alan secker

For some time I have been trying to get Skype 2.0.0.xx beta to properly
resolve images from my QuickCam Pro 5000. Its video test option gives me a
band of real video across the top of the window, the balance being noise.

KdeTV gives a perfect picture. The driver is the default of Mandriva Spring
2008.1.

On the assumption that this is never going to be resolved, I would like to
know of a reasonably priced web-cam that will do the job.

frank peelo

My webcam, which I got in Lidl for €13, works perfectly in mplayer, but
in skype I get a green screen with some speckle in the top quarter of
the screen. Sounds like skype has the width of your picture right, but
not the height, whereas on my machine it's wrong on both.

I borrowed a Logitech QuickCam Fusion
http://www.pixmania.com/ie/uk/152161...am-fusion.html
from a colleague, powered up the computer, plugged in the camera, ran
the skype video test -- and it worked.

(but it's 4 times the price of the Lidl camera, if I include shipping,
and money is quite tight about now, so I haven't bought one yet.)

It also worked with mplayer, but the picture didn't seem to be as good
as with the Lidl camera.

Oddly, if I run mplayer, then I have to restart X for skype to show any
video. Otherwise, the Skype video display does not get refreshed: it's a
black rectangle unless I drag another window across it; then it contains
afterimages of the dragged window. This is true even if though mplayer
has been shut down before starting skype, and even if mplayer had been
displaying a movie, or something completely separate from the webcam.
I'd love to know why! That's why "powered up the computer" was
significant in the previous paragraph. If the computer had not been
powered off, chances are I would not have seen any picture, although I
might have guessed that it wasn't the camera's fault.

Using Mandriva 2008.0.

Frank

mark madsen

Symptoms like these are often caused by a *slightly* less-than-perfect X
setup. (Aside: once upon a time, in a galaxy quite like this one, X
would not run at all if it was not set up perfectly, now it is a lot more
robust, and runs even when not everything is quite tuned.)

Alternatively, one of mplayer or skype is trying to drive your display at
a different bpp setting from the other. You can experiment with
different values for "DefaultDepth" in xorg.conf, but make sure that you
have a backup of your current xorg.conf in a safe place before you start
changing things.