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In recent versions of Ubuntu and in some computers, Cheese keeps saying:

There was an error playing video from the webcam

A bug was reported in Launchpad, which has not been solved.

The external webcam in my system is Logitech C170.

Screenshot showcasing the issue

user.dz
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Archisman Panigrahi
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  • Would you share portion related to webcam from the output of `sudo lsusd; sudo lshw` and the brand/model of the laptop? (if it is a laptop) – user.dz Jul 11 '16 at 12:46
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    @Sneetsher I have updated – Archisman Panigrahi Jul 11 '16 at 16:54
  • I spent several hours trying various things, including various releases of Ubuntu, and eventually got Cheese to work with my new audio/video grabber by using a live USB of Debian 9.6 "stable". This is when it came to my attention that [Ubuntu is based on Debian "unstable"](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/137789/why-does-ubuntu-use-debian-unstable-how-does-it-manage-to-be-stable-then). – Brent Bradburn Dec 20 '18 at 16:18
  • The solution for me was to close another program that was using the camera(OBS). – Adverbly Nov 01 '21 at 12:34

1 Answers1

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For some reason, the default picture resolution in Cheese is set too high for some webcams.

  1. Open Preferences, and change these resolutions to the lowest.

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2.Now restart cheese.

3.The webcam should work. Keep increasing the resolution until it stops working again.

Archisman Panigrahi
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    That's a workaround, not a solution. Cheese should support all resolutions listed. – 13rac1 Jul 11 '16 at 16:42
  • @eosrei Maybe, the webcam cannot provide that resolution? Because in my desktop this problem persists, but my laptop's internal webcam has no problem with higher resolution. What cheese should do is to check the webcam's maximum capability – Archisman Panigrahi Jul 11 '16 at 16:52
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    That's what Cheese is already doing. The listed resolutions are returned from the webcam driver. I've gone through compiling the entire video4linux stack related to this issue. The problem is summarized by: v4l-convert: libjpeg error: End Of Image The solution is *probably* a patch to the frame decoding libraries to handle the video colorspace/format. – 13rac1 Jul 11 '16 at 17:01
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    My webcam displays nothing at any resolution, including 160x120 – Aaron Franke Jan 12 '18 at 05:13
  • This does not work at all for me; `cheese` only provides a single choice for resolution, and it matches that of my camera. – Pointy Aug 06 '21 at 00:28