No video displayed and UI hangs

[lordnino]

Binary package hint: yelp

upon installation,every time i open cheese webcam booth no video display coming out and later hangs. pls help

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/yelp
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
Package: yelp 2.24.0-0ubuntu2
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: yelp
Uname: Linux 2.6.27-7-generic i686

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for your bug report. Please try to obtain a backtrace of the hang http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProgramCrash and attach the file to the bug report. This will greatly help us in tracking down your problem.

[carl1005 (carl1005)]

Had the same problem with cheese and camorama does not detect the webcam but it works with skype.
With Cheese, it either gives a corrupted image or it shows nothing while the webcam indicator light is still on. It sometimes crashes when closed but the crash went away after an update
I tried using kernel 2.6.24-21 leftover after upgrading from hardy and everything works perfectly.
When an update for 2.6.27-9 went out, I tried it again. It now just shows a blank image while the webcam indicator light is on.
All that in an Aspire 5630 (the gma950 version).
On an Aspire one, the webcam works without any hacks being used.

[CPKS (c-1)]

I hope that the attached data, read in conjunction with these comments, will aid diagnosis. It may be that the fault does not lie with Cheese.

Cheese worked OK for me in the early alphas of Intrepid, then stopped working with the symptoms described above. The first thing I noticed was that it took an abnormally long time before the animated paw-print image disappeared, and it seemed to be opening the camera device twice.

A significant breakthrough came when I tried to change the capture resolution to the minimum. As usual, Cheese went into a futex-wait and refused to respond further. However, when I restarted it, it worked OK, displaying low-res camera information and taking snapshots. I increased the resolution in steps until at 320x240 it packed up with a futex-wait.

The attachment contains the following files:

cheese1.out: result of cheese --verbose --gst-debug-level=3 2>cheese1.out
cheese2.out: ditto, but I changed the resolution (successfully) to 176x144 (next-to-lowest resolution).
envdata.txt: data about the environment, versions etc.

It seems to me that cheese is no longer able to cope with the data stream except at the lowest resolutions.

[Valeriy Krupnov (valich74)]

I have MSI Wind U90x with BisonCam NB Pro. Ubuntu 8.10 UMPC-realease.

On problem "It now just shows a blank image while the webcam indicator light is on." after checks gstreamer-properties, fix error "changed the resolution to 176x144".

The reason, after update software from repositories adjustment resolution set up automatically to 640x480.

Camera and cheese works.

[Omegamormegil (omegamormegil)]

I have similar problems with my Logitech QuickCam Deluxe For Notebooks (960-000043). Reducing the resolution to BELOW 320 X 240 causes it to start working, as suggested by CPKS.

[Omegamormegil (omegamormegil)]

I have duplicated the bug, and obtained a backtrace by following the instructions in the link provided by Pedro.

[Omegamormegil (omegamormegil)]

Upgrading libv4l to version 0.5.7 does not affect this problem.

[reh4c (gene-hoffler)]

Video still hangs on Ubuntu 9.04 alpha 5 netbook remix using a kohjinsha netbook. Cheese will take a photo, but video recording hangs and won't record properly. Please tell me how to debug and what info I can provide to help.

[CPKS (c-1)]

Fixed for me in Jaunty.

[reh4c (gene-hoffler)]

Problem still exists for me in Jaunty on my Kohjinsha netbook. Video recording hangs and doesn't playback. Still images are fine.

[Filippo Argiolas (fargiolas)]

reh4c, you have a different bug than this one. This is about cheese hanging on start yours is about cheese hanging on video recording. It happens with almost all netbooks because they are too much underpowered to do live theora encoding.
See http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=564957

[Omegamormegil (omegamormegil)]

I'm pretty sure this has been fixed for a while. Anyone still having this problem?

[Vish (vish)]

This bug has been reported a while ago , And from the previous comment it seems resolved.

Is anyone still facing this bug?

[Robert Hrovat (robi-hipnos)]

In Lucid webcam is detected, module loaded but no program shows cam content.

Dmesg output:
[10876.645785] Linux video capture interface: v2.00
[10876.647943] pwc: Philips webcam module version 10.0.13 loaded.
[10876.647945] pwc: Supports Philips PCA645/646, PCVC675/680/690, PCVC720[40]/730/740/750 & PCVC830/840.
[10876.647947] pwc: Also supports the Askey VC010, various Logitech Quickcams, Samsung MPC-C10 and MPC-C30,
[10876.647949] pwc: the Creative WebCam 5 & Pro Ex, SOTEC Afina Eye and Visionite VCS-UC300 and VCS-UM100.
[10876.983766] pwc: Logitech QuickCam 4000 Pro USB webcam detected.
[10876.983932] pwc: Registered as /dev/video0.
[10877.004613] input: PWC snapshot button as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/usb2/2-9/input/input8
[10877.004971] usbcore: registered new interface driver Philips webcam

[Vish (vish)]

@Robert Hrovat :
Could you try again?
In Lucid , My webcam also stopped working in the past week due to other some updates , and now its working again.

[Robert Hrovat (robi-hipnos)]

Yes and no :-)

Plugged in cam, dmesg outputs right messages, cam light goes up, but no picture on any program (cheese and emesene).

Reboot, trying the same procedure and cheese show up picture. So what's causing it works only sometimes?

[Vish (vish)]

@Robert Hrovat :
I'm noticing the same behavior too , but in my built-in webcam [laptop]
Sometimes the cam doesnt work and sometimes on reboot , it does work... But it is a not a bug in cheese since even when i test the webcam in gstreamer-properties , it shows the same problem [as you mention above with emesene]

And I'm not sure where the exact problem is either. But I'v found this in the messages logs whenever the cam doesnt work:

laptop kernel: [ 33.341883] usb 1-8: USB disconnect, address 2
laptop kernel: [ 33.342067] gspca: disconnect complete

Seems it might be a linux problem hence i'v reported Bug #552384 , do mention on the bug if you notice any such messages in the logs[ /var/log/messages ]

I'm closing this bug as fixed in cheese