Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Upside down skype video on Fedora 14 64bit

Yes that happens on my laptop:

Laptop: Asus K40AB
Web-cam: Chicony CNF7129

It seems Asus mounted the camera upside down in the laptop. The windows driver internally inverts the image and displays it.

Here's a simple trick that I learnt from the ubuntu forums.
If you run skype with:

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/skype
It fixes the issue. But running it that way always isn't a fun.

There are two things to fix this situation:

1. The boring way: Create a shortcut on the desktop, with the above line as the executing application. This fixes the issue for only one user and cannot be invoked by the run command.

2. The fun way:
i. Log in to the super user
$ su
Enter the password
ii. Go to /usr/bin
# cd /usr/bin
iii. Rename skype to skype.main
# mv skype skype.main
iv. Create a new file skype with the below content:
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/skype.main
# echo "LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/skype.main" > skype
v. Make the new skype executable
# chmod 755 skype

And you are done. Now running skype will call the above script which has a fix thus the video is displayed correctly.

Still facing an issue? Post a comment.

Update: having issues with LD_PRELOAD, check updated article on my new blog here.

8 comments:

  1. i tried this, and i get the error

    "ERROR: ld.so: object '/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored."

    skype then continues to open, but the image is still upside down.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Now what do i do after step iv ??

    I mean the root# disappears. Do I have to then enter the next line #echo....

    I tried that too, i simply do ctrl+c to exit then..

    ReplyDelete
  3. v4l1compat.so was not found in /usr/lib/libv4l/

    So I consider path as below:
    /usr/lib64/libv4l/v4l1compat.so

    But of no use. Still i find inverted video.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Try installing this:

      http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/19246019/dir/fedora_14/com/libv4l-0.8.5-1.fc14.i686.rpm.html

      Let me know if you still face the issue

      Delete
    2. Look at this, if it doesn't work

      http://community.skype.com/t5/Linux/Package-Skype-x86-64-RPM-for-Fedora/td-p/427679

      Delete
  4. Directions work perfectly under Fedora 19 on an Asus netbook N10J. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Works perfectly on Ubuntu 13.04 and Ubuntu 13.10

    ReplyDelete
  6. Works perfectly in Asus K50C notebook. Fixed the exact problem of inverted webcam image.OS is Fedora 20 i686 (32-bit). Thanks, great posting.

    ReplyDelete