dell vostro 3550 integrated camera in ubuntu
 

2 years back I purchased a Dell Vostro 3550 laptop and I directly installed Ubuntu 11.10 at that time. Whenever I use Skype or any other website which uses the webcam, it worked fine. But for the last few months, I'm having problems with my integrated camera. When I start Skype, screen will be black(not completely), and others are not able to identify me. Even the same happened in Google hangout also. When I start video call, it looks black. Can anyone help me please? I am using Ubuntu 13.04 64 bit OS. uname -a gives,

Linux ubuntu13 3.8.0-26-generic #38-Ubuntu SMP Mon Jun 17 21:43:33 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux.

One more important thing I have to add here is, I recently installed cheese in my laptop and it is shwoing my image very clearly. Not even a single darkness is seen. I also installed guvcvideo. But it gives the same problem(image black not at all clear). Please help. When I open skype or google hangout or guvcvideo, image looks like this: http://oi44.tinypic.com/21n2rlw.jpg

I contacted dell for this problem and they just said they dont have any support on linux. Please help, as it is giving lot of problem.

Thanks
Chaitanya.

Hi,

it would be good to know which graphics-adapter you're using. Could you please post the output of Are you using Skype from Ubuntu's repository? is it the most recent version? could you try an older version?

I would suppose that you have a problem either with your graphics-driver or one of the libraries used when the webcam runs. You may also try the strace command (start Skype from the commandline). will give you a logfile and you can check there for errors.

Markus