Quickcam video too dark

[Vishal Ravishankar]

I have a logitech quickcam chat webcam and the video is very dark. I am using Intrepid with all the latest updates and the latest kernel. here are few of the outputs i put in

$ lsmod | grep gspca
gspca_spca561 19328 0
gspca_main 29312 1 gspca_spca561
videodev 41344 1 gspca_main
usbcore 148848 5 gspca_spca561,gspca_main,ehci_hcd,uhci_hcd

$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 046d:092e Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Chat

$ dmesg | grep spca
[ 18.578611] gspca: main v2.2.0 registered
[ 18.582191] gspca: probing 046d:092e
[ 18.642229] gspca: probe ok
[ 18.642271] usbcore: registered new interface driver spca561
[ 18.642305] spca561: registered

[Peter Dedecker (peter-dedecker)]

Same problem here but with Device ID 046d:092c Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Chat
I can see the video in Cheese, where it is very dark,
In VLC I don't see the video, but the messages "v4l demux error: failed capturing new frame"
In Skype I only see some kind of snow.

Very strange.

[micheleo (mik-cattimik)]

and same problem here
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 046d:092f Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Express Plus

the only fix seems to be using v4l2ucp but:
1) the fixing affects only the current session
2) the video freezes most of times with Skype after adjusting

[nukedathlonman (areginato)]

Same problem being experienced here - the driver loads, but in aMSN & Ekiga Softphone I can't make any adjustments to the video leaving a nearly black image. It work's, but it is so dark and with no adjustment control I would exactly call it usable.

[wirespot (wirespot)]

AFAIK, Intrepid switched from the "external" gspca drivers to the new drivers that were recently added to the vanilla kernel. This is IMHO a good thing, since it guarantees that future kernel releases will carry the driver. On the downside, the "new" kernel drivers lack the module parameters of the "old" driver, and the default parameters make the image very very dark.

Steps have been taken for a while now to move everything to V4L version 2. V4L2 devices can be fully controlled from the userland. So it may be that parameters have been removed from the module by choice (I'm suspect), and from now on we should look for userland tools to tweak such devices.

One such tool is v4l2ucp (v4l2ucp.sourceforge.net) which is in Debian unstable but not in Intrepid, I'm afraid. It is a desktop app, with a GUI that allows you to tweak all the parameters of a v4l2 device. Unfortunately it has no way to automate this (no command line interface) and the settings are lost on reboot.

To address the specific issue of image too dark I've written and attached a small C program that will set the exposure on a v4l2 device to whatever you want. It is thus suitable to be called from startup scripts.

Usage example: set_cam_exp /dev/video0 2000

Works for me, YMMV.

I'm not a C programmer so I can't really take this any further, but it would be a great idea if someone more skilled would expand this into a command line tool that can list all valid parameters for a v4l2 device (plus valid ranges if applicable) and allow setting them, like sound mixers do.

[mp (m-p)]

I have tested WireSpot's code and it is easy to compile and execute, it is functional and essentially very useful - and you can find more info here, in case you dont know how to compile and run the thing - just follow the instructions, copy and paste the code, -- which doesn't have any malicious things in it, as far as I can tell (¡¡I AM NOT A PROGRAMMER!!) -- and you can control the exposure of your cam!

[ronny (ronny-standtke)]

I recently bought a Logitech Quickcam Communicate Deluxe/S7500 (046d:09a2) and also noticed that the video in Ekiga was much too dark. Only very bright light sources were seen as muddy spots in the image.
To my surprise the picture suddenly turned from pitch black to a bright white when I hold the webcam very close to a lamp. When I took the webcam off the lamp, the picture was perfect! Maybe this procedure triggered some webcam internal contrast correction, I don't know...

It is really a strange procedure to "blind" the webcam after every reboot to get it working, but this is the only way it works for me so far.

Please tell me what I can do to help you debugging and fixing this bug. I would be relly glad if my webcam would just work - as it was advertised here: http://linux-uvc.berlios.de/ and made me buying this cam in the first place. :-(

[Vítor E. Silva Souza (vitorsouza)]

WireSpot's program also worked for me.

vitor@seattle:~$ lsusb | grep QuickCam
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 046d:092f Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Express Plus

Thanks, man!

[Miha Pirnat (miha-wolfey)]

Same problem, WireSpot's solution worked.

 lsusb | grep -i logitech
Bus 005 Device 004: ID 046d:092c Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Chat

[Neville Grech (nevillegrech)]

Not working for me (with the following info):

It's exiting @ line 60

State before exiting:

control struct v4l2_control
queryctrl struct v4l2_queryctrl
fd int 6
exposure int 2000
devname char * 0x7fffdbeb26cc "/dev/video0"

(gdb) p control
$6 = {id = 9963793, value = 2000}

Stderr:
VIDIOC_S_CTRL: Numerical result out of range

[jarlaxl lamat (jarlaxl)]

Same problem here with dark display after some updates in intrepid. Wirespots solution worked for me too.
$ lsusb | grep -i logitech
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 046d:092f Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Express Plus

[kling0n (ubuntu-skadaha)]

There really is no need to run some custom C code to do this.

If you install the 'xawtv' package, it will install the v4lctl binary which lets you expose and/or set the attributes for the v4l device.

v4lctl [-c device] list will give you an overview of the attributes of the camera.

To change exposure, simply run 'v4lctl setattr Exposure 1500' (or whatever you want to change it to) and voila! it works... would be nice to have a gnome-panel applet or a control panel in cheese to do it though...

[wirespot (wirespot)]

You can use v4l2ucp, which is a graphical interface to all V4L2 attributes. Run it as `v4l2ucp device`.

Thanks for the v4lctl tip, it works and also lists all the attributes and their valid value ranges.

However, I'll have to think if I want to install 5 packages just for one particular binary.

[jarlaxl lamat (jarlaxl)]

I mark it as confirmed. I do not think that the expected behaviour is to have dark display by default and to have to download other software to adjust it or to run arbitary c code to get a better display

[Xander85 (alex-ng-cc)]

I get the following error when trying to run this program:

remotevs@remotevs-desktop:~/Desktop$ ./set_cam_exp /dev/video0 350
V4L2_CID_EXPOSURE is not supported

I am able to use V4l2ucp to adjust the exposure rate, but I'm looking to use an easier program to use on an embedded system.

Can anyone help with this error?

[Sushant (sushant)]

Hi

I am new in this forum, so kindly ignore my mistakes

I am trying to capture the image from
# lsusb
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 046d:092f Logitech, Inc.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001
 with the help of one of the C program ( enclosed as an attachment )
Its run fin but the output in black with some noise ( output as an attachment )

when i dump the v4l attributes its show as below
# ./v4l_dump
Using device /dev/video0
struct video_capability
{
        name='Camera'
        channels=1
        audios=0
        maxwidth=352
        maxheight=288
        minwidth=48
        minheight=32
}
struct video_picture
{
        brightness=0
        hue=0
        colour=0
        contrast=0
        whiteness=0
        depth=8
        palette=0
}

So please help me. I am in a big problem

[enb (elitenoobboy)]

This still seems to be a problem in lucid. It doesn't always happen, and when it does, unplugging the camera and replugging it back in seems to fix it, but sometimes it will go back to being too dark after a reset. I tried the c program, but I don't seem to know how to compile it? cc or gcc ./set_cam_exp.c -o foo gives out errors. I installed "v4l2ucp" from the repos and that has exposure setting in it, so that seems to work in place of the c program.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Vishal Ravishankar, thank you for reporting this and helping make Ubuntu better. This bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? Can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ .

If it remains an issue, could you run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux <replace-with-bug-number>

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

[Vishal Ravishankar (vishr)]

I wont be able to reproduce this since I don't have the same webcam anymore. Since its been a while, I believe this bug report can be closed.

Thanks for the help.

[wirespot (wirespot)]

It's still there in Lucid but I don't have any later releases I can test with.

Perhaps if someone could at least confirm it's gone in one of the later releases (and which)...

[giardia (fabriziosm)]

im using Ubuntu 11.10 with a QuickCam Chat webcam

 Bus 001 Device 002: ID 046d:092e Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Chat

on vlc (v4l2) the image is pretty good and not dark; it seems to work also with empathy (but i don't tested too much)

also the webcam led is not always on as in previous versions of ubuntu, but only if in use, that is pretty nice

unfortunately is not working with skype (beta version 2.2.0.35) (the /dev/video0 is selected but i got no video even if i press the button to start the video,in the settings or during calls)
is strange because in older version of skype i had the same webcam working. (skype team should solve this as long as is closed software?)

i cannot try the webcam with Cheese because it crashes everytime i launch the program, maybe this is a bug of Cheese
(cheese:5273): Clutter-CRITICAL **: Unable to initialize Clutter: Unable to find suitable fbconfig for the GLX context: Unable to find fbconfig with rgba visual

ps: v4l2ucp says driver is spca561

[penalvch (penalvch)]

wirespot / giardia, please execute the following via the Terminal and feel free to subscribe me to it:
ubuntu-bug linux

Thanks!

[Joseph Salisbury (jsalisbury)]

This bug was filed against a series that is no longer supported and so is being marked as Won't Fix. If this issue still exists in a supported series, please file a new bug.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/287336/comments/22