Hello,

I have Sony Vaio VGN-TZ260c (Intel® Core™2 CPU U7500 @ 1.06GHz, Ubuntu 9.04) with webcam Ricoh Co., Ltd (05ca:183a)-module r5u870 , this cam support only 640x480.

With properly configured Skype 2.0.0.72 (config.xml - in <lib> - <Video> <CaptureHeight>480</CaptureHeight> <CaptureWidth>640</CaptureWidth> <Fps>30</Fps> </Video> ) , my Webcam pass test and i was able to make video call (640x480).

Now, with Skype 2.1.0.47 i see the UVC Camera (05ca:183a) and still can view good webcam pic in test, but when try to make videocall, my caller see only small distorted part of webcam pic (when i configure 2.1.0.47 i had this problem - that`s mean cam works in mode 320X240 during videocall)

What can i do, to make skype work in HQ during videocall, again ?

Thanks,
Eugene

Hi Eugene,

I also have the same webcam and the same problem, however I have not come across a solution yet unfortunately.

Daryl

Hi Eugene,

the capture resolution settings are disabled in this public Skype beta. I hope they re-enable them again.

Anyway, it's not a Skype problem, but a know bug in the support of the Ricoh R5U97x-based web cams by the Linux UVC driver of the latest Linux kernels. Check this:

http://bitbucket.org/ahixon/r5u87x/issue/1...esolution-issue

There was a previous driver, specific for Ricoh R5U870-based web cams (05ca:183b, not sure whether it supports 05ca:183a), which AFAIK had been discontinued. The good news is that this driver has been updated to support the latest versions of the Linux kernel (including a release for 2.6.30), take a look here:
http://www.palmix.org/r5u870-en.html
The bad news is that it doesn't support high resolution (just 320x240) and that it produces a load of not-so-nice kernel stack trace dumps (maybe just warnings) in syslog: BUG: scheduling while atomic: skype/5346/0x00000002 when tested with Skype 2.1.0.48 in Linux 2.6.30.5, your mileage may vary. Worth a try.

Good luck!

aserrano,

Just wanted to report my results.
I have just tried the driver that you linked to, specifically this file: http://www.palmix.org/download/r5u870_k2.6.30_i386.tar.bz2 on ubuntu Karmic, however the web cam picture still appears corrupted at 320x240. It works at 640x480. My kernel is 2.6.31-9.

Hi darylblanc,

It's curious. I tried exactly the same driver build you downloaded (0.11.3 according to /var/log/syslog), and I couldn't make it work in 640x480 (v4l-info showed the video capture resolution was 320x240, indeed). I got the same results both using vanilla kernels versions 2.6.30.6 and 2.6.31.

Please, could you confirm using v4l-info that the video device you are using is provided by the r5u870 driver and _not_ by the uvcvideo driver? The first time I loaded the driver using "modprobe r5u870", my video device was already under control of the uvcvideo driver, so I had to:
rmmod r5u870
rmmod uvcvideo
modprobe r5u870
and check via /var/log/syslog and v4l-info that r5u870 was the driver handling my web cam.

Best regards,
Alberto.

Aha, you were right, I did not totally disable the previous driver it seems. I removed the old one with rmmod, and probed the palmix one then. Here is the relevant dmesg output:

$ dmesg | grep r5u870
[ 389.695993] usbcam: registering driver r5u870 0.11.3
[ 389.696019] r5u870-0: Detected Sony VGP-VCC7
[ 389.696199] usb 1-2: firmware: requesting r5u870_183a.fw
[ 389.779431] r5u870-0: registered as video0
[ 389.779496] usbcore: registered new interface driver r5u870

The strange thing is, now the camera is not detected by cheese. It does work in Skype and Ekiga though. By the way, before I used the camera, v4l-info reported the camera as 640x480, after using it in skype it changed to 320x240.

On playing some more, I discovered that it does work at 640x480 in Ekiga (you can choose several resolutions in this program). After doing so, running v4l-info confirms it was running at 640x480.

Thanks for your help, this seems to work!

palmix solved my problem (05ca:183a under 320x240 works).But skype still use 320x240, may be there is a way to configure skype(linux) use resolution 640x480 ?

Hi Eugen,

I guess that Skype will not work unless the web cam is "certified" as high resolution (not the case of this web cam, probably) regardless of the supported resolutions.

So regarding high resolution support, we have the same problem both with palmix r5u870 and UVC drivers, until this web cam gets certified or the video resolution hack is restored (let's cross fingers).

Regards.