D’oh! I was having a focus problem on a webpage with an embedded flash object (produced with openlaszlo). If the user set focus on some other part of the page, and then returned to the flash object, focus would not return immediately without some “poking around” — clicking different elements. It turned out this was because the object was embedded using code that contained a title, and therefore a floating tooltip, and that tooltip was stealing focus. The solution for me was just to remove the “title=…” part of the “object classid=…” tag.

You can now download a binary release of ucanvcam, the free and open-source virtual webcam, here. This release is a command-line version for now, to make the binary more portable. A separate release with the full GUI will be coming soon (you can get it now by compiling from source). Remember, you need the vloopback kernel module to actually output images; however you can test the program without this module.

Version 0.1.3 of ucanvcam is out. It fixes a few issues on Windows, and makes a start for a command-line interface as an alternative to the graphical interface (particularly handy on linux). If you are looking for source code, you’re better off taking it from svn, since it is changing rapidly. The numbered versions are more important for the Windows builds.

ucanvcam version 0.1.2 (aka “just barely usable”) is out. MakeSweet is hosting a windows build. ucanvcam is a free-and-open-source virtual webcam project. It currently compiles under windows and linux. On windows it can output via directx to applications such as skype. On linux it can output via a video loopback module, again to applications such as skype. It has some random limits though at the moment (hint: 320×240 images). Screenshot:

Update: there’s now a proper windows installer.

This is a strange one. I’ve noticed that vmware frequently stops my shift key from working when I switch back to other applications (this is on Linux). Finally found a good work-around for the problem, just run:

setxkbmap

And everything is fixed. Magic! Thanks to this thread for the solution.