Sunday, May 9, 2010

Fixing your Logitech WebCam on Ubuntu 9.04

Hello guys,

If you are using skype and a Logitech webcam (ID 046d:08af) on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope), you must have noticed this.
When you open skype, and go to options > video devices and 'test' your camera, you see some ugly looking green coloured lines all over. When you do a video chat, the other person hears a lot of 'noise' instead of your voice.

Before the solution, how do u check the ID of your webcam?
Just type in:
lsusb | grep QuickCam

And now, here's a quick solution to the problem:
1. Shut Down Skype
2. Make a new file in /usr/local/bin:
sudo vim /usr/local/bin/skype

3. Enter the following lines (INSERT):
#!/bin/sh
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/skype

and close the file (ESC :wq).
4. Change file permissions:
sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/skype

5. Start skype and video should work now.. :)

Thanks to the gentleman here who posted this solution!

-Dhaval

1 comment:

Aaditya M. Joshi said...

Much easier in Windows. *Grin.*