Arch Linux

brazzmonkey

Member

From: between keyboard and chair

Registered: 2006-03-16

Posts: 818

Webcam in skype

Hi everyone,

by boss wants me to skype with video. I have an integrated webcam which works with usual software like cheese and so on. I can't get it to work with skype (webcam's led briefly light up - nothing more).

I tried

$ LD_PRELOAD=/opt/lib32/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype
skype: error while loading shared libraries: libv4l1.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

or

$ export LD_PRELOAD=/opt/lib32/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so
$ skype
skype: error while loading shared libraries: libv4l1.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

libv4l1.so.0 is in /opt/lib32/usr/lib/

Thanks for any tips.

-- mod edit: don't put text like URGENT in your titles, see: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fo … ow_to_Post

Last edited by litemotiv (2010-11-15 17:45:18)

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what goes up must come down

wonder

Developer

From: Bucharest, Romania

Registered: 2006-07-05

Posts: 5,941

Website

Re: Webcam in skype

first of all that is not the location of the file. enable multilib repo, do a pacman -Syu and install lib32-v4l-utils

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype

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brazzmonkey

Member

From: between keyboard and chair

Registered: 2006-03-16

Posts: 818

Re: Webcam in skype

Many many thanks for your useful reply wonder!!
Multilib repos is enabled, but lib32-v4l-utils was not installed...
I used the path that actually leads to where I actually found the file (looks like there are some mismatch between webcam and skype articles on the wiki)...

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what goes up must come down

brazzmonkey

Member

From: between keyboard and chair

Registered: 2006-03-16

Posts: 818

Re: Webcam in skype

It no longer works... I'm clueless.
Doesn't seem to be a skype issue, though. My webcam doesn't work in cheese either...

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what goes up must come down

brazzmonkey

Member

From: between keyboard and chair

Registered: 2006-03-16

Posts: 818

Re: Webcam in skype

Actually I noticed the following:
- say my webcam is /dev/video0 after booting
- launching "cheese /dev/video0" works fine (/dev/video1 is my tvcard)
- testing the webcam in skype0 seems to mess with my video devices. Some how /dev/video0 disappears and become /dev/video2 (or even /dev/video1). I then have to find which is which by relaunching cheese withe the proper argument (sometime it happens that cheese lists video1 and video2 though video0 would be the proper one to select)

wtf?

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what goes up must come down

Leonid.I

Member

From: Aethyr

Registered: 2009-03-22

Posts: 999

Re: Webcam in skype

Actually I noticed the following:
- say my webcam is /dev/video0 after booting
- launching "cheese /dev/video0" works fine (/dev/video1 is my tvcard)
- testing the webcam in skype0 seems to mess with my video devices. Some how /dev/video0 disappears and become /dev/video2 (or even /dev/video1). I then have to find which is which by relaunching cheese withe the proper argument (sometime it happens that cheese lists video1 and video2 though video0 would be the proper one to select)

wtf?

What is the camera brand? In the wiki page you mentined before, there is a (really useful) mplayer command to capture video from the webcam. If it works your system is OK.

Skype is really a crappy piece of software and has poor support for some cameras under linux (like creative labs). Since your installation is 64bit, I assume you have a multi-core cpu + >=2Gb of RAM. In this case you could use a virtual machine to set up a winxp guest and pass-through the usb (camera) port to it.

Last edited by Leonid.I (2011-01-10 02:28:03)

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Arch Linux is more than just GNU/Linux -- it's an adventure
pkill -9 systemd

brazzmonkey

Member

From: between keyboard and chair

Registered: 2006-03-16

Posts: 818

Re: Webcam in skype

Thanks for trying to help.

I have an Acer Orbicam (lsusb gives Bus 001 Device 007: ID 046d:0896 Logitech, Inc. OrbiCam).
It works in Cheese as long as I provide the proper /dev/video as I stated before.
It doesn't work with mplayer

$ mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:width=640:height=480:device=/dev/video0 -fps 15 -vf screenshot
MPlayer SVN-r32663-4.5.1 (C) 2000-2010 MPlayer Team
161 audio & 350 video codecs
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing tv://.
TV file format detected.
Selected driver: v4l2
 name: Video 4 Linux 2 input
 author: Martin Olschewski <olschewski@zpr.uni-koeln.de>
 comment: first try, more to come ;-)
v4l2: your device driver does not support VIDIOC_G_STD ioctl, VIDIOC_G_PARM was used instead.
Selected device: Camera
 Capabilities:  video capture  read/write  streaming
 supported norms:
 inputs: 0 = vc032x;
 Current input: 0
 Current format: unknown (0x55595659)
tv.c: norm_from_string(pal): Bogus norm parameter, setting default.
v4l2: ioctl enum norm failed: Invalid argument
Error: Cannot set norm!
Selected input hasn't got a tuner!
v4l2: Cannot get fps
v4l2: ioctl set mute failed: Invalid argument
v4l2: ioctl query control failed: Invalid argument
[vdpau] Error when calling vdp_device_create_x11: 1
Opening video filter: [screenshot]
==========================================================================
Cannot find codec matching selected -vo and video format 0x55595659.
==========================================================================

v4l2: ioctl streamon failed: No such device
v4l2: ioctl set mute failed: Invalid argument
v4l2: 0 frames successfully processed, 0 frames dropped.

Exiting... (End of file)

I think I already tried using a virtual XP, but it was years ago. I guess I've got to get my hands on the installation CD (if ever I can find it...

You are right about my specs BTW.

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what goes up must come down

Leonid.I

Member

From: Aethyr

Registered: 2009-03-22

Posts: 999

Re: Webcam in skype

Hha... we are in the same boat.

According to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SkypeWebCams, your camera uses gspca. I have a creative labs notebook cam which uses the same module, and never managed it to work reliably with skype (in arch). Although it works with ekiga, mplayer, xawtv (?)... However, the same camera works with 2.6.18 (rhel5) kernel. There were some talks about changes in the video infrastructure in recent kernels, probably skype hasn't caught up yet.

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Arch Linux is more than just GNU/Linux -- it's an adventure
pkill -9 systemd

h-munster

Member

Registered: 2011-01-13

Posts: 5

Re: Webcam in skype

I am new to Arch Linux.  I just did a CTKArch install on my 64-bit machine.  Had similar problems with Skype and my Logitech C500 webcam, but I took a clue from this Fedora thread:  http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthrea … 5&t=217122

The basic concept is to first install all of the necessary libraries and dependencies for Skype.  Then install the 64-bit Skype "Dynamic" tarball from the Skype website:  http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/get-sky … -download/

Evidently, the "Dynamic" version "makes use of the existing system libraries" which "will minimize any potential library conflicts." 

Here's how did it.

First, I purged my existing installation: 

pacman -Rs skype

Secondly, I reinstalled fresh: 

pacman -S skype

Third, I removed just Skype (without ever running it), leaving the dependencies and libraries: 

pacman -R skype

Finally, I downloaded the "Dynamic" Skype tarball and installed it.  Installing the Skype tarball is easy -- just unpack it, and move Skype binary to /usr/bin/ and move everything else to /usr/share/skype/.

Actually, you don't even have to "install" the unpacked files to test them.  Just cd into the directory of the unpacked tarball and run: 

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype

Then, test your video.  Of course, this won't work if you have no /usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so.

By the way, I maintain my Icewm menu and taskbar mostly manually, so I manually created the menu/taskbar entries.  If the above process works for you and if you know how to make a PKGBUILD and use makepkg, you can create a package that will automatically register itself in window managers and desktops that have dynamic menuing systems.

Edit:  The "Dynamic" and "Static" links on the Skype page are shown close together, but they are actually separate links.  Try the "Dynamic" tarball first.

Last edited by h-munster (2011-01-13 18:37:56)

ngoonee

Forum Fellow

From: Between Thailand and Singapore

Registered: 2009-03-17

Posts: 7,358

Re: Webcam in skype

I think, if you look at the skype PKGBUILD in [multilib] (and most likely the i686 one as well) you'll see that's exactly what it does.

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h-munster

Member

Registered: 2011-01-13

Posts: 5

Re: Webcam in skype

Well, it might be worth a shot.  I can't explain it, but I had problems with the Arch package (with multilib enabled), while the above method worked for me.

Evidently, it worked for some Fedora folks, too.

Last edited by h-munster (2011-01-13 06:57:23)