Skype with Logitech QuickCam Connect

So, I got a webcam so I could do video chat with my mom while I'm at Cal Poly. (Her idea, not mine, but she bought me a webcam so it's all good.)

I ordered (on her credit card) a Logitech QuickCam Connect. It's one of (if not the) cheapest webcams out there. I first tested it with Cheese Webcam Booth. It worked fine. Then I opened up Skype and went to "options" to see about using the webcam. It looked like all the settings were right, but when I clicked to test my video, I got some really wierd static. I went online and found a fix on http://cwraig.id.au/?p=122.

Here's the shell script that I wrote from his instructions.

#!/bin/bash
# For some reason skype makes a mess of the signal that the webcam sends through.
# The workaround is to get gstreamer to watch the webcam and then to output the video to a virtual device. Skype then gets its video stream from this new virutal device.
# Script from http://cwraig.id.au/

# Install the Dependancies
apt-get install subversion build-essential libgstreamer0.10-dev

# Get the source for gstfakevideo
svn checkout http://gstfakevideo.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ gstfakevideo-read-only

# Compile and Install gstfakevideo
cd gstfakevideo-read-only
sudo make
sudo make install

# Move the real webcam device out of the way
sudo mv /dev/video0 /dev/video1

# run skype every time with the following command
gstfakevideo v4l2src device=/dev/video1

# Sources
# http://cwraig.id.au/?p=122
# http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=967223

Now, I don't want to have to move the real webcam device and run that long annoying code everytime, so I made the following shell script and added it to my startup applications:

# !/bin/bash
# Run Skype With Video

# Move the real webcam device out of the way
sudo mv /dev/video0 /dev/video1

# run skype every time with the following command
gstfakevideo v4l2src device=/dev/video1

# Sources
# http://cwraig.id.au/?p=122
# http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=967223

I put this script in ~/bin and created a launcher on my desktop that launches the script so I can manually launch Skype if I ever need to.