video chat with only one party having a camera

[Michael Nagel]

Binary package hint: pidgin

pidgin 2.6 added audio/video chat support. that's incredibly awesome!

however i did not get video chat working if only one party has a camera.

Scenario:
user A has a microphone and a camera
user B has just a microphone

they use jabber and send text messages ever since, and now audio/video chat is available and they want to use it.

case 1: user B starts an audio call to user A. everything works as expected! awesome.
case 2: user A starts an audio call to user B. everything works as expected! awesome.

case 3: user B starts an video call to user A.
actual behavior: following output to debug log and no call at all:
------------------
(15:09:01) mediamanager: gst pipeline error: Cannot identify device '/dev/video0'.
(15:09:01) mediamanager: Debug details: v4l2_calls.c(482): gst_v4l2_open (): /GstPipeline:pipeline0/GstBin:pidgindefaultvideosrc/GstBin:pidgindefaultvideosrc/GstGConfVideoSrc:gconfvideosrc1/GstBin:bin18/GstV4l2Src:v4l2src1:
system error: No such file or directory
------------------
expected behavior: voice call + video from A to B

case 4: user A starts an video call to user B.
actual behavior: following output to debug log and no call at all:
------------------
(15:11:40) g_log: purple_media_get_account: assertion `PURPLE_IS_MEDIA(media)' failed
(15:11:40) g_log: purple_find_buddy: assertion `account != NULL' failed
(15:11:40) g_log: purple_media_accepted: assertion `PURPLE_IS_MEDIA(media)' failed
(15:11:40) g_log: purple_media_get_account: assertion `PURPLE_IS_MEDIA(media)' failed
(15:11:51) g_log: purple_media_stream_info: assertion `PURPLE_IS_MEDIA(media)' failed
------------------
expected behavior: see above

sometime the following is displayed in the chat window:
------------------
media: Error with your webcam.
------------------

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Nov 15 14:55:27 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/pidgin
Package: pidgin 1:2.6.2-1ubuntu7
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
SourcePackage: pidgin
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic i686

[Toon Verwaest (tverwaes)]

I'm getting the case 3 behavior as well. It sometimes hangs pidgin and crashes it as well.

[Toon Verwaest (tverwaes)]

A quick fix is to go to plugins in pidgin and turn on the voice/video settings plugin, and changing the input video device to the "Test input" device. This broadcasts some test-video-data to the receiver with webcam and doesn't hang the conversation.

This of course doesn't solve the software bug but at least allows users to already use the one-way webcam.

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

Thanks a lot for reporting this. Pidgin should detect that user B does not have a microphone connected and display an appropriate error message if this user attempts to initiate or receive a video call.