Cheese in 11.2

English Multimedia
1

I am just wondering how to get it working in 11.2, obviously my webcam works as I can see it working in wxcam.
But cheese does detect it.
The older webcam tutorials for 11.1 doesnt seem to apply

2

Hi TaraIkeda,

I have cheese running on my 64-bit openSUSE-11.2 KDE-4.3.1 PC with a Phillips Web cam

0471:0311 Phillips PCVC740K ToUcam Pro [pwc]

I documented my experience here:
gspca in 11.2 - openSUSE Forums - getting cheese to work

My apologies, as I do not have the exact “cause and effect” specified in a specific and step-by-step manner.

Clearly cheese is a gnome application, where gnome uses gstreamer. Hence for a KDE user to get cheese running (with my webcam), one needs v4l applications and appropriate gstreamer applications installed. But that was not enough for me, and it was only after I installed camorama that the appropriate dependencies were (or dependency was) “pulled in” such that cheese works with KDE.

I do not know exactly what dependency was needed. More trial and error is likely needed for one to figure out that. Maybe you can figure that out and provide the precise information?

Anyway, this makes me think there is a mistake in the cheese rpm packaging, in that all the needed dependencies are not specified in the rpm … but I am not 100% certain that is the case. It is only my suspicion.

Anyway, I hope the link to my post is sufficient to help you.

3

I just installed, after seeing this post. Everything is working. (Apple iSight camera).

#zypper in cheese
Loading repository data...              
Reading installed packages...           
Resolving package dependencies...       

The following NEW packages are going to be installed:
  cheese evolution-data-server gnome-doc-utils info2html libbeagle1 libevoldap-2_4-2 libgnome-desktop-2-11 libgweather 
  libgweather1 rarian sgml-skel susehelp susehelp_en yelp                                                              

14 new packages to install.
Overall download size: 4.7 MiB. After the operation, additional 14.0 MiB will be used.
Continue? [y/n/?] (y):

gstreamer and additional codecs wer already there. (Anyway, I don’t think cheese is using any proprietory codecs).

4

Is there a KDE4-native alternative to Cheese?

5

Hi syampillai, …

To investigate my suspicion that extra rpms may have been needed for me (which you have possibly installed already) could you run the following command and provide the output:

rpm --query --all '*libgnomeui-devel*' '*libgnome-devel*' '*libbonoboui-devel*' '*gnome-keyring-devel*' '*libbonobo-devel*' '*libesd-devel*' '*audiofile-devel*' '*libtasn1-devel*' '*popt-devel*' '*libv4l*' '*libv4l*' '*zvbi*' | grep -v avahi | sort

I hope I have the syntax of that command correct. I am not at a Linux PC and hence I am not able to test it.

I am curious to read what, if any, of the above apps you have installed. … Its also possible that your web cam requires slightly different applications, than what is required for my webcam.

6

There are lots of alternatives to cheese. Whether there is one that is specifically KDE-native, I can not say. In addition to cheese, one can use wxcam, camorama, plus basic command line programs such as mplayer and ffmpeg.

In KDE3 I would sometimes use kopete to test my web cam, but kopete is not a webcam program per se. I find the program amsn has very good webcam detection.

7

Hi,
The output is SO simple :slight_smile:
I have only this:

rpm --query --all '*libgnomeui-devel*' '*libgnome-devel*' '*libbonoboui-devel*' '*gnome-keyring-devel*' '*libbonobo-devel*' '*libesd-devel*' '*audiofile-devel*' '*libtasn1-devel*' '*popt-devel*' '*libv4l*' '*libv4l*' '*zvbi*' | grep -v avahi | sort

libv4l-0.6.1-2.2.x86_64
8

Puzzling, as I had libv4l installed when cheese did not work for me.

One hypothesis is that I needed only a re-install of “libv4l”. As noted I actually had both Packman and openSUSE versions of “libv4l” installed at different times, but for some reason ( ? ) only the last install worked …

I’m not sure I like my explanation as to why only the last install of “libv4l” worked for me …

Another hypothesis is that by running “camorama”, some unknown configuration file (unknown to me) was correctly configured by camorama, and hence cheese worked. I don’t really like that explanation either.

I need to move my webcam to another PC, and see what is needed to get it functioning with cheese on another PC.

I also have a webcam in my Dell Studio 1537 laptop (with openSUSE-11.1), and I need to try cheese on that, and see what is needed.

It is puzzling to me as to why I struggled on this.

9

Yea, it is a good idea to move the cam to another fresh machine and try. I can’t do that because mine is built-in.

Resolving dependency is always an issue. Also, packagers are not bothered much to make sure that only “needed dependencies” are specified in the rpm.

See, what happened when I just did “zypper in cheese”. How is it dependent on stuff like evolution-data-server, beagle lib, weather lib etc. ?

10

I saw those. Its possibly related to what you had installed before. Its possibly related to the repositories you have selected already in your Software Package manager. I need to check my PC when I get home to see if I also have those dependencies.

I use Smart Package Manager 95% of the time (as opposed to using YaST Zypper) and sometimes Smart will pick up different dependencies that Zypper. I do try to keep the same repositories in both package managers, but even with the same repos, the algorithms for resolving more complex dependency situations are different between the two package managers.

11

I know its not my model, my logitech quickcam seems very linux ready.
I will scratch my head on this

12

I used to use “smart” but nowadays just on zypper only - on 11.0, 11.1 and 11.2.

13

After getting back from work today, I switched on my 64-bit openSUSE-11.2 KDE-4.3.1 PC that has my Phillips webcam, ran cheese, and I obtained the test pattern! Cheese did not work. Annoying.

So I closed cheese, ran the gnome program “gstreamer-properties” (that comes with gnome-media) and tried Video > Default Input > Plugin … from “Video for Linux 2 (v4l2)” and obtained no image with the test. It just sat there for 10 minutes. This worked last night!

So in “gstreamer-properties” I then toggled the Video > Default Input > Plugin … from “Video for Linux 2 (v4l2)” to “Video for Linux (v4l)”, did a test (saw pix in webcam), and then toggled it back to “Video for Linux 2 (v4l2)” and did a test (saw pix in webcam !! so now it works … go figure …).

I then closed “gstreamer-properties”, and ran “cheese” and cheese worked this time.

So there is something being reconfigured automatically here, that I do not understand.

14

I’m still puzzling over why this did not work, and then later worked.

For the portion where the webcam was recongized at boot, followed by when it did not work, I note the following in the dmesg file:

    6.504795] pwc: Philips webcam module version 10.0.13 loaded.
    6.504797] pwc: Supports Philips PCA645/646, PCVC675/680/690, PCVC720[40]/730/740/750 & PCVC830/840.
    6.504798] pwc: Also supports the Askey VC010, various Logitech Quickcams, Samsung MPC-C10 and MPC-C30,
    6.504800] pwc: the Creative WebCam 5 & Pro Ex, SOTEC Afina Eye and Visionite VCS-UC300 and VCS-UM100.
    6.504820] pwc: Philips PCVC740K (ToUCam Pro)/PCVC840 (ToUCam II) USB webcam detected.
    6.511779] iTCO_vendor_support: vendor-support=0

    6.527382] pwc: Registered as /dev/video0.

    6.530360] input: PWC snapshot button as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb3/3-2/input/input6
    6.530406] usbcore: registered new interface driver Philips webcam

  724.307160] pwc: isoc_init() submit_urb 0 failed with error -28
........
many 
.........
 1910.053000] pwc: isoc_init() submit_urb 1 failed with error -28
 1910.053013] pwc: Failed to set video mode VGA@1 fps; return code = -22
.........
many
........

Where there were hundreds of entries of:
724.307160] pwc: isoc_init() submit_urb 0 failed with error -28

I note when the webcam is working with cheese there are no dmesg entries.

15

Now this is strange:
FrequentlyAskedQuestionsPWC < PWC < Foswiki
… where it has this to say about a similar error (12 as opposed to 28):

Applications hang when the camera is connected through a USB hub or active extension cable
Indications: dmesg shows an error message like this:
pwc isoc_init() submit_urb 0 failed with error -12
pwc isoc_init() submit_urb 1 failed with error -12

This could be due to a problem with the enhanced host controller interface (EHCI) driver, try using the universal driver instead. Check which usb controller driver you are using (this is assuming your drivers are modules):

lsmod | grep usbcore

You should see something like
usbcore 107384 6 uhci_hcd,pwc,snd_usb_audio,snd_usb_lib,usbhid
If your *_hcd driver is ehci_hcd you could try swapping it for the uhci_hcd by doing this (as root):

rmmod ehci_hcd && modprobe uhci_hcd

Try reconnecting the hub or extension cable, cross your fingers and fire up your favorite webcam application.
But error 12 is not the same as 28 … so I need to surf some more on this

16

A couple of points that may be useful:
(1) Actually, there is only one application level API, v4l2, that works with the cam. The old v4l (version 1) is emulated via a compatibility layer (v4l1_compat). So, applications that interface with version 1 driver still work. (Example: sane driver for webcams).
(2) There are situations that can leave the cam in some intermediate state when certain errors occur. Exiting the application may not reset it and hence, even another, proper application, that was running properly earlier, may not run after that! I am sure of this because I had gone through the v4l2 source code sometime back.