The objective of this tutorial is to show the reader a quick-start method of testing a Webcam on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish. You can usually plug in your webcam and have instant access to it. If you have a built-in camera, that should also work without any extra configuration.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to install Cheese application
- How to test webcam
| Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
|---|---|
| System | Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish |
| Software | Cheese |
| Other | Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command. |
| Conventions |
# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
How to test webcam on Ubuntu 22.04 step by step instructions
Ubuntu aims to provide out of the box support for peripheral audio or video devices. The chances are that the only action you need to make is to plugin your Video camera ( if not built-in camera ) into your Ubuntu Linux system and start using it.
- Plugin in your Video camera ( if not built-in camera ) and enter the following command:
$ dmesg | grep -i "Camera" [ 6.656705] uvcvideo 1-1:1.0: Entity type for entity Camera 1 was not initialized! [ 6.656744] input: UVC Camera (046d:0990) as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-1/1-1:1.0/input/input13
From here you should see some clues whether webcam has been connected and recognised by the Ubuntu 22.04 system. Other commands you might use to list available Webcam cameras on your system are:
$ ls -ltrh /dev/video* crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81, 1 Jan 16 09:27 /dev/video1 crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81, 0 Jan 16 09:27 /dev/video0
or
$ v4l2-ctl --list-devices UVC Camera (046d:0990) (usb-0000:00:14.0-1): /dev/video0 /dev/video1 - Configurable options such as brightness, zoom, etc. are viewable with this command (you may need to substitute video0 with a different device name):
$ v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 --list-ctrls
- You can use the
cheeseapplication to utilize your webcam and record videos or take pictures with it. Install it by opening a command line terminal and executing these commands:$ sudo apt update $ sudo apt install cheese
- Start Cheese application by searching for
cheesewithin Activities menu or by executing the following command:$ cheese
Once the Cheese starts it will pick up your default webcam and start streaming video from your webcam.
Closing Thoughts
That’s all there is to it. Cheese is just one of many video capture programs available for Ubuntu 22.04; feel free to install one or more of your favorites. As long as the above commands are indicating that your webcam is discoverable, then any video capture program should be able to utilize your webcam.