Frequently Asked Questions

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

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

What are the requirements of Cheese?

• glib-2.0 >= 2.15.4

• gobject-2.0

• gtk+-2.0 >= 2.10.0

• gdk-2.0
• dbus-1
• hal
• cairo
• pango

• librsvg >= 2.18.0

• gstreamer-0.10 >= 0.10.15

• gstreamer-plugins-base-0.10 >= 0.10.15

• gstreamer-plugins-good-0.10 >= 0.10.6

• gstreamer-pango-0.10 >= 0.10.12

• gnome-vfs-2.0
• libgnomeui-2.0
• xf86vidmodeproto
• libebook-1.2 (evolution-data-server)
• postr for Flickr export (optional)
• f-spot for F-Spot export (optional)
• a webcam (a v4l2-webcam is highly recommended)
• a brain

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.

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

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 fill a bug. Else bug the gstreamer guys

Do you know another Chuck Norris joke?

Of course! Chuck Norris has the greatest Poker-Face of all time. He won the 1983 World Series of Poker, despite holding only a Joker, a Get out of Jail Free Monopoloy card, a 2 of clubs, 7 of spades and a green #4 card from the game UNO.

Where does cheese store my photos?

They are stored in ~/.gnome2/cheese/media

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.

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"