Fakecam not working

snap
1

i installed fakecam on fedora 33 beta and it just goes crazy.
i have a ryzen 3700 and it eats up to about 80% cpu (python3), the cam led is lightning but nothing happens, except this crazy workload.

2

Have you installed and configured the v4l2loopback module as per the instructions? If so, maybe @lucyllewy could help?

3

yes, as mentioned in the documentation here: https://snapcraft.io/fakecam

4

Yes, I’m trying to figure out ways to improve efficiency. It is very computationally expensive to do its thing.

Are you using the Fakecam GUI? If so, it seems that most of the time it needs toggling on and off multiple times before the camera works. I’m not sure why this is yet, but I know about the problem.

1 Like
5

This seems more like a task for the gpu or a real bug if other software providers get that working on cpu level.
Its a 8 core processor with 16 threads. when it eats up 80% CPU usage (on all threads!), that means there must be something bogus going on, doesnt it. not sure how other software does that, but guess they do not depend on gpu calculation.

just noticed that i have to start it with fakecam.gui, thanks for that hint. i was not sure how to start it so i just typed in the terminal “fakecam” and noticed that the led turns on but nothing else seem to happen (no gui etc.). with fakecam.gui i see a gui and can start it. but then again the problem with the high cpu usage.

6

when i set a background image, the cpu load goes down from 1200% to ~380%, fyi

7

That’s an interesting discovery! I’ll see if I can figure out how that helps and try to reduce overall cpu usage.

8

Running Pop!_OS 20.04

I need to run the command:
sudo modprobe -r v4l2loopback && sudo modprobe v4l2loopback devices=1 video_nr=20 card_label="fakecam" exclusive caps=1
every time I reboot for fakecam to work.

I tried the methods described here:

adding the following line into /etc/modprobe.d/fakecam.conf and then run sudo modprobe -r v4l2loopback; sudo modprobe v4l2loopback:

 options v4l2loopback devices=1 video_nr=20 card_label="fakecam" \
 exclusive_caps=1

I also tried running the script:

sudo apt-get install v4l2loopback-dkms
 echo options v4l2loopback devices=1 video_nr=20 \
 card_label="fakecam" exclusive_caps=1 | sudo tee -a \
 /etc/modprobe.d/fakecam.conf
 echo v4l2loopback | sudo tee -a /etc/modules-load.d/fakecam.conf
 sudo modprobe -r v4l2loopback
 sudo modprobe v4l2loopback

neither fixes the problem.

Any thoughts?

9

Just want to add that, other than having to run the command, it works really well. Using ~10% of each thread of CPU (AMD Ryzen 9 3900 (24) @ 3.100GHz).

10

I’ve installed the stable version of fakecam (2.2.0), and fakecam.gui works fine for me. When I run fakecam itself, though, my cam is turned on and “fakecam” is detected by Teams, but does not show anything. Is this a known issue, or should I perform any additional tasks to get Teams to properly handle the video stream?

Some of my possibly related specs are:
OS: Linux Mint 20.1 x86_64
Kernel: 5.4.0-74-generic
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Mobile
GPU: Intel HD Graphics 630
GPU Driver: Dell HD Graphics 630 [1028:07be]

Many thanks in advance!

Cheers,
Robin.