Cannot choose which video device to use

[Malcolm Parsons]

Binary package hint: empathy

I have a TV card and a webcam.

The TV card is /dev/video0.
The webcam is /dev/video1

Empathy uses /dev/video0, I need it to use /dev/video1

Cheese has a setting for choosing the device to use, but Empathy does not.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: empathy 2.30.1-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-22.33-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-22-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon May 24 21:59:32 2010
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: empathy

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

thanks for finding the upstream bug report :)

[D'Lazesz (dlazesz)]

Workaround:
Empathy uses gstreamer. You can change it in gstreamer-properties.
Or in gconf-editor /system/gstreamer/0.10/default/videosrc
From: v4l2src
To: v4l2src device="/dev/video1"

It would be nice to place some hint to this option.

[pschonmann (pschonmann)]

Same here, i have Maverick and empathy from telepathy PPA.
Workaround works well, but would be fine to choose source of video stream

[Sean DS (se4n-1)]

general workaround:

Add these lines to /etc/rc.local (before exit 0)

cp -R -p /dev/video0 /dev/video2
cp -R -p /dev/video1 /dev/video0
cp -R -p /dev/video2 /dev/video1

rm -rf /dev/video

This swaps the video devices on startup.