I have a UVC web cam, the Creative Live! Cam Chat HD, and am trying
to run it under Fedora 14's 2.6.35.11-83.fc14.i686.PAE kernel,
using X.Org X Server 1.9.4, and the current intel driver for the on-chip
integrated graphics of a core I3 processor.
This camera works nicely in everything like cheese, camstream, camorama,
xawtv and guvcview. It doesn't work in the one thing I want it for: Skype.
I am pretty sure this is Skype's fault, exacerbated by its closed nature
and the fact it has not had an upgrade for a long while. But I
wonder if anyone has an idea whether this could be fixed or whether
I should just return the camera for restocking fee and keep trying
other ones. (I note that the V0700 doesn't appear to be officially
supported, but since it works in everything else, Skype seems to be
to blame).
Here is the ID from lsusb:
Bus 001 Device 009: ID 041e:4088 Creative Technology, Ltd
What usb and uvcvideo report in /var/log/messages:
[52201.794788] usb 1-1.5: Product: VF0700 Live! Cam Chat HD
[52201.794793] usb 1-1.5: Manufacturer: Creative Technology Ltd.
[52201.794797] usb 1-1.5: SerialNumber: 0L220009
[52201.799938] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device VF0700 Live! Cam Chat
HD (041e:4088)
I can include in subsequent messages more of v4l-info and lsusb details,
but for now the most potentially useful observations seem to me to be the
following:
v4l-info seems to be saying that the camera has multiple possible
video capture modes:
video capture
VIDIOC_ENUM_FMT(0,VIDEO_CAPTURE)
index : 0
type : VIDEO_CAPTURE
flags : 0
description : "YUV 4:2:2 (YUYV)"
pixelformat : 0x56595559 [YUYV]
VIDIOC_ENUM_FMT(1,VIDEO_CAPTURE)
index : 1
type : VIDEO_CAPTURE
flags : 1
description : "MJPEG"
pixelformat : 0x47504a4d [MJPG]
VIDIOC_G_FMT(VIDEO_CAPTURE)
type : VIDEO_CAPTURE
fmt.pix.width : 320
fmt.pix.height : 240
fmt.pix.pixelformat : 0x56595559 [YUYV]
fmt.pix.field : NONE
fmt.pix.bytesperline : 640
fmt.pix.sizeimage : 153600
fmt.pix.colorspace : SRGB
fmt.pix.priv : 0
Guvcview, it seems (I keep saying "it seems" because I don't
really understand this) to allow us to see what the cameras streaming
output looks like when interpreted in different ways.
By default it chooses MJPG, but if I choose YUYV, it
produces a distorted output that looks *very similar* to
the distorted output produced by Skype.
This leads me to believe that perhaps the only problem is
that Skype is not interpreting the output of the camera
correctly, and all that perhaps need be done is to force
the camera to put out the kind of output Skype thinks it
is getting.
This does not seem to require any conversion anywhere
since the camera appears to be capable of putting out
the YUYV that I speculate Skype thinks it is getting.
Does any expert think this is a possibility, and if so
would it be hard to force the camera to just put out
a selected one of its native modes?
I assume the UVC interface already allows one to force a
certain mode output but that Skype messes this up and
the solution would have to be to set the default mode
differently. Perhaps not as there is not option for
any of this on the two v4l control panels I am aware
of.
(Other things tried to far, to no avail: setting
Skype to various capture sizes and frame rates,
thinking perhaps it was confused about thos, and
also trying the fake video stream thing that is
floating around from a view years ago. Haven't
gotten too far with that as of yet.)
Thanks
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