# &application; Manual

&application; is a video and photo shoot program that for webcams (or other cameras) and can do some cool effects

2007
daniel g. siegel (dgsiegel@gmail.com)
Jaap A. Haitsma (jaap@haitsma.org)
Joshua Henderson (joshhendo@gmail.com)

&legal;

Jaap
Haitsma
jaap@haitsma.org
Joshua
Henderson
joshhendo@gmail.com
0.1
2007-12-04

Jaap A. Haitsma jaap@haitsma.org

Jaap A. Haitsma

0.2
2008-01-12

Jaap A. Haitsma jaap@haitsma.org

Joshua Henderson joshhendo@gmail.com

Jaap A. Haitsma

## Feedback

To report a bug or make a suggestion regarding the &app; application or this manual, follow the directions in the &application; Contact Page.

## Introduction

&app; is a video and photo shoot application with cool effects for the GNOME desktop

## Usage

The main screen of &app; looks like the screen shot below

### &app; screenshot

&app; defaults to photo mode, and needs to be changed to video mode if desired.

### Effects

To apply effects to the input of your webcam, click the button labelled Effects. When you go to the effects window, you will see a window similar to the image below

#### &app; effects screenshot

You are able to select numerous effects to apply to your photo. To apply an effect, just click on the name or image above, and the button will turn to a blue shade. Selecting multiple effects will apply all the effects to your image (for example, if you apply “Hulk” and “Horizontal Flip”, the input from the webcam will be altered to have a green shade and be up side down).

### Photo Mode

Photo mode is the default mode that &app; opens in. When not in photo mode, click the button labelled “Photo” or press Alt – P to change to photo mode. Photo mode will take a single photo every time the button labelled “Take a photo” or the Spacebar is pressed, and will save to disk.

### Video Mode

Video mode is a mode that allows you to take short videos using the webcam. When not in video mode, click the button labelled “Video” or press Alt – V to change to video mode. Video mode will start recording a video every time the button labelled “Start Recording” or the Spacebar is pressed. The video will stop recording and save to disk when the button labelled “Stop Recording” or the Spacebar is pressed.

The video mode does look any different to the screen shot of photo mode, except that the button labelled “Take a photo” will be either “Start Recording” or “Stop Recording” (depends if you are currently recording or not), and the button labelled “Video” is greyed out, whereas the button labelled “Photo” is not.

## Working with photos and videos

### Taking a photo

To take a photo in &app;, be sure to be in “Photo” mode.

To take a photo, apply the effects that you wish by clicking the button labelled “Effects”, click on the effects desired as described in a previous section and press the button labelled “Back”. You should now have the effects that you clicked on applied to the webcam input.

To take the photo, press the button labelled “Take a photo”. You will then see &application; count down from 3. At the end of the count, your entire screen will flash white, and the photo that was just taken will appear in the photo stream at the bottom of the program window.

### Taking a video

To take a video in &app;, make sure that the “Video” button has been pressed

To start recording a video, press the button labelled “Start Recording” or press the Spacebar. The time of how much video has been recorded will appear in the bottom right hand corner.

If your video appears to be jerky or have a low frame rate (only updating the picture every few seconds), it does not mean that the original recording is also of bad quality. It has probably a more constant and higher frame rate than what you see. To stop recording, press the button labelled “Stop Recording”. The video recorded will appear in the photo stream at the bottom of the program.

## Sharing Photos and Videos

### Viewing a photo or video

To view a video or photo that has been taken, locate it in the photo stream and double click on it. Alternatively, you can right click on it and select “Open”. This will then open the file in the default application for that file type.

### Saving photos and videos to an alternate location

To save a photo to an alternate place on your hard drive where you can easily find them, find the photo or video that you wish to save in the photo stream, right click on it and select “Save As” from the pop-up menu. This will bring up a standard “Save File” dialog that will allow you to rename the photo if desired and save to any location you wish.

### Deleting a photo

To delete a photo from the photo stream, locate the photo you wish to delete in the photo stream, left click on it once and press the delete button on your keyboard. Alternatively, you can right click on it and click “Delete”.

You will be prompted if you wish to delete it from the photo stream. To confirm, press the button labelled “Move to Trash”.

This will only move the image to the trash/garbage bin, as well as remove from your photo stream. This will not remove the photo from your computer. To remove it from your trash, you will need to empty your trash.

### Send a photo by e-mail

Photos can be directly emailed from &app;. You will need to have the default mail client set up with an email account, otherwise you will need to set one up. To email a photo, locate the photo you wish to email in the photo stream, right click on it and select “Send by Mail”.

This will open the default mail client (for example, Evolution) and a new email message with the photo as an attachment.

### Set as Account Photo

To set a photo as your account photo (which can be viewed from System -> Preferences -> About Me, and which will also appear if the login window displays a list of user names with photos), locate the photo that you wish to set in &app;, right click on it and select “Set as Account Photo”

### Export a photo to F-Spot

To export a photo to F-Sport, locate the photo that you wish to export in your photo stream, right click on it and select “Export to F-Spot”. You will then be prompted from F-Spot if you wish to import the photos that are sent to it.

Depending on the version of &app; that you are currently using, F-Spot may prompt you to import the entire photo stream.

## Frequently Asked Questions

### The video is sluggish/has a slow response. What can 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.

To change the settings, run "gstreamer-properties", click the Video tab and change the appropriate settings.

### I have a Mac with iSight and a ATI graphics card, and the colors are weird.

This is a problem with the ATI graphics card, though there is a work around. Change the video-output to custom and insert the following: "ffmpegcolorspace ! video/x-raw-yuv,format=(fourcc)YV12 ! ffmpegcolorspace ! xvimagesink".

To change the settings, run "gstreamer-properties", click the Video tab and select custom from the drop down menu.

### My webcam works with gstreamer, but does not work with &application;. What's wrong?

Using "gstreamer-properties" mentioned in the above question, try changing from xvimagesink to ximagesink or vice-versa. If this still does not work run "cheese --verbose" on the command line and copy the logging into a bug report in our bug tracker.

### My webcam works with other programs such as Ekiga, Camorama, but not with &application;. What's wrong?

See if your webcam works when testing it in "gstreamer-properties". If it works there, but not in &application;, please file a bug report in our bug tracker.

### Where does &application; store my photos?

Your photos are stored in ~/.gnome2/cheese/media. You can also save them to an alternate location from within &app;. Please see the help topic titled "Saving photos and videos to an alternate location" for information on this.

### My Quickcam Express doesn't work with &application;...

or gstreamer, and I see errors like "Not enough buffers. We got 1, we want at least 2" in the &application; output. With driver "qc-usb".

Try running "qcset /dev/video0 compat=dblbuf" to enable double buffer compatibility mode, then restart &application;

### Which cameras are supported

&app; uses gstreamer for video grabbing. So in principle &app; supports any camera that works with GStreamer. In principle that should be any camera which support video4linux or video4linux2.

## About

&app; was initially written by daniel g. siegel dgsiegel@gmail.com. as a Google Summer of Code project. Later Jaap A. Haitsma jaap@haitsma.org and also others joined daniel in improving Cheese. To find more information about &app;, please visit the &application; web page.

To report a bug or make a suggestion regarding this application you can file a bug in our bug tracker.

This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public license as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. A copy of this license can be found at the GNU site, or in the file COPYING included with the source code of this program.