Hi there, I've chosen to put this question in the newbie thread as I had a look at the netowrking and software thread and they seem to deal with a lot more serious issues than the question I am about to ask.

I am struggling to find an instant messenger program on linux which is able to provide the no hassle 2 way webcam conversation that I am used to with msn messenger. i've tried almost all the common ones including amsn (but it tells me that it only suuports one webcam feed at a time so its either mine or my girlfriends webcam but not both simultaenously), gaim and kopete dont have much webcam support (the last time i checked), ediga doesnt seem to be able to find my webcam at all! The closest I've got is amsn but as explained it only allows 1 webcam at a time. I've tried to use palantir as a webserver to host my webcam so that my girlfriend can see me but the connection is very unstable much to her anger.

I have seen screen shots of amsn with two webcams but cant seem to find how to get it working.

I was wondering how everyone else is solving the problem of 2 way webcam conversations.

I have a Logitech quickcam messenger which works well with the spca5xx module.

thanks for you help in advance.

Gyach Enhanced works for me (I haven't used it for about a year though):
http://www.phrozensmoke.com/projects/pyvoicechat/

I'm pretty sure this is standard fare in Gaim, no? Never tried it, though...

I havent used gaim for a while having found it didnt support dual webcam, I shall have a look again. Are there any good ones which support msn protocol?

gaim doesn't have webcam support as far as i know
but i think kopete does...

Does it support dual webcam on msn Im network?

I think Mercury can do it.

www.mercury.to

I just tried to install mercury on my gentoo machine and I keep getting

"bash: /usr/bin/mercury: /bin/bash: bad interpreter: Permission denied"

even with different startup files suggested. Has anyone else had any luck running this ?

Forget chat clients.

Just set up an sip account at http://www.ekiga.net/ and get yourself ekiga and you are both off and running.

Try Ekiga. It is formally known as Gnome Meeting. If the web cam or video capture works in Linux, it will work with Ekiga.

What do you mean two web cams? Do you mean Picture-n-Picture from and the person you connected to?

I suggest that you do not use USB web cams because the quality (a lot of digital noise) is not high enough for the compression to be efficient. Use video capture cards or a DV camcorder instead. The quality will be a lot better and the compression can be more efficient.

When i say two webcams , i would like the usual thing in msn, where it allows me to send my webcam to the other person while i can see theirs. I'm not too concerned about picture in picture at the moment. I tried ekiga a while ago and like others it didnt really suuport my webcam. I will try again though.

Again if the web cam is not supported by Video 4 Linux, it will not work in other programs. All video conferencing programs in Linux uses Video 4 Linux or Video 4 Linux version 2 for video capturing.

I suggest using mplayer to test your web cam.

Try using Video Lan Client.

The webcam works fine if i am able to specify its location. VLC doesnt let me stream the webcam correctly for some unknown reason, I am going to try it directly from the command line rather than the GUI and see what happens. Ideally I'd like an IM program which caters for two way webcam.I will try both ekiga (again) and VLC command line and post back any results...By the way i forgot to make clear that my girlfriend doesnt not have linux and runs windows <moan> so i guess this rules ekiga out.

Thanks for all your help so far

Ekiga is designed to work with Netmeeting or MSN. Before Gnome Meeting changed its name to Ekiga, it worked well with Netmeeting using a BT878 based video capture card. The Ekiga developers have not yet provided ways to detect the inputs of video capture devices, so users have to stick with tunning channels. Right now it seems DV camcorders with IEEE-1394 (aka Firewire or i.Link) should work better with Ekiga.

Mercury Messenger is JAVA based. You need to run the script that it comes with it or type java -jar mercury. I have not used Mercury Messenger.

Another way is to use VMware and installing Windows 98. USB 2.0 only works well in Windows 98 or Linux under VMware. If you use Windows 2000 or Windows XP in VMware, USB 2.0 will crash the virtual machine because how Windows 2000 and Windows XP handles USB request.

K thankd for the help, ekiga seems to recognise my webcam now, so am hoping I can try to connect to my girlfrind on her msn messenger (though the ekiga site says it supports windows messenger , not MSN messenger) Will post back with any thing i find.