Picture/Video capture programs

Question

What software options are there for taking videos and or pictures within Ubuntu (Much like Apple's Photobooth)?

Please limit one software solution per answer and include key features/description of the software

This has been made more generic from the original posters question of "Alternatives for Cheese" in order to make it work better on this site. While Cheese will inevitably be an answer to this question, so will every other available software like cheese making it not only work for the Original Poster, but also everyone else (Those looking Alternatives to either Cheese - or software similar to Cheese). — Marco Ceppi, Oct 27 '10 at 15:43

score 18 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

18

cheese

Cheese uses your webcam to take photos and videos, applies fancy special effects and lets you share the fun with others.

Cheese uses GStreamer to apply fancy effects to photos and videos. With Cheese it is easy to take photos of you, your friends, pets or whatever you want and share them with others. After the success of the Summer of Code, the development continued and we still are looking for people with nice ideas and patches ;)

alt text

edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

Community

1

answered Oct 27 '10 at 15:02

sBlatt

4,649

Is there a way to increase FPS on cheese. I get sluggish videos and while taking pics I have to stay still for about 2 sec for the picture to be stabalized. – Gaurav Butola Oct 27 '10 at 20:02

score 7 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

7

Camorama Webcam Viewer

sudo apt-get install camorama

Caomorana screenshot

edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

Community

1

answered Oct 27 '10 at 15:32

Good option to do basic capturing and adjustments. Required only 1 package (camorama - ~1MB post install) as opposed to 33 packages (~79MB) required for cheese on my setup. – Sithsu May 01 '14 at 12:21

score 4 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

4

GTK+ base UVC Viewer

It has a clean, intuitive design that makes it very easy to use, and gives excellent results each time.

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edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

Community

1

answered Jun 13 '13 at 12:46

Radu Rădeanu

174,437

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 13 '24 at 04:02

ffmpeg + ffplay + pipe

Mostly for some minimalist fun, but it does work:

sudo apt install ffmpeg
ffmpeg -f v4l2 -framerate 30 -video_size 1280x720 -input_format mjpeg \
  -i /dev/video0 -c copy -f matroska - |
  tee out.mkv |
  ffplay -

You will get a "preview window" with ffplay, and once you close that window, the file out.mkv will also contain the video you just recorded.

ffplay from pipe explained at: https://superuser.com/questions/322216/how-can-i-pipe-output-of-ffmpeg-to-ffplay/520952#520952

More context at: How to check available webcams from the command line?

Tested on Ubuntu 23.10, Lenovo ThinkPad P14s.

score 0 · Answer 5 · edited Mar 10 '17 at 22:31

0

QtCAM is a free, Open Source Linux Webcamera Software with more than 10 image control settings, extension settings and Color space switching.

edited Mar 10 '17 at 22:31

Zanna

72,471

answered Nov 25 '15 at 10:13

venkatesh

1

Picture/Video capture programs

5 Answers5

cheese

Camorama Webcam Viewer

GTK+ base UVC Viewer

Linked