Fixing your webcam in Ubuntu Jaunty
After more than two years running Feisty on my Dell Latitude D820, I finally decided it was time to upgrade my Ubuntu distribution to the latest release tagged Jaunty. I started to lack a couple of essentials like Firefox 3, Flash Player 10 and I wanted to get my hands on the Google Chrome browser too. Installation was super smooth and within 20 minutes I could login to my new system.
Now, the webcam issue : I have a QuickCam Messenger webcam, which is recognized correctly by Ubuntu, but it does not work with Skype or JMF (Java Media Framework) applications.
Here's my dmesg output :
[30850.333403] gspca: probing 046d:08da
[30851.979243] zc3xx: probe 2wr ov vga 0x0000
[30852.023239] zc3xx: probe sensor -> 11
[30852.023244] zc3xx: Find Sensor HV7131R(c)
[30852.030593] gspca: probe ok
[30852.030667] gspca: probing 046d:08da
[30977.315326] zc3xx: probe 2wr ov vga 0x0000
koen@d820:/home/koen$ lsusb
Bus 005 Device 003: ID 046d:08da Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Messanger
I never had webcam issues with the previous Ubuntu releases.
Jaunty is using V4L2 and although drivers that are in the mainline kernel are often v4l2, many applications will only work with v4l1. Even v4l2 apps often don't work with v4l2 webcams as the webcams often have camspecific (compressed) pixelformats and most applications don't support all these.
Skype for one does not work. JMF applications either. The image from the camera is green and black garbage/noise.
The solution is to preload the backward compatibility library for v4l to get it to work.
koen@d820:/home/koen$ LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype &
If you want to setup system-wide and at startup, then create a file /etc/ld.so.preload and put the path to this library in. Or use ld.so.preload-manager from the Ubuntu repositories to do this for you.
koen@d820:/home/koen$ sudo ld.so.preload-manager /usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so
Happy camming !
July 10th, 2009 at 21:40
[...] koen in the comments linked to this blog post, with a much cleaner solution to the problem than the one presented below. I haven’t tested [...]
July 21st, 2009 at 08:17
[...] no funcionan con V4L2, como muchas aplicaciones modernas obvian el uso de V4L ! Así que, estuve googleando y ví que se podía cargar librerias de retro-compatibilidad con V4L, de modo que Flash vea tu webcam! [...]
July 21st, 2009 at 09:13
Thx a lot!
Excellent! 
From Argentina!
July 26th, 2009 at 03:54
I used the advice here:
http://www.eoinmurphy.org/blog/2009/04/26/logitech-webcam-skype-under-ubuntu/
Worked a charm
August 14th, 2009 at 01:55
Thank you so much!
August 15th, 2009 at 04:59
Prezados:
A solução apresentada, após o teste em minha webcam D-Link DSB-C320, aka Z-Star zc0302, funcionou perfeitamente no Skype.
Tks
September 25th, 2009 at 12:57
It works !! Grote klasse Koen !
Ben al twee dagen aan het rommelen met Ubuntu 9.04 om de QC Messenger 046d:08da aan de praat te krijgen.
Kan ik eindelijk met Zoneminder aan de slag !!!
November 1st, 2009 at 22:58
thanks, koen. great work, been beating my head against the wall on the ubuntu website. thank you google!
November 17th, 2009 at 19:06
Just wanted to say thanks, found this solution after an hour or so on Google and it works great.
Thanks.
January 2nd, 2010 at 10:24
Great workaround, mate!!! I got stuck with my STX in Jaunty and had to install VirtualBox to run it under XP, which was just slow and everything but nice…now its working perfectly!! Thanx so much, man…
January 3rd, 2010 at 02:18
Yes i have just tried this after 2 weeks of trying to get my Trust Spacecam to work again without the ‘green noise’ properly after a Debian sid via Sidux upgrade, a few months back, and it works!
Kopete Yahoo messenger also had the same problem after a system upgrade. So i will try this also when i get time.
Thanks.
February 11th, 2010 at 19:04
Thank you thank you thank you ! Spent a whole day trying to debug a multitude of apps, when it turns out to be this
Thanks again, cheers!