes, but it's an empty package:

greenman@Wolfenstein:~$ dpkg-query --listfiles oss-compat
/.
/etc
/etc/modprobe.d
/lib
/lib/oss-compat
/lib/oss-compat/linux
/usr
/usr/share
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/oss-compat
/usr/share/doc/oss-compat/copyright
/usr/share/doc/oss-compat/changelog.gz

Moreover, I can't find snd-pcm-oss.
Well, I just realized this posting is taking place in the Lucid forum, and I'm using Maverick.
Looks like those packages have been gutted. I notice that in the kernel libraries in Lucid, snd-pcm-oss is there.
In Lucid, snd-pcm-oss and its associates are part of the kernel package, not part of oss-compat.
In Maverick, there is no /lib/modules/2.6.32-25-generic/kernel/sound/core/oss, and consequently, no oss compatibility stuff.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: What webcam for Kubuntu?

A little more research...
They expect you to use the padsp to open applications that want oss.
So I reinstalled pulseaudio, then tried padsp skype. That didn't work at all.
<Warning, flame coming>
I have tried to be as open minded about pulseaudio as is possible, but at this point I think it is no longer possible.
I'll quit now, before I get banned...
I know, I'll file a bug report on launchpad! Maybe that will irritate me enough I'll forget about this.

[GreyGeek]

Re: What webcam for Kubuntu?

mmm... padsp, part of pulseaudio-utils. I removed pulseaudio because it was allowing kmixer to show only two sliders, a volume slider and a capture slider. When I removed all the pulseaudio packages I could (those that didn't want to bring down my KDE4 desktop) and rebooted I got my ICH9 audio controls back... Master, Headphone, Front Mic, Front Mic Boost, Capture, Beep, Speaker, IEC958, PCM and Digital.

Resetting the Digital allowed me to get sound back with flash player. It also allowed me to get my voice back in SecondLife.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: What webcam for Kubuntu?

I did post a report on launchpad, and found that there are a ton of complaints about oss support being removed. And, as usual, nobody cares.
It is possible to get skype to work with pulseaudio, but it looks like none of the stuff like mencoder, etc are going to work at all, period, pulseaudio or no. I tried reinstalling pulseaudio, but none of the oss applications work. This is not good news. I don't know whether kopete works or not, but it seems I will not be able to do any audio/video capturing, at least not on kubuntu. Will have to try this on aptosid and see if I can get it working.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: What webcam for Kubuntu?

Couple of updates here:

1. The problem with cheese is that it was defaulting to 1600x1000 or whatever resolution. Turning it down to 640x480 fixed the framerate.

2. Moving the mouse to a different usb hub solved the mouse crashing problem.

3. Working with gstreamer to try and get audio/video capture, but still no success.
That's strange; live audio/video capture stuff for windows is a dime-a-dozen. But nothing really functional for linux. Apparently what has to be done, is the audio and video captured to different files, and then the two joined with an editing program. That can be done, but so far I have not been able to get anything to capture both at the same time. Still working on it.

4. Trying to find an IM application that will do both audio and video. Ekiga and skype will, but so far I haven't found anything for yahoo. Gyachi is a work in progress, still trying to compile it.

[GreyGeek]

Re: What webcam for Kubuntu?

It could be an audio+video driver problem for your specific hardware, or a setting of some sort.

My Sony has no problem recording audio and video via either cheese, guvcview, or any other audio/visual tool. Every Logitech webcam from c260 down to 100 that I've used, regardless of the computer I've used it on, has performed in the same manner. The c260 has a built in mic and audio-video recordings from it work great.

I am at a loss as to what is causing your problem with the C510. The Linux webcam site says it works well with Linux.

BTW, I ran a Maverick 10.10 LiveCD (made fresh today) and noticed that Pulseaudio is now enough UNREMOVABLE that it prevents me from getting alsa to make visible all the audio controls that alsamixer shows.