Ubuntu 18.04.2 XPS 13 9380 Web Cam only at 640x480

640 X 480 is default VGA driver.

documentation on X11 general driver setup and specific to "/etc/X11/xorg.conf 

video drivers have been given a "modeline" (or many modelines) to describe a mode (or list of modes) which a monitor can use.

There are zero issues with properly installed OS.

This system was tested with 18.04 LTS, running the 4.15.0-1027-oem kernel.

https://certification.ubuntu.com/hardware/201810-26535/

WebCam SCB-0385N, SC-0311139N and SC-03FFL11939N

The USB Device Class Definition for Video Devices, or USB Video Class, defines video ztreaming functionality on the Universal Serial Bus.

works fine with cheese, vlc, skype and other applications, but google-chrome will have issues accesing it. Add the following line to /etc/modprobe.d/uvcvideo.conf to fix this:

options uvcvideo nodrop=1

you can get a list of all available module parameters with the modinfo command:

# modinfo uvcvideo

"quirks" parameters, are  used

with the quirks parameter. assuming you want to enable both UVC_QUIRK_FIX_BANDWIDTH (which has the hex-value 0x80, which is 128 in decimal) and UVC_QUIRK_RESTRICT_FRAME_RATE (which is 0x200 thus 512) you would use a quirks value of 640 (which is 128+512 resp. 0x200|0x80):

 # modprobe uvcvideo quirks=640

After  adding that line, reloading the driver should fix the issue:

sudo rmmod uvcvideo && sudo modprobe uvcvideo

Ubuntu keeps the kernel module for UVC in /lib/modules/your kernel/ubuntu/media/usbvideo and the makefile has to be altered slightly to install to the correct directory. Open the the makefile in a text editor and change :

INSTALL_MOD_DIR := usb/media

to

INSTALL_MOD_DIR := ubuntu/media/usbvideo

then run

sudo make install

Update dependencies

sudo depmod -a

Insert Modules

Plug in external camera and enter the following command :

sudo modprobe uvcvideo