Linux Format forums

[fede]

Well, I was going to record a short video to be played at a meeting I could not attend, and Cheese crashed every single time I tried it - that was on Ubuntu 12.10, Mint 14.1, and (live DVD) Knoppix 7.0.4, on four different computers. At best, the window would freeze and eventually crash when I started "record video" (Mint and Knoppix), or, on Ubuntu, the window disappeared right away. I keep all of these distributions updated, so there must be something "basic" that's not set up properly (as you might guess, I used four different webcams, all of which work fine in terms of showing up or of working with, say, Skype).

Any suggestion is welcome - I don't expect to have a similar recording to come up very soon, but I'd rather not be blindsided again (and, that's right., I didn't send any video - when I tried my wife's Vista laptop as a last resort, there was no software to record video that I could find...)

[heiowge]

I tend to use a camera or a phone and upload that.
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AMD PHENOM II X6, 14 GB DDR3, 500 GB hd, 1GB nVidia card, running Linux Mint 14 KDE / Win 7. Damn thing keeps breaking.

eeepc 1015PX, 1.66 Ghz Intel atom processor, 2 GB DDR3, 320 GB hd running Mint 14 MATE. Running great.

[ajgreeny]

Try guvcview from the repos of ubuntu. It is much better than cheese, in my opinion. I have never ever managed to get cheese to work recording videos, though it will take pictures.

There is also wxcam from http://sourceforge.net/projects/wxcam/files/wxcam/, but that would not record sound on my hardware, which is a dirt cheap logitech webcam and separate mic, whereas guvcview manages that easily.
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Xubuntu 12.04 user, and loving it!

[fede]

Thank you for your suggestion to try guvcview. I did try to find an alternate to cheese from Synaptic, but just missed this one. It does not freeze when I try to record a video, but it also does not seem to save anything. I am writing this before dipping into the man pages, but if you have any suggestion on how to record and save stuff, it would be great.

Thanks!!

[ajgreeny]

On my Ubuntu 10.04 machine the video (capture.avi) is saved automatically to my Desktop, and I think the configuration for that is in the "Video and Files" tab of the guvcview Controls window.

Double check what the file is named in your "Controls" window and then see if you can find that named file; it may be autosaved in the same way as my videos are.
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Xubuntu 12.04 user, and loving it!

[fede]