Hi,
I am now using avicap for some months now to record movies from TV, and I'd
like to talk about what I like at Avicap, and what could be improved.
I've got an Athlon550/TNT2pro, running a staandard-kernel 2.4.18 with the v4l
and bttv-drivers that come with the kernel.
I was using Avicap-0.7.22, now I'm using my patched CVS version with my
timertable-patch (see my other Email!)
I record usually with 384x288 pixel, RGB24 color mode, 25fps, using xvid-0.9
at 3 Mbit/sec, with halfpel interpolation and luminance masking on
That gives me a perfect picture - and it takes only 70-80% CPU time, that's
*great*, and neither the drivers nor avicap crashes, that's even *better* -
thanks a lot for it :-)
The only problem is, that there's an audio-video delay in the resulting
recording - but that's no real problem, cause I can fix that afterwards with
VirtualDub (on Windows or Wine..)
Here are some features I like to see in Avicap, and I am quite willing to help
implement it, if I am able to:
* Timertable/VCR functionality - done, already implemented, see my other mail
* fullscreen/maximize option (at least when I'm not recording, preferred also
when I am recording)
I tried myself some things to patch Avicap to have a working
fullscreen/maximize function, I've seen that there are some remaining bits of
code where someone seemed to have tried it before me, or at least thought
about it?
Anyway, I tried the following:
a) I patched the 'Preview' ShmRenderer to have a maximize function.
It works, actually - but, because I am using 'only' a QImage.scale for this
purpose, it is much too slow, it works but it is of no real use :-(
b) I tried to hack around in the 'Overlay' routines to try to force the thing
somehow to be scaled, but well, I failed completely there, it isn;t that
easy...
c) I had a very close look at the source code of xawtv/motv.
xawtv manages to get the window fullscreen/maximized in overlay-mode without
any CPU usage (at least, on my computer).
This is, because xawtv uses the xvideo extension of Xfree to get the video
scaled on the screen.
I then tried to merge Avicap with the xvideo code from xawtv - but failed
again.
I could merge the code, it compiles, it links, it runs, it just doesn't do
anything better.
Sigh, I can program Qt, but I have never ever programmed X86 directly, and
we're talking here about severe xlib programming, so I'm bound to fail here.
d) I had also a short look at mplayers source code
mplayer has got a library called libvo, which contains code for about every
way of getting graphics scaled fast on the screen, maybe it could be worth a
try to merge Avicap with the libvo code somehow?
I'd volunteer, but it also looks like a lot of xlib-programming, and I'm not
perfect for that task.
e) I had a short look at the sdl-overlay code in aviplay, I dunno how easy it
would be to port it to avicap.
Any ideas, any comments, anyone ever tried anything?
I can send you the other patch where I tried out that maximize-stuff, but that
patch is a messy hack, cause I had to experiment a lot...
I'd also like to know about the development status of 'qtrecompress'
qtrecompress looks like a very young VirtualDub, are there any plans to make
qtrecompress a tool as good as VirtualDub?
Are there any tools on linux that can be used like VirtualDub (with any
codec??)
I'd have interest in helping there - but I don't have any ideas or knowledge
about programming to use codecs, about howto find the next frame/keyframe and
to paste a resulting avi together.
Does avifile contain enough 'high-level' api-calls, to allow someone without
that knowledge to write something like VirtualDub from qtrecompress, or would
I need lots of knowledge about .avi files in general?
At least, if someone else would help me, I'd be willing to write the GUI code?
Alex
--
Alexander Rawass
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://tuxfleet.sourceforge.net http://qtreemap.sourceforge.net
...but some day you'll be a STAR in somebody else's SKY...
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