Terrible resolution on integrated webcam on Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition 9310

[Jordan]

This seems to be a known issue, but I couldn't find any launchpad bug corresponding to it. Apologies if I missed it, or if there is a better place for reporting a bug like this.

When I try to use the webcam on my newly purchased Dell XPS-13-9310 Developer Edition, using Cheese (or any other app) on Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS (fossa-bulbasaur X55), as it came out of the box, I only get a very pixelated low quality 640x480 resolution instead of the hardware's 1280×720 capability as advertised here:

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-laptops-and-notebooks/xps-13-developer-edition/spd/xps-13-9310-laptop

From what I gather, no linux driver exist that can use the full resolution of this webcam.

I hope that it is somehow possible to get a proper driver from Dell / Realtek. If not, I hope that Realtek can provide documentation for the interface so that a proper driver can be written. I'm tempted to try to make that my first contribution of a driver, but in all likelihood I won't have the time or motivation to learn all that's needed and actually write it.

Until a driver is available, I would appreciate if Dell would clarify on their website that their 9310 Developer Edition can only use the full advertised resolution in Windows. (I would not have bought this laptop if I had known about this limitation, as I frequently use Google Meet / Zoom and the current quality is not acceptable to me).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: linux-image-5.10.0-1045-oem 5.10.0-1045.47
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.10.0-1045.47-oem 5.10.46
Uname: Linux 5.10.0-1045-oem x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.20
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Sun Oct 3 15:40:31 2021
DistributionChannelDescriptor:
 # This is the distribution channel descriptor for the OEM CDs
 # For more information see http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DistributionChannelDescriptor
 canonical-oem-somerville-focal-amd64-20200502-85
InstallationDate: Installed on 2021-09-22 (11 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 20.04 "Focal" - Build amd64 LIVE Binary 20200502-05:58
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: linux-signed-oem-5.10
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Pierre Equoy (pieq)]

Hello!

Sorry for the very late reply...

First of all, there have been a few Linux kernel updates in Ubuntu 20.04 since you opened this issue. Please upgrade your system and check if you have the latest available version of the kernel installed; in a terminal, you can run these commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
uname -r

You should get something like "5.13.0-30-generic".

If the problem still persists, install the Video4Linux utility package and check what formats and resolutions are available for the webcam; again, in a terminal:

sudo apt install v4l-utils
v4l2-ctl -D --list-formats-ext

You should get something like:

=============
Driver Info:
 Driver name : uvcvideo
 Card type : Video Capture 5
 Bus info : usb-0000:00:14.0-3
 Driver version : 5.13.19
 Capabilities : 0x84a00001
(...)
 [1]: 'MJPG' (Motion-JPEG, compressed)
  Size: Discrete 640x480
(...)
=============

Please attach the output of the v4l2-ctl command to this issue so we can investigate.

Thanks!

[Pierre Equoy (pieq)]

Cheese has a known issue working with some formats (see lp:1882896), which was fixed, but the fix has not been backported to Ubuntu 20.04.

Could you also check the resolution found by the https://webcamtests.com/ website?

[Palumbo Juliette (juliette-pal)]

Hello,

I have the same problems as Peter. These camera resolution problems are present online and on "cheese". Here are the test results:
=============
~$ v4l2-ctl -D --list-formats-ext
Driver Info:
 Driver name : uvcvideo
 Card type : Video Capture 6
 Bus info : usb-0000:00:14.0-6
 Driver version : 5.13.19
 Capabilities : 0x84a00001
  Video Capture
  Metadata Capture
  Streaming
  Extended Pix Format
  Device Capabilities
 Device Caps : 0x04200001
  Video Capture
  Streaming
  Extended Pix Format
ioctl: VIDIOC_ENUM_FMT
 Type: Video Capture

 [0]: 'MJPG' (Motion-JPEG, compressed)
  Size: Discrete 1280x720
   Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
  Size: Discrete 960x540
   Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
  Size: Discrete 848x480
   Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
  Size: Discrete 640x480
   Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
  Size: Discrete 640x360
   Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
 [1]: 'YUYV' (YUYV 4:2:2)
  Size: Discrete 640x480
   Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
  Size: Discrete 1280x720
   Interval: Discrete 0.100s (10.000 fps)
  Size: Discrete 640x360
   Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
  Size: Discrete 424x240
   Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
  Size: Discrete 320x240
   Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
  Size: Discrete 320x180
   Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
  Size: Discrete 160x120
   Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
=============

You can find an attachment of Webcamtests.
Do you have any solutions?

Thanks!