iSight Camera + Skype in Macbook with OpenSUSE 12.1 64bit

I got video in skype working on my macbook 4.1 by doing the following:

  1. Download and install skype + dependencies. See Skype dependencies on openSUSE 12.1 (x86_64) - Skype Support Network for more information.
  2. Download and install isight-firmware-tools through yast.
  3. Mount OSX partition. (Obviously this won’t work if you’re not dual-booting, in which case you’ll need to do some independent research on getting the isight firmware)
  4. Run command as root
ift-extract -a /media/Mac\ OSX/System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleUSBVideoSupport.kext/Contents/MacOS/AppleUSBVideoSupport
  1. Verify that “isight.fw” is located in /lib/firmware.

This provided me with a semi-functional webcam. Video worked in VLC, did not work in Skype, and worked in Cheese if resolution was set below 640x480.

To get it fully functional in Skype I needed to do the following:

  1. Download 32bit libraries for video4linux through yast. (This is because I’m using 64bit OpenSUSE)
  2. Launch Skype by running
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l2convert.so skype

I then made a text file with the contents


#! /bin/sh
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l2convert.so skype

I made the file executable “chmod +x [filename]” and copied it into /usr/sbin.
then I edited the menu entry in gnome3 so that running skype executes the above script.

It’s not an elegant solution but it works. I hope it helps someone out. Let me know if there’s a better way to do this.