May 12, 2010

How To Fix Webcam Problem In Skype

You have a webcam that don't work in Skype (for example image is flipped) but it works fine other apps like Cheese?

This is problem to a lot of people, i have two webcams and both are not working good with Skype.

Before you start you need to have libv4l-0 installed.

To install libv4l-0 to terminal and type:
sudo apt-get install libv4l-0
Now you need to edit skype.desktop so you can pre-load libv4l-0 with skype.
sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/skype.desktop

Now replace;
Exec=skype 

with:

Exec=bash -c 'LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype'



Now camera should work fine. Just make sure you need to repeat this workaround after every Skype update.



Thanks to kaspin on sending tip.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

to me there was evrthng installed. so i just started skype with "#!/bin/sh
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype1"
than i made a script so it'll start evrtime now. Thank a lot....

Unknown said...

"LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype" worked fine (Ubuntu 10.04, Creative webcam) where other suggested solutions failed. As a newishbie, could you please tell me if there is any way I can attach this instruction to a logo which I could click on to open Skpe in the future.
Thanks a lot, Kaspin

Unknown said...

The problem with the above solution is that you have to input the instruction every time you open Skype. A permanent solution (from https://help.ubunbtu.com/community/Webcam) is to go to System/Preferences/Main Menu/ Internet/Skype/Properties, and replace the Command with
bash -c 'LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype'. For 64-bit machines replace "lib" by "lib32" in the command.
kaspin

Ivan said...

Thanks kaspin, i edited post.

Anonymous said...

Works for Skype on Ubuntu 9.10 and Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000.

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