I’ve Microsoft VX-1000 webcam. It’s not awesome, but it was cheap and it’s doing the job. Troubles came when I wanted to make it work with Ubuntu 64 bits and Skype.
Skype recognises the camera, USB camera (/dev/video) but when you try to use it, its led goes to green for a second and then… darkness. According to the documentation, the camera is fully supported… apparently I’ve a different definition of “fully supported”. However, there is a method to make it work. Basically you’ve to start skype with this command: “LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l2convert.so skype”
That’s a little bit uncomfortable, so lets make skype start with a script and be executed every time you boot your machine:
- Open a terminal
- Write: echo ‘#!/bin/bash’ > skype.sh && echo “LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l2convert.so skype” >> skype.sh && chmod +x skype.sh
- Go to System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications
And there, add a new entry and fill the form. Here’re some images:
Now you can start skype by clicking the script you’ve created and it will be launched on each boot 🙂