Ugh – finally, after much backward and forward (even to the point I dragged out a Windows laptop) I’ve tracked down the issue which was stopping my embedded webcams (which otherwise works in all other applications) from working with the latest beta of Skype for Linux.

The solution is this (thanks Ubuntu Forums):

for 32-bit Linux / Skype

sudo mv /usr/bin/skype /usr/bin/skype.original
sudo echo -e "#!/bin/bash \nLD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype.original" > /usr/bin/skype

for 64-bit  Linux / Skype

sudo mv /usr/bin/skype /usr/bin/skype.original
sudo echo -e "#!/bin/bash \nLD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype.original" > /usr/bin/skype

I found the command to build the script didn’t work out for me

$ sudo echo -e "#!/bin/bash \nLD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype.original" > /usr/bin/skype
bash: !/bin/bash: event not found

So, I built my own script

sudo nano /usr/bin/skype

and pasted in the lines to build the script

#!/bin/bash
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype.original

Of course, the script needs to be made executable

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/skype

Then all that remained was to make sure no instances of skype were running, and re-launch skype from the menu.

For me, the video came up once Skype had loaded, from other discussions, some people may need to restart their machines.