Linux: Getting Information About Your Video Device

I was about to teach Skype about how to use HQ video transmission, means a transmission where your video resolution is more than 176×144 or 352×288 (PAL). I’ve read, that adding these lines into your $HOME/.Skype/<your skype user name here>/.config.xml

<Video>
<CaptureHeight>480</CaptureHeight>
<CaptureWidth>640</CaptureWidth>
</Video>

into the <Lib> section, would Skype make HQ Video transmission. But it didn’t for some reasons. Some mentioned to use also the <Fps> tag, but also gave the advice to check if the hardware even supports such frame-rates and resolutions. Continue reading “Linux: Getting Information About Your Video Device”

Setting up webcam on Linux

I’m sure this has been described thousands of times, but today it took me again almost one hour to find out how to set up the webcam application on Linux. This HowTo was made for Debian like systems, if you are experienced enough you can easily port this HowTo onto other distros like Fedora/Redhat, Gentoo or SuSE, too.
Here we go: Continue reading “Setting up webcam on Linux”

Getting Started with Skype on Linux

I bought a new webcam few days ago (Tevion MD85872) and had in mind to use it for video conferencing with my family and friends, and this – yes – with Linux. I’ve tried a few messengers, which were told to be able to work with Linux regarding video transmissions. This is the

  • MSN messenger and
  • Yahoo! messanger

ICQ doesn’t support video on Linux, and all other application available, doesn’t talk to the messengers my friends and family is using.
Long story short, I didn’t manage to make MSN or Yahoo! work.
A friend of mine said, I should use Skype, and I’ve tried it also. And surprise surprise, Continue reading “Getting Started with Skype on Linux”

Poor man's workaround for Cheese zero byte problem on Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)

cheese webcam application
cheese webcam application

I’m checking cyclic if the zero byte problem with the webcam application cheese is gone meanwhile.
So happened today, and no – it’s not. Since I really needed a stream badly today, I’ve looked again for a fix or workaround. But looking on the Internet for this bug reveals that this bug used to happen more often than one time. It’s sad, because I like this little nifty application.
And found only poor man’s workaround. Well, better then nothing. Continue reading “Poor man's workaround for Cheese zero byte problem on Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)”