EasyCam 2

[http://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/viewtopic.php?id=16670 EasyCam 2] is a New Release of EasyCam. Please try if you have any problems with EasyCam

Installation

Add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://blognux.free.fr/debian unstable main

Then you need to update the packages and install easycam

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install easycam2

EasyCam 1

[http://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/viewtopic.php?id=16670 EasyCam] is a software for an automated webcam installation. Thanks to the autodetection it will install the needed driver for your webcam.

There are [http://blognux.free.fr/Liste/ lists] of the autodetected webcams. At the moment the list is small, but it's constantly growing.

The source code is [http://blognux.free.fr/sources/ here]

Installation

Add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://blognux.free.fr/debian unstable main

Then you need to update the packages and install easycam

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install easycam

Start easycam

with the following command you start easycam (There is also an icon under System->Administration):

lauchcam2

Now you can choose your webcam from the list. The software asks you if you want to install the driver.

After a some compilation your webcam should be ready.

Problems

If you get in trouble you can check on their [http://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/viewtopic.php?id=16670 thread] (in french) or on the [http://wiki.ubuntu-fr.org/materiel/webcam_logitech_msn?s=amsn Documentaion Ubuntu Francophone (in french)].

Testing your webcam

There is a nifty little application called [http://camorama.fixedgear.org/ camorama] to view, alter and save images from a webcam. Simply install it via apt:

sudo apt-get install camorama

Additional software

If you want to have a little tray system icon that notifies you when your Webcam is on, try [http://infinito.f2o.org/cameramonitor/ Camera Monitor]. There is even a [http://infinito.f2o.org/cameramonitor/cameramonitor_0.1-1_i386.deb debian/ubuntu package] available.

Webcam support is built in to [http://amsn.sourceforge.net/ aMSN], [http://kopete.kde.org/ kopete] and [http://www.gnomemeeting.org/ ekiga]. As usual, install with

sudo apt-get install kopete
sudo apt-get install amsn
sudo apt-get install ekiga

Recording to an AVI file

[https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MPlayer MPlayer] is capaple of displaying a webcam video stream, for example with the command line

mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l:width=640:height=480:device=/dev/video0

The resolution (width=??? & height=??? ) should be chosen to match the output of your device.

The companion to MPlayer, [https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MEncoder MEncoder] can record from a webcam to video files such as AVI, for example without audio:

mencoder tv:// -tv driver=v4l:width=320:height=240:device=/dev/video0 -ovc lavc -o webcam.avi

and with audio

mencoder tv:// -tv driver=v4l:width=320:height=240:device=/dev/video0:forceaudio:adevice=/dev/dsp1 -ovc lavc -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=64:mode=3 -o webcam.avi

Type 'man mencoder' for more info on the audio options. In the example, /dev/dsp1 refers to the webcam USB Audio device, while /dev/dsp would refer to the sound card

You may need to install these programs with

sudo apt-get install mplayer mencoder

Installing spca5xx manually

You can find howto's for manual installation of the spca5xx driver [wiki:Spca5xx here].

Edgy troubleshooting : pwc driver is broken

On Edgy, the pwc driver in the kernel is [https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.17/+bug/56090 broken].

[http://www.lavrsen.dk/twiki/bin/view/PWC/WorkingWebcamsWithPWC List of the working webcams with pwc.]

An easy check to see if your pwc driver is broken :

{{{$ lsmod | grep pwc

pwc 51964 1 <- Your driver is broken ! (around 50kb)

pwc 93984 0 <- your driver seems ok. (around 90kb) }}} How to get your webcam working ?

1) Install build-essential and the kernel-headers for your kernel (linux-headers-2.6.17-6-686 for me).

2) Download latest driver from http://www.saillard.org/linux/pwc/ (http://www.saillard.org/linux/pwc/files/pwc-10.0.12-rc1.tar.bz2 for me)

3) Unpack and go into extracted directory

4)

make

5)

sudo modprobe -r pwc

6)

sudo cp pwc.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/media/video/pwc/pwc.ko.saillard

7)

cd /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/media/video/pwc

8)

sudo mv pwc.ko pwc.ko.ubuntu

9)

sudo ln -s pwc.ko.saillard pwc.ko

10)

sudo depmod -a

11)

sudo modprobe pwc

12) Enjoy!

CategoryDocumentation CategoryCleanup