Talk:Webcam setup

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Latest comment: 29 January 2023 by Microraptr in topic FFmpeg

v4l2

The VLC section recommends v4l:// to view and record from the webcam. This produces errors unless v4l2:// is used. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video4Linux says V4L1 support was dropped in kernel 2.6.38. Should this be changed or additional information included to the wiki? Corburn 16:02, 5 March 2012 (EST)

Definitely, please just update the article, there's no need to keep outdated information. If you want you can also spend a few words about the deprecation of v4l in favour of v4l2. -- Kynikos 05:19, 6 March 2012 (EST)

Image preprocessing

Any programs with configuration to make a dark image/detect broken pixels and set up preprocessing to help against it?(preferably in the configuration) I guess it is a bit of an 'advanced' feature.

Note: xawtv still freezes the system for me even after adding /etc/modprobe.d/uvcvideo.conf (Other programs work)Jasper1984 (talk) 13:41, 18 September 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Module loading

"If your webcam is USB, the kernel should automatically load the proper driver."

I have a Thinkpad X230 with an integrated webcam (USB-ID 5986:02d2) which seems to work with the uvcvideo module. The drivers were not automatically loaded though. I first thought the device might be unsupported because I couldn't find this exact USB ID in the list of supported UVC webcam devices, or anywhere else.

As the uvcvideo module seems to support a lot of common devices(?), should there be a generic hint like "if it isn't automatically loaded, try modprobe uvcvideo" in this article, or is this too much trial-and-error?

Another idea would be to mention this in Lenovo_ThinkPad_X230, but as there might be other devices using this webcam this might not be the right place either...

Any opinions?

binaryDiv (talk) 18:01, 8 October 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Did modprobe uvcvideo actually work or did you have to reboot as well? -- Lahwaacz (talk) 18:10, 11 October 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Reboot after doing what...? I'm using this system for a while now and always thought it didn't have a webcam because it wasn't auto-detected (and I didn't need it anyway). Now I tried modprobe uvcvideo and it worked, I didn't do anything before that. binaryDiv (talk) 13:55, 12 October 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]
E.g. after a kernel upgrade... Lahwaacz (talk) 19:49, 12 October 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]

xawtv needs a font?

$ sudo pacman -S xawtv
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (7) confuse-3.3-3  libftdi-1.5-1  lirc-1:0.10.1-8  xorg-fonts-alias-misc-1.0.4-1  xorg-fonts-misc-1.0.3-10  zvbi-0.2.35-4  xawtv-3.107-1

Total Download Size:    8.76 MiB
Total Installed Size:  20.46 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] 
:: Retrieving packages...
 zvbi-0.2.35-4-x86_64                                                          375.3 KiB  5.55 MiB/s 00:00 [###############################################################] 100%
 lirc-1:0.10.1-8-x86_64                                                       1210.9 KiB  16.9 MiB/s 00:00 [###############################################################] 100%
 xorg-fonts-alias-misc-1.0.4-1-any                                               3.3 KiB  0.00   B/s 00:00 [###############################################################] 100%
 xorg-fonts-misc-1.0.3-10-any                                                    6.6 MiB  41.3 MiB/s 00:00 [###############################################################] 100%
 xawtv-3.107-1-x86_64                                                          444.2 KiB  25.5 MiB/s 00:00 [###############################################################] 100%
 confuse-3.3-3-x86_64                                                           45.3 KiB  6.32 MiB/s 00:00 [###############################################################] 100%
 libftdi-1.5-1-x86_64                                                          125.7 KiB  7.22 MiB/s 00:00 [###############################################################] 100%
(7/7) checking keys in keyring                                                                             [###############################################################] 100%
<snip>
(6/6) Updating X fontdir indices...
$ xawtv -c /dev/video0
This is xawtv-3.107, running on Linux/x86_64 (5.10.10-arch1-1)
xinerama 0: 2560x1440+0+0
Alsa devices: cap: hw:2,0 (/dev/video0), out: default
Warning: Missing charsets in String to FontSet conversion
Warning: Missing charsets in String to FontSet conversion
Oops: can't load any font

Searching, found references to: LC_ALL=C xawtv" or "LANG=C xawtv"

$ LC_ALL=C xawtv -c /dev/video0
This is xawtv-3.107, running on Linux/x86_64 (5.10.10-arch1-1)
xinerama 0: 2560x1440+0+0
Alsa devices: cap: hw:2,0 (/dev/video0), out: default
Oops: can't load any font
$

—This unsigned comment is by Beepboo (talk) 08:05, 28 January 2021‎. Please sign your posts with ~~~~!

FFmpeg

The section Webcam setup#FFmpeg is mostly about using IP Webcam on Android, which is described in more detail on the new article here: v4l2loopback#Using an Android device as webcam. So I think it is safe to delete most of the text except for the link on top. Microraptr (talk) 22:21, 29 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]