Can’t enable the webcam on any website

A Former User

Using Opera Developer 44.0.2505.0 on Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS (x86; i3)

Whatever the website, I can’t use the webcam (I never did before, it’s the first time I need it).

I checked the configuration (from about:config) specifies to ask, the webcam is not always disallowed.

There is sometime an icon on the left of the address bar. It says access to the webcam was refused, tell me to click a button to delete this setting and reload, but it’s finally always the same. Sometime this icon is not there while I know the website expect the webcam. I have no dialogue box asking me neither.

If that's useful to mention, the webcam does not seems to work with Firefox neither, although I allow access to the webcam, it always seems to be disallowed. However, it works fine with Gstreamer, as I tested.

A Former User

May be it's related to this Chrome bug report ? : https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=470717&q=webcam ubuntu&colspec=ID Pri M Week ReleaseBlock Cr Status Owner Summary OS Modified

A Former User

This may be related with Flash too, and Flash does not work neither on Opera Developer for Ubuntu (known long time pending bug). Flash works fine on Firefox, so I check the per site Flash configuration and global configuration (which is a Macromedia web web at https://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager04.html ), and seems Flash does not see the webcam neither.

This seems to be an environment issue, but surprisingly the webcam works with Gstreamer.

I read about a V4L vs V4L2, which seems to be a webcam protocol. It is said some old webcam does not work with V4L2, and my webcam is ten years old. But Gstreamer uses V4L2 and sees my webcam.

A Former User

Seems Flash for Linux, uses V4L1 (or V4L for short) video driver, while all recent (a few years old or less) Linux distributions provides V4L2 only, V4L1 being obsoletes since long.

There exist a wrapper which can make a webcam using a V4L2 driver (all webcams on recent enought Linux boxes) visible to Flash as a V4L webcam : http://www.swift-tools.net/Flashcam/

I have not tested it yet. There is unfortunately no PPA for this (there use to be one, but for older Ubuntu versions, not maintained anymore since long), so there is no other choice than compiling it manually and pray for not encountering any error during the process.

(really, Linux is a lot boring compared to Windows … sorry to be honest)

A Former User

There also exists a compatibility layer to be used with as an LD_PRELOAD, but I can’t find this library on my Ubuntu 14.04 : https://beeznest.wordpress.com/2011/07/02/adobe-flash-and-v4l2-webcams/

I will investigate on this and the previous, later, and will tell if one or the other works

A Former User

There also exists a compatibility layer to be used with as an LD_PRELOAD, but I can’t find this library on my Ubuntu 14.04 : https://beeznest.wordpress.com/2011/07/02/adobe-flash-and-v4l2-webcams/
I will investigate on this and the previous, later, and will tell if one or the other works

This one works, but only with Firefox, using /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libv4l/v4l1compat.so (exactly LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libv4l/v4l1compat.so firefox). One may have to use another path (run a find /usr -name v4l1compat.so to get yours). Works with Firefox, but still not with Opera, no picture, while at least, it prompt me for access right to the camera, so that's still a step further.

Note as Flash does not work with Opera, I tested the webcam with Opera, on a website which does not rely on Flash: opentokrtc.com/ (I tested Firefox on the same too).