Webcamoid, webcam capture plasmoid

Webcamoid is a webcam plasmoid for the KDE desktop environment.

Features

• Take pictures with the webcam.
• Record videos.
• Manages multiple webcams.
• Play/Stop capture, this saves resources while the plasmoid is not in use.
• Written in Python.
• Uses GStreamer as capture engine.
• Custom controls for each webcam.
• Popup applet support (you can embed Webcamoid in the panel).
• Add funny effects to the webcam (requires GStreamer plugins).
• Translated to many languages.
• Stand alone installation mode (use it as a normal program).

Installing

Webcamoid requires the gst-launch-0.10 executable (GStreamer), you can install it with:

• Arch/Chakra/Parabola: pacman -S gstreamer0.10 gstreamer0.10-good gstreamer0.10-bad
• Debian/Ubuntu: apt-get install gstreamer0.10-tools gstreamer0.10-plugins-good gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad
• Fedora/CentOS: yum install gstreamer gstreamer-plugins-good gstreamer-plugins-bad-free
• OpenSuSE: zypper install gstreamer-010-utils gstreamer-0_10-plugins-good gstreamer-0_10-plugins-bad_
• Mandriva/Mageia: urpmi gstreamer0.10-tools gstreamer0.10-plugins-good gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad

The easy way

You can follow these instructions to install Webcamoid. Alternatively, you can install/uninstall Webcamoid from console:

install

plasmapkg -i webcamoid.plasmoid && kbuildsycoca4

uninstall

plasmapkg -r webcamoid && kbuildsycoca4

As stand alone program

This install mode is highly encouraged since it gives the best user experience.
The stand alone installation mode allow you to use Webcamoid as a plasmoid, but also as a normal program. This installation way requires root access.

unzip webcamoid.plasmoid
cd Webcamoid
su -c 'python2 setup.py install --prefix=/usr'
kbuildsycoca4

From Github

Be careful, the GIT repository is unstable, it could work or not.

git clone https://github.com/hipersayanX/Webcamoid.git
zip -r webcamoid.plasmoid Webcamoid -x \*.git\*
plasmapkg -i webcamoid.plasmoid && kbuildsycoca4

Translating

Edit the Webcamoid.pro file and add you language code to the TRANSLATIONS macro, then, in the root directory of the project run:

pylupdate4 -verbose -noobsolete Webcamoid.pro

A contents/ts/yourlang_code.ts_ will be created. Translate that file to your language using Qt Linguist. Then run the following command:

lrelease -removeidentical Webcamoid.pro

Supported languages

Some languages are officially supported and other are supported through Google Translator.

• Catalan
• Chinese Simplified
• Chinese Traditional
• English (official)
• French
• Galician
• German
• Greek
• Italian
• Japanese (official)
• Korean
• Portuguese
• Russian
• Spanish (official)

Adding distro detection support

If you had no installed the required GStreamer packages, Webcamoid will show you a dialog telling what packages you must install. The problem is that there are a lot of GNU/Linux distros arround the world, and I can't waste my time testing one-by-one each of these.
If you want support for your distro distro, please follow these steps:

For newest distributions

Since February of 2012 the /etc/os-release file becomes the standard way of detecting the current working distribution. See more at this link.

Give me the output of this command:

cat /etc/os-release

If your distro doesn't contains this file please go to the next step.

For oldest distributions

Give me the output of this command:

python2 -c 'import platform; print(platform.linux_distribution())'

In both cases, you must find wich packages contains these files:

/usr/bin/gst-launch-0.10
/usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstcoreelements.so
/usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstalsa.so
/usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstaudioconvert.so
/usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstffmpegcolorspace.so
/usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsttheora.so
/usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvorbis.so
/usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsteffectv.so
/usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideo4linux2.so
/usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstgaudieffects.so
/usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstgeometrictransform.so
/usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvp8.so

Please provide all this info in the issues page.

Reporting Bugs

In the root folder of webcamoid run this command:

plasmoidviewer

use Webcamoid until an abnormal event happen, write a list with the following information:

1. Your Webcamoid version.
2. Your distribution name and version (numeric, please).
3. Your KDE and Qt version.
4. Your Python version.
5. The output of the previous command.
6. Any other useful information.

Send this list to the issues page.