9th OPW Report: Common Problems of Cheese- Part Two

* To complete the documentation of Cheese, it was necessary to write about the crashes that Cheese can have in this new version: 3.0.2. I must confess these are very hard topics to write:

Because this is a new version, it was difficult to find [SOLVED] cases. All related posts  were opened in 2006, 2008 and 2010 most of the time; but I found some helpful posts in forums of Ubuntu, Fedora, archlinux, Open SUSE, xbmc; including the forums of official pages like skype, ekiga, MAC OS X, etc.

* Blogs also played an important role, Cibort’s blog, maintainers of Cheese: Luciana’s blog, Patricia Santa Cruz, Laura Luca.

* I also contacted the creator of Cheese:  Daniel Siegel

Well… finally my writing looks like this: 

Cheese automatically gets closed.

After crashing, you may get this error message:

$ cheese

progname=cheese; RGBA=on The program ‘cheese’ received an X Window System error. This probably reflects a bug in the program. The error was ‘BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)’. (Details: serial 77 error_code 8 request_code 132 minor_code 19) (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously; that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it. To debug your program, run it with the –sync command line option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.) ?

You can solve this problem following these steps:

1. Modify as a root, the gtkrgba.sh file:

   sudo gedit /etc/profile.d/gtkrgba.sh

   You will see a list with all the applications that use rgba.

2. Include in the list ”:cheese”; be careful, it is “:” before “cheese”. See the last word in the last line: GTK_MODULES=rgba export GTK_RGBA_APPS=allbut:firefox:firefox-3.5:gksudo:ooffice:soffice:inksca\ pe:gksu:gtk-recordMyDesktop:kompozer-bin:gpaint:lernid:totem:truecrypt:thunde\ rbird-bin:thunderbird:checkgmail:gloobus-preview:exe:firefox-bin:swiftfox-bin\ :gnome-mplayer:gnome-screensaver:google-chrome:chromium-browser:prism-bin:gno\ me-mplayer:xsane:metacity:mutter:Banshee:cheese
3. Save it and Cheese will work fine by terminal as a terminal

See more details of the sources:in Debian , in Ubuntu.

If you don’t have the rgba package, click here for more information.

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No device found

When you open Cheese, it says “No device found”.

There are many situations that can cause this, try each of the following to get your webcam working:

1. Plug your webcam into another computer.If it works there, then it is a problem with the connection to your computer, or the operating system if it was a different one on the other computer. Check the ports on your computer (try another one) and consult support for your particular operating system.
2. Type on terminal $sudo dmidecode -t systemThis will report information about your system’s hardware as described in your system BIOS according to the SMBIOS/DMI standard. This will often include usage status for the CPU sockets, expansion slots (e.g. AGP, PCI, ISA) and memory module slots, and the list of I/O ports (e.g. serial, parallel, USB).Notice what is showed in the “Status” line. For further information, see the demidecode page.
3. Type $lsb_release -a;lsusbIt recognized the ID. You will see a hex number (e.g. “0a24:43b7″ in one of the lines), the first 4 digits: manufacturer, the second 4: device. In this case, we are lookign for a video device; so, maybe the name includes the ‘video’word. If not, try to ignore the hub lines and search the rest of the ID of the list.
4. Find your driver here

Nowadays most applications work with V4L2; so, make sure you have it.

If not, you can install it through Add/Remove Software or install and load some libraries with backward-compatibility with V4L.

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One or more needed GStreamer elements are missing

If you get this error when opening cheese: “One or more needed GStreamer elements are missing: camerabin”, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Activities overview and open the Terminal.
2. Install gst-plugins-good which contains camerabin element.

Probably package gstreamer0.10-plugins-good in Ubuntu. It should probably be a dependency of Cheese in Ubuntu too.

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© 2011 Julita Inca

Slow recording video

If the video is sluggish and everything looks quite slow like as the video lags, you may install some missing libraries, likecluttervideosink. So, in order to let your graphics card do the work, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Activities overview and open the Add/Remove Software.
2. Type clutter-gst in the Searching by description textbox, located on the left side of the window and press Enter key.
3. A list of packages will be shown. Make sure you have the package wanted and its dependencies, marked.Otherwise, mark them for installing. In this case, it is shown the ClutterMedia interface to GStreamer package marked.
4. Click Apply.

If there are no packages shown or you got them installed, try with rest of packages of the list.

If the problem continues, please file a bug report here. You must log in first.

Webcam works perfectly in Skype and Ekiga, not in Cheese.

Cheese basically uses technologies like gstreamer, GApplication and SVG.

Depending on the devices detected, it uses either v4l or v4l2; but it doesn’t use it directly, it uses gstreamer elements.

Here is the list of the basic packages that Cheese use:

• gio-2.0
• glib-2.0
• gtk+-3.0
• gdk-3.0
• gnome-desktop-3.0
• gstreamer-0.10
• gstreamer-plugins-base-0.10
• librsvg-2.0
• clutter-gtk-1.0
• clutter-1.0
• clutter-gst-1.0
• gee-1.0
• libcanberra-gtk3
• x11
• gobject-2.0
• gdk-pixbuf-2.0
• cairo
• pangocairo
• mx-1.0
• gnome-video-effects

If your laptop works perfectly with Skype or Egika, but not with Cheese; try to add the packages listed above, doing the following steps (e.g.: Adding the gnome-video-effects package):

1. Go to the Activities overview and open the Add/Remove Software.
2. Type gnome-video-effects in the Searching by description textbox, located on the left side of the window and press Enter key.
3. A list of packages will be shown. Make sure you have the package wanted and its dependencies, marked.Otherwise, mark them for installing. In this case, it is shown the Collection of GStreamer video effects package marked.
4. Click Apply.

If there are no packages shown or you got them installed, try with rest of packages of the list.

If the problem continues, please file a bug report here. You must log in first.

What are the drivers and webcams that works with Cheese?

Logitech provides support for Linux on several of their cameras.

C500 1.3MP webcam which works impeccably on Ubuntu, also Philips SPC 1030 or 1000NC Webcam and others like:

Make and Model	Distro and Version	Device Id	Driver
Logitech HD Webcam C310	Ubuntu 10.10 64bit	046d:081b	uvcvideo,usbvideo,gspca_main
China cheep-detected as Alcor Micro Corp	Ubuntu 10.04-64bit	058f:3881	uvcvideo,gspca_main
philips webcamspc1300nc	Ubuntu 10.04	05ca:183a
Vimicro Z-Star USB1.1 5.2MP Webcam (sold as I-SMART X-Laser Series)	Ubuntu 10.04	0ac8:3450	uvcvideo
Pluscom 8MP Webcam (UC480-2)	Ubuntu 10.04	1e4e:0100	uvcvideo
Logitech HD Pro Webcam C910	Ubuntu 10.04	046d:0821	uvcvideo
Labtec Notebook Webcam	Ubuntu 10.04	046d:08aa	gspca_main
Creative Live! Cam Notebook	Ubuntu 9.10 64bit	041e:4068	gspca
Trust Widescreen HD Webcam (16530)	Ubuntu 9.04	145f:0167	uvcvideo
Creative Webcam Instant	Ubuntu 9.04	041e:4034	gspca
A4tech PK-333E	Ubuntu 9.04	09da:8090	uvcvideo
A4tech PK-130MG	Ubuntu 9.04	09da:022b	gspca
Vimicro Z-Star chip, sold as A4Tech PK-35N	Ubuntu 8.04	0ac8:303b	gspca
Sony Eyetoy	Ubuntu 8.04	054c:0155	ov51x_jpeg
Logitech Quickcam Express Plus	Ubuntu 7.10, 8.04	046d:092f	gspca
Vimicro Z-Star	Ubuntu 7.10, 8.04	0ac8:0321	gspca
Philips SPC220NC	Ubuntu 7.10	093a:2463	gspca v. 20071224
Sony Vaio		05ca:183a

Source:

From the ubuntu list

gspca support

spc1300nc support

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© 2011 Julita Inca

** If you think this is extremely technical or maybe most users won’t be able to understand it, please let me know how to improve the document. Thanks…

wait! I almost forgot the effect part.. I did not found too much information about effects; so, if you can help me with this, it would be great! … I still have this error message in my lap, I think is related to: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=678502

(cheese:2089): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_get: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

** (cheese:2089): WARNING **: Error with effect filter . Ignored

(cheese:2089): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_get: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

(cheese:2089): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_variant_new_string: assertion `string != NULL' failed

(cheese:2089): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: g_settings_type_check: assertion `value != NULL' failed

(cheese:2089): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_variant_get_type_string: assertion `value != NULL' failed

(cheese:2089): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: g_settings_set_value: key 'selected-effect' in 'org.gnome.Cheese' expects type 's', but a GVariant of type '(null)' was given