No picture from Logitech Quickcam Communicate Deluxe

[Chris Mayoros]

I have a Logitech Quickcam Communicate Deluxe which worked perfectly out of the box on both Ubuntu 7.10 & 8.04. I did a clean install of 8.10, and it no longer displays a picture. I've tried Skype, Cheese, and Ekiga. In all three, the light on the camera comes on, but the programs just show a black screen. The audio still works fine. If there's further information I can provide, please let me know.

[Ron B. (flybye882001)]

Here it is the Logitch Quickcam Communicate STX that has a similar problem. In skype all one gets for a video- signal is a green colored mess. Microphone feature works fine and I use it.

[ehtz28 (gaius-artemis)]

I have a QuickCam Communicate STX, it was working perfectly with Ubuntu 8.04. Now that I have upgraded to 8.10 it does not work anymore either with Egika, skype or amsn. I am using the 64bits version of Intrepid Ibex. The wierd thing is that I also did an upgrade on my wife's laptop form 8.04 to 8.10 (32 bits) version but on her computer her webcam which is another logitech works perfectly.

Is this a known bug in the 64bits version of Ibex?

[Chris Mayoros (cmayoros)]

I'm actually on the 32-bit version.

[proycon (proycon)]

Is it using the gspca_zc3xx driver? From what I understand this is a v4l2 driver and some apps use the older v4l1 instead. I got it to work by preloading a wrapper library for v4l1 compatibility as follows (make sure libv4l-0 is installed):

$ LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so camorama

If you're on a 64-bit system and use 32-bit apps like skype, then apt-get install lib32v4l-0 and subsequently use:

$ LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype

[vinces1979 (vinces1979)]

proycon: thanks great advice, works great.

I fixed skype for now with:

sudo mv /usr/bin/skype /usr/bin/skype-bin; echo -e '#!/bin/sh\n\nexport LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so\n\nskype-bin' | sudo tee -a /usr/bin/skype; sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/skype

[MikeLeonard (mikeleonard)]

I have the same issue (black screen using Logitech Quickcam Communicate Deluxe under Ubuntu 8.10) -- BUT, I found a simple fix. Apparently, the camera defaults to some "auto" settings (probably brightness or contrast). When I see the initial black screen, I take the camera and point it to my laptop's LCD (or my brightly-lit Blackberry screen, or some other light source). Immediately, the black screen goes bright white, then when I remove the light source, the camera appears to operate normally.

I am unable to find any utilities that let me configure or access the camera's settings in Ubuntu. I tried installing the qc-usb-utils and qc-usb-modules, but I didn't have much luck using qccam and qcdebug in terminal. I'm hoping I can find something that provides some of the functionality that I saw in the Windows driver (face-tracking, right-lighting, etc.)

[Damien (takahara)]

Same problem here with the Logitech Notebook Deluxe.

effectv gives repeats an error message:
v4lsync:VIDIOCSYNC: Invalid argument

ekiga doesn't like it either
"Your driver doesn't seem to support any of the color formats supported by Ekiga.
 Please check your kernel driver documentation in order to determine which Palette is supported."

Skype displays pure garbage(tm) in its small preview window.

But... the magic trick above fixes it: just type

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so my_program

when you launch "my_program".

Tested with skype, ekiga, effectv on Interpid Ibex 8.10 and kernel 2.6.27-9-generic

Bootnote: "cheese" works without this hack.

[Cyril Chaboisseau (cyril-chaboisseau)]

I've encountered similar results on Ubuntu and Debian as well.

From what I can tell, this is rather a kernel issue : is works with all versions up to 2.6.26 but v4l in 2.6.27 seem to break the way the Logitech Quickcam is handled (maybe an API change ?).

I'll try to report to the V4L team for further debugging.

[Cyril Chaboisseau (cyril-chaboisseau)]

This bug has been discussed in the video4linux mailing list <http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/video4linux-list> back in October.
See also the bugzilla entry related to this http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11741

The reason why it worked with previous kernel is because the new gspca driver in 2.6.27 uses v4l2 while the older out-of-tree gspca patch worked with v4l1.

cf. http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11741#c2
<quote>Also note that the Ubuntu devs are aware they need to patch all their apps to
use libv4l to work seamlessly with cams supported by the new gspca when moving
to 2.6.27. I'm very certain they know this as I personally told their
kerneldevs this at the Plumbers conference.</quote>

Until then, to make the webcam work you'll have to prepend the LD_PRELOAD with v4l1compat module (package libv4l-0) :

ex:
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so effectv

or with mplayer :
mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:device=/dev/video0
(I could make the latter work with Debian but not the latest Ubuntu/Intrepid)

[Konrads Smelkovs (konrads-smelkovs)]

Just a me too post to confirm that LD_PRELOAD trick works. What a general bugger :)

[revelationman (brianwmarto-gmail)]

Hello

I am getting the same issue green box in Skype nothing in aMsn

Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 413c:3016 Dell Computer Corp.
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 046d:08ad Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Communicate STX
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Well I am willing to wait till a proper fix is released for this could you confirm will the fix be in the next release in 9.04

Thanks

[Forage (forage)]

I just installed 9.04. The webcam is working again in Ekiga. I don't, however, get anything when Flash tries to use the camera on a website like mebeam.com.

[troll1602 (troll1602)]

I am using Ubuntu 8.10 and I tried the LD_PRELOAD trick with skype and cheese and instead of getting the weird green, I get an image with a lot of color distortion. I attached a photo.

Also I get this error when running cheese:
 libv4lconvert: Error decompressing JPEG: fill_nbits error: need 3 more bits

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Would anyone who has this hardware available be able to test with the latest Karmic Alpha release just to confirm if this issue remains in the actively developed release? Images for testing are available at http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ . Please let us know your results. Thanks.

[Martin Hoefling (martoss)]

I can confirm this bug in ubuntu karmic

[Martin Hoefling (martoss)]

OK, in fact - I can confirm that it works with ubuntu & the preloading in the skype wrapper. If you store the session via gnome, skype is loaded via the real binary instead of the script. Adding it to the startup items manually fixes this with my logitech quickcam stx.

[Kiko Barcelli (kikobar)]

Hi Martin, I have just upgraded my system from 8.04 to 9.10 and have lost my Communicate STX... could you expand you explanation about how you did your trick?
Thanks.

[MarcoV (underwaterteam)]

hi kiko,
I've got the same problems. With 9.04 and 9.10 either Logiteck Quickcam STX and Trust USB2 webcam live don't work. I've got the problems with Skype and Cheese.

[enrike (altern2)]

I am using 2.6.31-9-rt and even with the
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype
trick I only get the first frame. After the image from the webcam is frozen.

this is the output of skype

% LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype
libv4lconvert: Error decompressing JPEG: unknown huffman code: 0000ffff

and output from dmesg

[30948.753348] usb 1-1.1: new full speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 1
2
[30948.839480] usb 1-1.1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[30949.048107] Linux video capture interface: v2.00
[30949.062986] gspca: main v2.6.0 registered
[30949.069870] gspca: probing 046d:08d7
[30950.549401] zc3xx: probe 2wr ov vga 0x0000
[30950.577400] zc3xx: probe sensor -> 0011
[30950.577407] zc3xx: Find Sensor HV7131R(c)
[30950.578046] gspca: probe ok
[30950.578066] gspca: probing 046d:08d7
[30950.578086] gspca: probing 046d:08d7
[30950.578111] usbcore: registered new interface driver zc3xx
[30950.578115] zc3xx: registered
[30950.761470] usbcore: registered new interface driver snd-usb-audio
[36970.863607] zc3xx: probe 2wr ov vga 0x0000
[37172.008322] process `skype-bin' is using obsolete setsockopt SO_BSDCOMPAT
[37173.337404] zc3xx: probe 2wr ov vga 0x0000
[37357.431863] process `skype' is using obsolete setsockopt SO_BSDCOMPAT
[37373.571520] zc3xx: probe 2wr ov vga 0x0000
[37656.021505] zc3xx: probe 2wr ov vga 0x0000
[37656.232412] gspca: usb_submit_urb [0] err -28
[37657.736098] zc3xx: probe 2wr ov vga 0x0000

[antesdelalba (antesdelalba)]

Couldn't run effectv without the LD_PRELOAD, with a :

Bus 001 Device 009: ID 046d:08da Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Messanger

Worked fine with it.

[Petr_Kosv (karrrolina)]

It seems people in Fedora grapled with this in 2008: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=456825

[Petr_Kosv (karrrolina)]

I am sorry - in terminal type gstreamer-properties, click enter,
click video, try v4l1 or v4l2 - AND MY WEBCAM WORKS for me (v4l2 works with genius islim 300x)

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

This package has been removed from Ubuntu. Closing all related bugs.