RE: [GnomeMeeting-list] Grey screen with Philips PCVC720K/40 (ToUCamXS) USB webcam

[Stefan Brüns <stefan watri org au>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: gnomemeeting-list-bounces gnome org 
> [mailto:gnomemeeting-list-bounces gnome org] On Behalf Of Julien PUYDT
> Sent: Thursday, 6 April 2006 4:36 AM
> To: GnomeMeeting mailing list
> Subject: Re: [GnomeMeeting-list] Grey screen with Philips 
> PCVC720K/40 (ToUCamXS) USB webcam
> 
> RazaMetaL | Only The Good Die Young a écrit :
> > Hi, mi webcam is detected but ekiga only show one grey 
> screen. What can I do
> > to fix it? This is my dmesg output:
> 
> Try both the V4L and the V4L2 plugin.

IIRC the pwc driver module of the stock kernel is somewhat broken. Since the
decompression has been moved out (which is fine, as signal processing should
be done in userspace), only a few modes - which can be done uncompressed -
are really supported. Unfortunately, the module does not report an error,
when a mode which needs compression is requested, but accepts the request
and delivers a blank (grey) frame, and the default is to use compression
even for modes which could be done uncompressed (to save usb bandwidth).

The second problem can be partially solved by setting the default
compression to 0. Unload the pwc module, put an option in an appropriate
file in /etc/modprobe.d/ (or wherever your distribution thinks it belongs),
and load the module again.

Stefan