Webcam only shows static in Adobe Flash 10

[object404]

The webcam isn't supported properly in Adobe Flash 9 - users will only get a black box.

The webcam on Linux is supposed to be supported in the latest Flash 10 release candidate and a lot of general Linux users have reported the cam to work with linux.

Testing with the Adobe Flash 10.0.12.0 release candidate plugin on both the Browse activity and Opera 9.52 on 2 XO-1s (one with Build 656, the other on Update.1 711) using any Flash app that uses the webcam, both XOs showed red & green static in lieu of webcam images.

Something is being detected though, if you wave your hand in front of the webcam, the static shifts and reacts. Some kind of synchronization issue?

It's very important to fix this as there's quite a lot of potential to use the webcam for Flash on the XO

[mstone-xmlrpc]

changed by irc user cjb:

I can't see us fixing this ourselves, but we'd welcome a patch.

[object404]

Reported the bug to Adobe, got instructions on how to get information on the XO's cam and report it back to Adobe here: http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2008/07/paparazzi_v2_1.html

Sent the following info to Adobe:

/dev/video0 is a V4L2 device named "cafe_ccic" /dev/video0 is capable of video capture /dev/video0 is capable of streaming capture /dev/video0 supports 'YUYV 4:2:2' (raw format, V4L2_PIX_FMT_YUYV) /dev/video0 supports 'RGB 444' (raw format, V4L2_PIX_FMT_RGB444) /dev/video0 supports 'RGB 565' (raw format, V4L2_PIX_FMT_RGB565) /dev/video0 supports 'Raw RGB Bayer' (raw format, V4L2_PIX_FMT_SBGGR8)

Ed Costello from Adobe replied with: "Thanks for the information. We'll look into the issue, but may be obliged to wait for a future interim release to introduce these changes."

[overbyte]

I can't get any video at all on my XO in FlashPlayer 10 (version 10,0,15,3) in a Flash application at www.vyew.com. When I try to activate the webcam in that application, Flash Player pops up a security settings window asking for permission to allow www.vyew.com to access the camera and microphone, but that settings window is frozen. Clicking the Allow radio button doesn't work, nor does the Close button in the security window. Since the security setting window has grabbed focus, the application itself is greyed out and does not respond. The only way to kill the security window is to reload the browser page or navigate away. When I try the right-click menu in the Flash application on the www.adobe.com/products/flash/about page, the settings window similarly grabs and freezes. www.vyew.com runs fine with webcam on a PC laptop running VISTA with Flash Player 10.

The above was all done using the standard Browse activity. Using Opera 9.12 for Linux (build 544), I get only a gray box on the adobe "about" page where Browse did display the Flash movie. Since I launched Opera from Terminal, I could read error output by returning to Terminal, which showed that Opera complained about a plug-in not responding and closing it. I think this was the Flash plug-in not responding in Opera. Looking at the launch of Opera, I see warnings that two library modules could not be loaded, including libjvm (Java Virtual Machine), so I suspect that Opera won't even run Flash Player 10 due to insufficient RAM in the XO. When I try to load a Flash application (www.vyew.com) I get a segmentation fault message out of Opera's terminal output. I can run the little movie at the Adobe Flash "about" page on the standard XO Browse activity, but not on the larger Opera browser. Looking at memory allocations and availability on "top" command in Terminal while Opera is also running (launched with command "Opera &") shows very little free memory and no swap space allocated at all.

All of this leads me to suspect that the little XO doesn't have enough RAM to run Flash Player 10 fully operational inside of a browser. Perhaps changing the swap allocation would help, but I don't know how to do that.

[overbyte]

I should have mentioned that my XO mentioned in the above comment is running Build 767 Sugar 0.82.1 Firmware Q2E18, on of the fall 2008 XO's sold by Amazon, updated to build 767 by me.

[wad]

You really need to update your firmware and operating sytem.

[rsavoye]

From what I can tell, this isn't a Gnash Plugin bug but an Adobe one. Just as a note, we're working hard on swf v10 support in Gnash, and as of the latest release of Gnash 0.8.6, both the webcam and microphone work when using Gstreamer.

[overbyte]

I just installed Adobe FlashPlayer 10,0,45,2 on my XO-1 with up-to-date operating system & Browse activity. Flash content plays, but when I try to test the XO's camera using FlashPlayer Settings dialog (right-click in a Flash movie > click Settings), the FlashPlayer Settings dialog that pops up does not respond to mouse clicks. Navigating with Tab and Enter, I can bring up the camera tab and activate the camera test window. All I see is diagonal purple and black lines, which do respond by changing when I wave my fingers in front of the lens. The camera selection box does show "cafe ccic (V4L2)". This is exactly the same behavior I got last year with an earlier version (10,0,22,x) of FlashPlayer. Nothing's changed. However, when I run Xubuntu from a bootable SD card in the XO, I can get perfectly fine video/audio in FlashPlayer 10 plug-in on Firefox. So, it's not the hardware, but rather it's a software bug.

[Quozl]

Replying to overbyte:

I just installed Adobe FlashPlayer 10,0,45,2 on my XO-1 with up-to-date operating system & Browse activity.

Your report is incomplete. Which XO-1 build? (os140py, os13, os802, or os802b5). Which Browse activity version? Which version of Xubuntu?