avicap grabOne: Invalid argument problem

I am having this problem on Mandrake but I just installed Knoppix and it
does the same thing.

I am trying grab a video stream from my web cam and encode it to a file.
I have xawtv working but in only captures to a sequence of still images,
I would rather do it an in one step. So I know the hardware is working
and my v4l modules are loaded properly. Gnomemeeting also works fine.

I compiled the avifile from CVS and have been trying to use avicap. I
have also have tried avirec but it gives me the same thing. No image
shows up just a red bar on top of a black bar or grey bar on top of a
green bar or some times a solid color box or red, black, grey or green.
Never a picture.

Knowing that the hardware works and assuming that the software is
working the most likely cause is that I am not configuring this
correctly. I have it reading from /dev/video a symlink to
/dev/v4l/video0 and I tried both. Any idea why it is not getting a
picture?

All I get is repeated errors of ...
v4l1: VIDIOCMCAPTURE in ::grabOne: Invalid argument
v4l1: VIDIOCSYNC in ::grabWait (frame 0)
v4l1: VIDIOCMCAPTURE in ::grabOne: Invalid argument
v4l1: VIDIOCSYNC in ::grabWait (frame 1)
v4l1: VIDIOCMCAPTURE in ::grabOne: Invalid argument
v4l1: VIDIOCSYNC in ::grabWait (frame 0)
v4l1: VIDIOCMCAPTURE in ::grabOne: Invalid argument

until I stop the program. I have traced down the code where this error
is but have not looked into in enough to see exactly what is happening
there.

Is anyone using avicap with a webcam? Can someone tell me what I am
doing wrong.

Roy Souther
www.SiliconTao.com

Changing the way people do business.