Cheese v41.0 shows a black screen on startup
Greetings lovely developer of Cheese!
I use Cheese maybe every couple of weeks so I can't say when this problem started exactly or how recently it became an issue, but it used to be that when I opened up Cheese, it would automatically turn my camera on and show that image within Cheese. However, I tried using Cheese this past weekend and when I started it up, I had a few issues: (1) it just shows a black screen, (2) my camera is "on" as indicated by a light next to my built-in laptops camera, but nothing is showing and (3) all the Cheese controls are grayed out and inaccessible.
Doing a bit of tinkering around, I have discovered a possible oddity that may be a possible bug related to Cheese. If I go into the Cheese preferences, under Webcam, the device is listed as "HD WebCam HD Webcam" and for both Photo and Video resolution is set to 1280 x 720. With these defaults set, Cheese v3.38.0 will open to a black screen, but if I go into the preferences and change the photo/video resolution to any other values listed, then oddly enough the webcam will turn on and display it correctly within Cheese. Switching from 1280 x 720 to 640 x 360 and oddly enough vice versa allows the webcam to be displayed in Cheese. However, if I keep 1280 x 720 selected after doing the steps I just mentioned to make it display in Cheese, and then close Cheese and open it back up, it will only show a black screen again. When I run Cheese in a terminal, no error messages are shown. So it seems my main issue I've encountered here is Cheese will default to a black screen with grayed out controls under 1280 x 720, but under 640 x 360, Cheese will start up and function normally.
As far as I am aware though, I've always had the photo/video values set to 1280 x 720, and Cheese used to function just fine in the past until recently. Luckily, my solution to address this is just to lower my photo/video values to 640 x 360 and by doing that, when I open and close Cheese, the camera will turn on and display the image correctly within Cheese. Personally, I don't think it bothers me to have my values lowered, but for other users perhaps that may be more of a concern. Nonetheless, I just wanted to report this issue in the event it helps solves things.
Thank you for reading this report and below I'll leave with a few quick screenshots to show the issue and some system information which may be helpful for any further troubleshooting. If you need anymore information from me or any additional logs, please feel free to let me know and I will do my best to provide them. Thanks again for reading this and thanks for making a great piece of software, I appreciate all the work the devs do.
[scott@endeavourOS ~]$ inxi -Fxxxza --no-host
System:
Kernel: 5.14.8-arch1-1 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.1.0
parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-linux
root=UUID=2c6a8f39-939c-47a4-9d95-dabf69e6f5c6 rw nvidia-drm.modeset=1
quiet loglevel=3 nowatchdog
Desktop: GNOME 40.4 tk: GTK 3.24.30 wm: gnome-shell dm: GDM 40.0
Distro: EndeavourOS base: Arch Linux
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: Acer product: Aspire E5-576G v: V1.32 serial: <filter>
Mobo: KBL model: Ironman_SK v: V1.32 serial: <filter> UEFI: Insyde v: 1.32
date: 10/24/2017
Battery:
ID-1: BAT1 charge: 16.7 Wh (100.0%) condition: 16.7/62.2 Wh (26.9%)
volts: 12.7 min: 11.1 model: PANASONIC AS16B5J type: Li-ion
serial: <filter> status: Full
CPU:
Info: Quad Core model: Intel Core i5-8250U bits: 64 type: MT MCP
arch: Kaby Lake note: check family: 6 model-id: 8E (142) stepping: A (10)
microcode: EA cache: L2: 6 MiB
flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
bogomips: 28808
Speed: 800 MHz min/max: 400/3400 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 800 2: 800
3: 800 4: 800 5: 800 6: 800 7: 800 8: 800
Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: Split huge pages
Type: l1tf
mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: conditional cache flushes, SMT vulnerable
Type: mds mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable
Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI
Type: spec_store_bypass
mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp
Type: spectre_v1
mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full generic retpoline, IBPB: conditional,
IBRS_FW, STIBP: conditional, RSB filling
Type: srbds mitigation: Microcode
Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel UHD Graphics 620 vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: i915
v: kernel bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:5917 class-ID: 0300
Device-2: NVIDIA GP108M [GeForce MX150] vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI
driver: nvidia v: 470.74 alternate: nouveau,nvidia_drm bus-ID: 01:00.0
chip-ID: 10de:1d10 class-ID: 0302
Device-3: Chicony HD WebCam type: USB driver: uvcvideo bus-ID: 1-7:4
chip-ID: 04f2:b571 class-ID: 0e02
Display: x11 server: X.org 1.20.13 compositor: gnome-shell driver:
loaded: modesetting,nvidia resolution: <missing: xdpyinfo>
OpenGL: renderer: NVIDIA GeForce MX150/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 470.74
direct render: Yes
Audio:
Device-1: Intel Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI
driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel alternate: snd_soc_skl bus-ID: 00:1f.3
chip-ID: 8086:9d71 class-ID: 0403
Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.14.8-arch1-1 running: yes
Sound Server-2: JACK v: 1.9.19 running: no
Sound Server-3: PulseAudio v: 15.0 running: yes
Sound Server-4: PipeWire v: 0.3.37 running: yes
Network:
Device-1: Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3168NGW [Stone Peak] driver: iwlwifi
v: kernel port: 4000 bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:24fb class-ID: 0280
IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter>
Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet
vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: r8168 v: 8.049.02-NAPI modules: r8169
port: 3000 bus-ID: 04:00.1 chip-ID: 10ec:8168 class-ID: 0200
IF: enp4s0f1 state: down mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
Device-1: Intel Wireless-AC 3168 Bluetooth type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8
bus-ID: 1-5:3 chip-ID: 8087:0aa7 class-ID: e001
Report: rfkill ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: up address: see --recommends
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 238.47 GiB used: 146.6 GiB (61.5%)
SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required.
ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: SK Hynix model: HFS256G39TND-N210A
size: 238.47 GiB block-size: physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B
speed: 6.0 Gb/s rotation: SSD serial: <filter> rev: 1P10 scheme: GPT
Partition:
ID-1: / raw-size: 237.97 GiB size: 233.17 GiB (97.99%)
used: 146.6 GiB (62.9%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2 maj-min: 8:2
ID-2: /boot/efi raw-size: 512 MiB size: 511 MiB (99.80%)
used: 296 KiB (0.1%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda1 maj-min: 8:1
Swap:
Kernel: swappiness: 60 (default) cache-pressure: 100 (default)
ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 512 MiB used: 6 MiB (1.2%) priority: -2
file: /swapfile
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 56.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: nvidia temp: 51 C
Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
Processes: 310 Uptime: 3h 8m wakeups: 1 Memory: 15.51 GiB
used: 5.79 GiB (37.3%) Init: systemd v: 249 tool: systemctl Compilers:
gcc: 11.1.0 Packages: pacman: 1258 lib: 294 flatpak: 0 Shell: Bash v: 5.1.8
running-in: tilix inxi: 3.3.05