Arch Linux

charlie

Member

Registered: 2013-09-18

Posts: 57

Cheese can't record video

Hi, whenever I try to record a video on my webcam using Cheese this fails. It used to work, not sure when it started to fails. There is the following output on the command line:

(cheese:7489): cheese-WARNING **: 12:20:39.618: Can't record audio fast enough: ../gst-plugins-base/gst-libs/gst/audio/gstaudiobasesrc.c(841): gst_audio_base_src_create (): /GstCameraBin:camerabin/GstAutoAudioSrc:audiosrc/GstPulseSrc:audiosrc-actual-src-puls:
Dropped 1574370 samples. This is most likely because downstream can't keep up and is consuming samples too slowly.


(cheese:7489): GStreamer-CRITICAL **: 12:20:43.619: gst_caps_append: assertion 'IS_WRITABLE (caps1)' failed

I tried to look this up, apparently a problem with recording the audio, not having enough buffering.

I've searched for this error message on the internet and there seems to be some suggestion about increasing the buffer time by setting an option inside `~/.asoundrc`. But, the place where I found these suggestions didnt say what would the syntax be (and I also search for that as well : "alsarc buffer time") and, more importantly I'm not sure that this is what I really need to do in order to solve the issue. This, especially considering that Cheese used to be able to record a video with the sound before some change happened.

Here is some information about my system related to alsa:

$ lsmod | grep '^snd' | column -t
snd_seq_dummy          16384   0   
snd_hrtimer            16384   1   
snd_seq                86016   7   snd_seq_dummy
snd_seq_device         16384   1   snd_seq
snd_hda_codec_hdmi     73728   1   
snd_hda_codec_realtek  135168  1   
snd_hda_codec_generic  98304   1   snd_hda_codec_realtek
snd_hda_intel          57344   3   
snd_intel_dspcfg       28672   1   snd_hda_intel
snd_hda_codec          167936  4   snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec_realtek
snd_hda_core           106496  5   snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_codec_realtek
snd_hwdep              16384   1   snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm                147456  4   snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_core
snd_timer              45056   3   snd_seq,snd_hrtimer,snd_pcm
snd                    114688  18  snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hwdep,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_timer,snd_pcm

and

$ ls -l /dev/snd
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root       60  7 juin  09:26 by-path
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 12  7 juin  09:26 controlC0
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 10  7 juin  09:26 hwC0D0
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 11  7 juin  09:26 hwC0D2
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  3  7 juin  12:20 pcmC0D0c
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  2  7 juin  12:27 pcmC0D0p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  9  7 juin  11:48 pcmC0D10p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  4  7 juin  11:48 pcmC0D1p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  5  7 juin  11:48 pcmC0D3p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  6  7 juin  11:48 pcmC0D7p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  7  7 juin  11:48 pcmC0D8p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  8  7 juin  11:48 pcmC0D9p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  1  7 juin  11:48 seq
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 33  7 juin  09:26 timer

Edit-1: I've disabled pulseaudio as suggested in https://askubuntu.com/questions/564033/ … uffer-size ("echo autospawn=no > ~/.pulse/client.conf " then "pulseaudio -k"). The error message disappeared (except for the "gst_caps_append: assertion 'IS_WRITABLE (caps1)' failed" message) but the resulting recording is still not functional: there is no sound and the video is not recorded properly: despite being 2 minutes long there's only a few second of video playing in vlc. Maybe this is not just a problem with the sound?

Edit-2: Ive tried with Zoom as well, theres a functionality that allows to record a meeting, the recording works fine, including the audio, so this seems related either to cheese or to the pipeline on which cheese relies.

Edit-3: Vlc can as well record video from the webcam properly.

Edit-4: I remember there being a bug in cheese that has been resolved a few weeks ago. (cheese version on my system is 3.34.0). I remember having an issue with it, the update which solved the issue made cheese run again but very slowly (basically frozen). I removed older files from the Webcam directory and this seemed to resolve the problem (cheese was trying to make thumbnails or something). Seems like it may be an issue with this program?

Last edited by charlie (2020-06-07 13:22:15)