IPU6 support on Linux

[wrosenauer]

Hi,

I use a Thinkpad X1 Gen 11 with a Raptor Lake chipset/cpu and an IPU6 camera with openSUSE Tumbleweed.

IPU6 cameras have been a long standing issue and are still not fully supported everywhere but with the latest software in openSUSE:

- kernel 6.13.4

- libcamera 0.4.0

I can finally at least get a video picture from the qcam application which is part of libcamera.

Camera is also referred to as "ov2740" in case that is important.

Still the latest Zoom client 6.3.11 does not show any video. It selects the Camera "ipu6" but it stays black.

Anyone knows the state of support of this camera within Zoom? Should I rather raise a support issue?

Thanks,

 Wolfgang

[elhossary]

Same issue here, X1C gen 10
Arch linux, with Kernel 6.13.7

[MGSR]

Hello @elhossary and @wrosenauer,

Thank you for your patience. 

We were advised that since the solution can vary, please reach out to our technical support team by submitting a ticket. They’ll be happy to assist you further.

[wrosenauer]

I had a ticket open already but it was closed more or less as "not supported at this moment".

[MGSR]

Hello there,

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

We have flagged this internally and will keep you updated as soon as we have more information.

In the meantime, we appreciate your patience.

[aljinovic]

Is there any update available?

[aljinovic]

Hello, any news on this front?
IPU6 cameras are functional with pipewire for a while now.

An ETA would help.

[firecub]

Same here. I have ipu6 camera. It works with other apps but not Zoom.

[yoyobaoooooeeel]

At our company devices with ipu6 are becoming more prevalent and this is becoming a bigger and bigger issue.

[MarkusM]

Same problem here:

- relatively new notebook (Lenovo x12 Detachable Gen 1, 2022, Firmware 1.37) running Fedora 42 with Gnome 48,

- unable to use the webcam with Zoom because the webcam runs via ipu6.

My workaround at the moment (not ideal, but the only working solution I found):

- Install OBS Studio via Flatpak (using dl.flathub.org, not registry.fedoraproject.org).

- Deactivate Secure Boot in the Bios.

- Install v4l2loopback (which does not work with activated Secure Boot).

- Start OBS Studio and activate the "Virtual Cam".

- Start Zoom and select "OBS Virtual Cam" as video source.

- Downside: the video image has a significant delay and the CPU usage is even higher than usual (because Zoom is unable to take advantage of hardware encoding on Linux anyway, and the loopback goes on top).

[cupu]

Hi Markus,

It could be these instructions below help you with signing the v4l2loopback kernel module in case you need to use secure boot:
https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/html/managing_monitoring_and_upd...

In your workaround steps what do you use as a source (in obs) for the virtual camera?

Thank you 

[MarkusM]

Hi cupu,

Set up Virtual Cam: In OBS, I create a new scene, add a new video source, and name it "OBS Cam". I open its settings. Under "device" in the settings dialog, there is a long drop down list: most of the entries start with "ipu6", but there are two entries starting with "Integrated RGB Camera". One of them is the infrared camera, the other one the 'normal' webcam which should do the job. 

Settings of the Virtual Cam: In the settings of the Virtual Cam (gear icon next to the Virtual Cam button), I select "source" as  the "output type" and under "Output selection" I choose "OBS Cam" (i.e. the name I gave in the previous step).

Start up the 'stack': I first start the Virtual Cam in OBS, and then start Zoom. I connect to a meeting where I can choose "OBS Virtual Cam" in the video settings. Unfortunately, the "OBS Virtual Cam" entry in Zoom is sometimes missing, and I haven't found out yet why this happens. My impression is, that the order in which the components of the workaround are started matters: First, start OBS and the Virtual Cam, and then start Zoom.

[MarkusM]

Thank you for the link. I will try it out.
Settings in OBS: In OBS, I create a new scene, and add a new video source which I name "OBS Cam". Under "Device" in the settings of "OBS Cam", there is a long list of video sources. Most of them begin with "ipu6", but two begin with "Integrated RGB Camera". One of them is the built-in infrared camera (for face recognition), the other one is the 'normal' webcam which should be selected. In the settings of the Virtual Cam, I choose "source" as "Output type", and under "Output selection" the "OBS Cam" (the name from above). I start the Virtual Cam.
Settings in Zoom: Then I start Zoom and connect to a meeting. In the video settings, I select "OBS Virtual Camera" (instead of ipu6). Unfortunately, the entry "OBS Virtual Camera" is sometimes missing, and I haven't found out yet why this happens. My impression is that the order matters in which the components of the 'stack' are started: First, start OBS and the OBS Virtual Camera, and only afterwards, start Zoom and connect to the meeting.

[aljinovic]

Hello @zoom @support @ZoomZoom @MGSR, is there any update on this topic, is it even in your roadmap? The share of IPU6 camera laptops is increasing steadily and having no update or timeline is disappointing.

[MarkusM]

Using the OBS Virtual Cam is nice but the set-up is quite complicated (see above). So I put the Zoom desktop client aside and switched to the web interface. Everything works very well so far. The details:

• Fedora on Lenovo X12 detachable Gen 1 (11th Gen Intel Core i5-1130G7 with Iris Xe Graphics).
• Install Firefox via RPM (in my case, version 144.0.0 at the moment). Make sure that Firefox uses hardware accelerated video decoding and encoding:
• Open the URL "about:config" and accept the warning. Search for the following two options and switch them to "true":
  • media.hardware-video-decoding.force-enabled
  • media.hardware-video-encoding.force-enabled
• Go to https://app.zoom.us and log in. Start a new meeting.
• In the pop-ups, allow Firefox to access the microphone and the camera. The IPU6 camera works out of the box. Hardware acceleration seems to work as well (at least, the CPU is much less occupied with the Zoom session than with the desktop client).
  Screen sharing works perfectly (you also have to give Firefox the permission in a pop-up).