Video Conferencing On Linux

I have normally had a bad experience with multimedia related software till today. An expensive IBM PC camera has not been working for quite a while, so I had banished it to my family’s Windows XP machine. But I needed one to play with for my own FC3 linux box.

My hardware dealer at first insisted that I try out a damn cheap Chinese cam costing Rs. 950. The package was as cheap as it could be made, but the demo that he showed me was impressive. So I took it home, and guess what it still didnt work, coz’ there were no drivers.

So I returned it and got a Logitech Quickcam express instead (lsusb output: ID 046d:0870 Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Express). I had to google and get the drivers from http://qce-ga.sourceforge.net/.

Tweaking all the stuff to make it work was a bit of a story, and I would shortly put in up at http://www.lug-delhi.org wiki. The end result is:

• xawtv works.

• gnomemeeting can show my pic

• gnomemeeting can connect and work with a remote netmeeting peer.

The pictures below show how the cam looked out of the box, and how it can look after tweaking.

Before

After