Webcam + Linux = Temporary Frustration

by dez on January 3, 2010 · 2 comments

in Personal

I got myself a fancy webcam.  One that has a nice microphone and a 2 megapixel camera. Problem is that I run Ubuntu, but not just any Ubuntu, the 64-bit version. Anyways, watch the video.  Below the video is the description that I posted on Youtube.

I finally got video and audio capture working with my new webcam on Ubuntu 9.10 x86_64. It took me about 4 hours to find the right settings, granted 3.5 of those hours were spent finding a player that could actually record.

I ended up using mencoder command line.

Here’s the code I ended up with:
mencoder tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:width=320:height=240:device= /dev/video0:forceaudio:adevice=/dev/dsp2 -ofps 30 -ovc lavc -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=128:mode=3 -o ~/test.avi

I was actually surprised when it worked since I had about 12 other videos of it not working. NO, I didn’t say the same thing over and over, this was actually the second successful video and sound one.

I’m going to work more to get some better frame rates and audio sampling.

  • livius

    Simply… THANK YOU! I made myself crazy to find an easy way to record audio and video on ubuntu… You made me spare a lot of hours (let’s say more than 4… ) looking for the solution.
    Thanks again.

    • http://iamdez.com dez

      awesome! I’m glad to have helped.

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