WebCamoid 8.0.0 - .pet & SFS, 32/64-bit

[Mike Walsh]

Morning, all.

Following the purchase of a new UVC-compliant webcam yesterday, I was having a browse (as you do!), to see what alternative webcam apps to Guvcview and Luvcview might be available.....and I came across this, on the 'AlternativesTo' site:-

http://alternativeto.net/software/webcamoid/

And that led me here, to the 'WebCamoid' page at GitHub:-

https://webcamoid.github.io/

I liked the look of this one straight away.....and the fact that it was available as an AppImage got me even more interested. There's three versions:-

1) The 'Installable'. This is an all-in-one .run file, that has a built-in 'installer' (similar to a Windoze installer). Like a Windows .exe file, you click on this, and follow the instructions.....and the end result is that WebCamoid is installed on your system.
2) The 'Bundled'. This is the AppImage; everything needed self-contained.
3) The 'Portable'. This one, I'm guessing, is what you can build into a complete, true 'portable app', which you can run from a USB stick literally anywhere. But it's an enormous package, since it contains the entire Qt5 set of libraries.....almost 100 MB in total!

I downloaded both 32- and 64-bit AppImages, and tried them out in Tahr64 and 32-bit Xenialpup. In both cases, the AppImage runs flawlessly; there's always something of a delay with these things, since I suspect they're having to 'unpack' in RAM before running.

You can take snapshots; you can record videos.....just like Guvcview. The difference here is that these will run in any Pup; you don't need to wait for a package for your specific Pup.

The 'kicker' (there's always one!) is that they will only run on fairly recent Pups, as WebCamoid utilises Qt5, and requires at least glibc-2.19 & gcc 4.8.8. I've tried the 32-bit version out in Xenialpup, Tahrpup 6.05, and rg66's X-Tahr 2.0 (based on Tahr). It runs fine in all cases.

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For anyone who might like to try this out, I've made these up into .pet & SFS packages, for both 32- and 64-bit, utilising the AppImage itself. Rather than clicking directly on the AppImage every time, this will give you a MenuEntry to start from, and a .desktop entry if you want to place a 'launcher' on the desktop. These are 40+ MB packages, so I anticipate the SFS will probably be the favoured choice.

Packages can be found here:-

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/unygx5 ... /WebCamoid

Feedback would be appreciated. Have fun.


Mike.

[april]

I gave the sfs a try on Precise 5.7.1 ,no go but I guess its a bit old now
Tried the pet too

Code: Select all

# WebCamoid
webcamoid: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.17' not found (required by /tmp/.mount_gU24w8/lib/libdrm.so.2)
# 

Thanks Mike

[Mike Walsh]

Hi, april.

I gave the sfs a try on Precise 5.7.1 ,no go but I guess its a bit old now

Indeed, that probably is the case. In fact, I'm now starting to think this is a 'beta' version.....or even something like an RC2 or RC3 release candidate, even though it doesn't say so. It's rather unstable, too.

The 64-bit version doesn't seem too 'shonky', but trying to do basic stuff in the 32-bit version (like adjusting screen resolution) results in an instant crash. And it does it over, and over again.

It's rather unpredictable, too..... It's quite possible I rushed this one out too quickly, before giving it a trial run for a few days. It's what I should really have done, TBH.


Mike.