webcam sn9c202 (sonix) working perfectly in U10.10 but not U11.04

If you run cheese, does it work ok?

Yes it works perfect, but on 10.10... (and with all other webcam apps)

on 11.04, cheese just gets to spin :-)

in 11.04, it gets only to work with xawtv...

someone suggested me in the forum to run dmesg in 11.04 ...

I will test that when I re-update to 11.04, but I am taking a break now,
as a user I like things to work straight out of the box (not having to go back to the early days, like for windows 3.1 :( )

I took the plunge again (with fear of drowning and having to downgrade again)...

They must have patched the upgrade as now cheese can be made to work, and it is fine and dandy with other checks too:
like - Alt-F1, Alt-F2 working etc.

So well done...

now I have a comment for developers - for cheese and some other webcam apps, it defaults strangely to the PCI card if there is a competing PCI capture card with the USB webcam (do not know about firewire webcams, there are not many)...

what happens, say take cheese... and my case...

I forced the system to make /dev/video0 as the webcam and /dev/videoX the other video capture device...

creating / using (real case) the file "options" which I stick in the

#put this in as file options in /etc/modprobe.d

options sn9c20x sn9c20x_first_minor=0
options zoran video_nr=1
options cx8800 video_nr=2
options cx88_blackbird video_nr=3

now, v4l panel will accept the order...

but cheese will reset that zoran is nr=0
and webcam is nr=1...

and since zoran is not linked to any output device, the screen is black!

now the only way to make cheese stick to vid0 as the webcam is to start another webcam app (such as wxcam, even if it does not work properly) which will then make the change stick...

I wonder why that is...

so my request to devs is to give the option to the user to select the default app, and handle it such that the change sticks, like wxcam seems to successfully do...

well my penny worth thought... ;)

*** I meant:

so my request to devs is to give the option to the user to select the default ***device***, and handle it such that the change sticks, like wxcam seems to successfully do...

***

Every new update brings its woes, and it is boring

Ubuntu 11.04 updated video4linux, and the libraries are no longer in the usual path which was:
/usr/lib/libv4l/
to:
/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/

the library names have changed too, so that what was (e.g.)
/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l2convert.so

has become:
/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libv4lconvert.so

anyways, I have not found out where v4l1compat.so or its new name is, so cannot use this:
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype

there is a file called:
/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libv4l1.so

and I wonder if changing to
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libv4l1.so skype

will yield a viewable video...

I find it very annoying when developers do this and do not advise how to take account
of the changes, sloppy programming...

If anyone has a clue, will appreciate the share

add:
I tried LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libv4l1.so skype and it does not work...
Last edited by bgrau2000; 1 Minute Ago at 04:50 PM..

Well I fixed it for myself...

the workaround is to get a copy of the missing folder that contains the old v4l libraries and put it where it used to be... (I was lucky to have a non-upgraded virtualbox with ubuntu 11.04), so the path for the libraries needed was:
/usr/lib/libv4l/
with the crucial file
v4l1compat.so

that being said, the developer/s needed to let us know that they deprecated the compatibility for v4l1... and offer an alternative, or at least offer this workaround...

so hopefully problem solved, at least for me...

if you want the old driver, I attached it here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=11199660#post11199660

Great share, hopefully it will help others having the same issue :)

please mark as solved if it is so

Thanks

actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said 48 minutes ago: #7

Great share, hopefully it will help others having the same issue :)

please mark as solved if it is so

Thanks

-----------------

yw

and no it is not solved, I do not know if it works in other settings, and it is messy - the developer/s removed the folder for a reason, and they need to sort this out so that we have backward compatibility through the normal ppa channel, not a DIY approach...

but I am glad my skype video now is back to work ;)

Could log a bug....