On Sat, 2007-03-24 at 16:59 +0000, Mark Fraser wrote:
I have managed to get my webcam - a Logitech model - working using the gspca drivers from http://mxhaard.free.fr/ . However, everytime there is a new kernel available I have to recompile it. Is it available on a repo like Livna have done with the nVidia drivers and kmod-nvidia.
I like leaving it as it is, so I can recompile (which takes less than a minute) to have it immediately available.
Secondly, even though I can view the output of the webcam in the configuration window in Kopete, I can't get anyone else to see it and I can't view anyone else's that are online.
I finally beat that problem some time ago, but for the life of me, I cannot remember exactly what I did. Have you tried ekiga yet?
I have read that I may need to change some settings in my router for port forwarding. Does anyone know if this is true and if so what ports, bearing in mind that I use MSN on two different computers.
Ahha! Here's some pointers I found in the way back machine by Paulo Cavalcanti promac@gmail.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- I do not think there is anything wrong with the driver for most cameras. Mine (Creative, ntsc), has pretty acceptable colors. But there are many issues involved to stream audio and video.
1) Enough bandwidth (minimum 600Kb for download and upload) 2) Firewall rules 3) NAT forward rules (sometimes, STUN is unavoidable) 4) A known protocol
I have used my camera with a home solution, called freemeeting, and I could send and receive audio and video very well. This software is intended for video-conferences. Either, I had very good results with motion, which can be used to remotely monitor an ambient, and send images via an http connection.
Sometime ago, I also tested many soft-phones in linux, such as Skype, ekiga, wengophone, ohphone, linphone, X-Lite. Some of them can also send video. Mileage varied, depending mostly on the available bandwidth (ideal >= 2Mb)
This is how I forwarded ports in my router:
TCP 6890 - 6900 192.168.254.x MSN UDP 6890 - 6900 192.168.254.x MSN UDP 5000 - 5100 192.168.254.x Ekiga TCP 30000 - 30010 192.168.254.x Ekiga TCP 1720 192.168.254.x H323 (Ohphone/AOL) TCP 5060 - 5061 192.168.254.x sip UDP 7070 - 7089 192.168.254.x siproxd UDP 10600 - 10601 192.168.254.x wengophone
As a last remark, the last time I tried skype (maybe a year ago) in windows XP, my computer rebooted every time I sent and received video simultaneously. So, uncle Bill also had his problems...