If Cheese displays a garbled picture or one with poor colour/brightness/contrast, go to the Ubuntu wiki Webcam Troubleshooting page for steps to resolve this.

If Cheese doesn't display the output from your webcam, test that the problem is not with Cheese before trying anything else by using one of the programs in the next section.To record video or take a snapshot, click either on photo or video and select Take a Photo or Start recording. Cheese should automatically detect your webcam and display live video stream.

Type in the following command: sudo apt-get install cheese.It uses the gstreamer library, which utlilizes the video4linux2 API.ĭownload and install Cheese using the following steps: Cheese is included in the Main repositories since Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron). To test whether or not your webcam works in this way, install Cheese, a GNOME program for capturing video and stills from a webcam. This means that you should be able to plug-in your webcam and use it straight away: no driver disks or installation. Ubuntu aims to provide 'out-of-the-box' or 'just-works' functionality for webcams.

The Linux-UVC project has a good list of UVC compatible webcams. When looking to purchase a webcam for use with Ubuntu, you should look for a UVC compatible camera. However, other drivers also exist that may allow more devices to be used. This aims to provide a universal driver in the same way that a generic driver handles USB storage devices (memory sticks, hard drives etc). Webcam support in Linux is mainly provided by the Linux UVC Project's UVC driver. Please note that this document is intended for the current release: Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat). Trying to setup and use your existing webcam.Looking for information on which webcam to buy.If you are reading this page, you are probably in either/both of the following situations: This document describes how to choose, setup and use a webcam in Ubuntu.

Install vlc ubuntu