webcam on eeepc 901

[fred smith]

On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 01:09:09PM +0100, Mogens Kjaer wrote:
> On 11/23/2009 12:42 PM, fred smith wrote:
> ...
> >the webcam works (for some definitions of "works"), but... I can
> >fire up cheese and see myself on the screen as I move around. it will
> >take still photos. but when I tell it to record a movie the subwindow
> >where the video should display goes black for many seconds, then every
> >once in a while (30 seconds or possibly longer) it will display a
> >still image, then wait a long while before updating the screen with
> >another one. if I let it "record" for a minute or two then stop it
> >and play back, the playback is just like what I saw during recording.
> 
> It's the encoding of the video that takes resources.
> 
> On my 901 cheese runs at >180% CPU time during the recording.
> 
> You can lower the resolution in preferences, and it will actually
> do a recording.

thanks, I'll look into trying that.

> 
> Or try some other software?
> 
> mplayer will display from the camera with:
> 
> mplayer tv://
> 
> so maybe mencoder can be used to make a recording?

It's worth trying, thanks for the hint.
> 
> ...
> >so, what experiences have the rest of you had on eeepc with F10/F11/F12?
> >And does anyone have any suggestions on  how to make it work?
> 
> I had F11 on mine where I've partitioned the 4G+16G disks into one
> logical volume. That was painfully slow.
> 
> "Luckily" my preupgrade to F12 ruined my system (I had cleaned /boot,
> tune2fs -r 0 /dev/sda1, it rebooted and started the upgrade. It stopped
> after 175 packages, and left me an F11½ system. I could neither continue
> the upgrade or go back) so I did a fresh installation. I did a minimal
> installation with / on the 4G and /home and swap on the slower 16G disk.
> 
> I've moved and symlinked /var/cache and /usr/share to /home to get more
> space on /.
> 
> F12 now works much better than F11.

I've partitioned mine as you describe, i.e., a single LVM spanning both
SSDs and as you also describe, disk i/o is pretty painful. it took somewhere
around 12 hours to do the upgrade from DVD, and another 4 or 5 to install
all the updates waiting for yum to grab.

when I installed F11 I tried it with / on the 4 gig ssd, but it just 
wasn't big enough for me to install a fairly full system on. I could have
pared it way down, but I just know I'd be hanging on the edge, and would
soon run out of space if/when I decided to add a few more packages, so I'm
currently living with a slow system.

I understand (from the eeepc forums) that some people have been successful
at replacing one or both SSDs with tiny 1.8" hard drives, and am tempted
to try that. But availability of such drives doesn't appear to be very 
good. while I haven't searched REALLY hard for them, so far I've not found
them anywhere except on ebay, which isn't my preferred place to shop for
hard drives. :) My wife has a fairly new 1005HA with a hard drive, and it
is a whole lot more snappy than my 901 with SSD, so I suspect my 901 would
feel a lot better, too, if it had a HD.

Thanks again for the suggestions!

-- 
---- Fred Smith -- fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us -----------------------------
  "And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father,
  Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government there will be no end. He 
 will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding
      it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever."
------------------------------- Isaiah 9:7 (niv) ------------------------------