Frequently asked questions

Please read through these common questions and answers before emailing the mailing list.

Feel free and do email the mailing list if you want to change or add items to this page, thanks!

Storage location

Where does cheese store my photos?

Depending on your settings, they are stored in the XDG-directories for photos and videos (~/Pictures/Webcam and ~/Video/Webcam)

Slow video response

I'm getting a really slow response with the video, the video is sluggish and everything looks quite slow, like as the video lags, what could i do?

You may have set "ximagesink" (X Window System (No Xv)) as video-output. This means, that your cpu is doing all the work. Change it to "xvimagesink" (X Window System (X11/XShm/Xv)) in order to let your graphics card do the work.

Changing output device

Where can I set those things mentioned in the answer above?

Just execute gstreamer-properties (or in the menu: Multimedia Systems Selector) and change it there.

Webcam does not work

My webcam works with gstreamer, but does not with cheese... What's wrong?

Try to change from xvimagesink to ximagesink or vice-versa, maybe that does the wonder.

My webcam works with ekiga, camorama, but not with cheese... What's wrong?

Try to see if it works with gstreamer-properties. If it works there, please file a bug. Else, bug the gstreamer guys When filing a bug, please inlcude the output of v4l-info. If the camera still has a v4l version1 driver you can try running cheeese as:

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so cheese

If it is a v4l2 one it is worth trying

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l2convert.so cheese

My Quickcam Express (qc-usb driver) doesn't work with Cheese (or gstreamer), and I see errors like "Not enough buffers. We got 1, we want at least 2" in the Cheese output.

Try running qcset /dev/video0 compat=dblbuf to enable double buffer compatibility mode, then restarting Cheese.

Effects not working

Why are my Effect selection buttons displayed as blank grey rectangles?

This is a long-standing Xorg bug which affects the "ati" and "radeon" drivers.

A reported solution is to include the following in the Device section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Option "XaaNoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"