Hello,
I'm glad to announce new release of Linux driver for DC10plus video capture card.
Now it is even more capable.
Please, visit http://www.cicese.mx/~mirsev/Linux/DC10plus/ for more information.
News:
May 31, 2000: v 0.2
Changes from v 0.1:
1. TV encoder code has been fixed to operate correctly in PAL standard.
2. Full motion decompression is finally working! Now you can record and
play back your clips in AVI MJPEG or Quicktime format using lavtools
(see below). You even can play back your movie files captured in
Windows with Studio. Both NTSC and PAL standards should be supported.
Known problems:
1. If you are planning to use lavtools to capture your video, you need to
apply patch (read Tools and utilities section below). This is not a
driver problem, lavtools have been written for ITU-R.601 image format,
and DC10plus card can provide only square pixel format. This is a
hardware limitation imposed by SAA7110 TV decoder.
2. To capture full motion video with lavtools in PAL standard you may need
to add an option -f A (reverse fields, see lavtools distribution for
more information). I don't know yet where the bug is hidden, it may be
the driver or lavtools...
3. Sometimes when the driver has just been loaded into memory, before
using lavrec utility first time you may need to run xawtv just once.
Otherwise, lavrec may not be able to start capture video. I have
noticed this behavior only with PAL signal.
4. When the system speed is not enough to maintain data rate of compressed
video stream, it seems that dropped (lost) frames are not counted by
lavrec, so it waits forever for frames from the driver even if driver
has finished capturing video. In this state one can only kill lavrec by
SIGKILL to get rid of it. It could be also driver issue, I will be
looking into it.
5. The driver now works only with DC10plus cards which have ADV7176 TV
encoder. If you have different chip ADV7175 or another version of DC10,
try to change the i2c address (I2C_ADV7175 macro) in adv7175.c file. It
can be one of these: 0xD4, 0xD6, 0x54, 0x56. After that recompile the
module, try to load the driver and see your syslog file or use dmesg to
check if the chip is detected. In the next version I will try to make
automatic search for this hardware.
Hopefully, these problems will be fixed soon. Now, since the driver seems to
be working properly, I will focus on the interaction between the driver and
software. If you have any idea or can suggest some patches (which is better
;-) for any application or to the driver itself, you are always welcome.
However, to make this work more productive, I would suggest, first of all,
to discuss your ideas and patches for specific application with a maintainer
of that application. Read Tools and utilities section below.
Tools and utilities
I used two main tool sets to test the driver: xawtv and lavtools. Xawtv
allows you to watch real-time video on a computer monitor if your video card
supports overlays. Lavtools (the lavrec utility) can be used to capture full
motion compressed video and audio, and save it on a disc in AVI MJPEG
format, so it can be played later by xanim program. Lavtools provide also
lavplay utility to play back captured video using hardware decompression and
this feature is supported by the current DC10plus driver.
Before using these utilities with DC10plus board and this driver, I would
recommend to read installation and usage instructions supplied with these
tools. Please note, however, that DC10plus card supports only square pixel
format. In contrast, the majority of TV related programs operate by default
in ITU-R.601 recommended format which is different. The basic image size for
DC10plus card is 640x480 (NTSC) and 768x576 (PAL) when both TV fields are
captured at full resolution. Resolutions 320x240 (NTSC) and 384x288 (PAL)
are also supported. So, to run the tools mentioned above successfully with
this driver you will need to do some additional work:
xawtv, to work in NTSC standard, can be started with an additional
option '-geometry 640x480' or '-geometry 320x240'. Accordingly,
for PAL standard, set xawtv geometry to 768x576 or 384x288.
Instead of running xawtv with additional options, you may add the
following line to your .Xdefaults file:
Xawtv*geometry: <put appropriate format here>
Unfortunately, I had experienced some problems with xawtv
regarding its interaction with the driver. I believe that this is
not a driver issue, so probably some work should be done to xawtv
source. Just in case you have similar problems, read this: If you
run xawtv program and see nothing but black window on your screen,
click on this window with right mouse button and change TV
standard to proper one using pull down menu. If nothing happens,
quit or kill xawtv, turn off your TV source or disconnect it from
the DC10plus board and try to run xawtv again. Then, while the TV
source is still disconnected, try to set proper TV standard and
then turn the TV source on, or connect it to DC10plus board. Now
the TV image should appear on the screen.
lavtools, in order to work with DC10plus board, must be patched to
operate correctly in square pixel format. The patch against
lavtools version 1.2 is available. Visit the driver homepage for
more information.
General information about DC10plus video capture card
The DC10plus card is manufactured by Pinnacle Systems Inc. and is considered
by this company as low end product for home use. Currently the company
provides very easy to use Studio software with only Windows 95/98 drivers
for the card (even Windows NT/2000 is not supported). However, the hardware
itself may sometimes satisfy even professional: the frame resolution can be
up to 640x480, for NTSC, and, 768x576 for PAL standards, which is better
than Super-VHS (400 vertical lines). The MJPEG hardware compression provides
the ability to capture and play back full motion (50/60 fields per second)
video with data rates below 10 MB/s, at compression ratio about 3 for very
good image quality at full resolution, or even below 2.5 MB/s for acceptable
VHS like or better image quality. The current price ($149.00 in USA) and
card characteristics make this card very attractive even for beginners.
Multisystem PAL/NTSC capability: Pinnacle Systems Inc. insists that DC10plus
cards sold in USA are for NTSC only and the cards sold in Europe and
Australia are both PAL and NTSC... Well, I can not tell for every card sold
in USA but at least one of them (guess which one? ;-) supports both PAL and
NTSC, however, the drivers for Windows 95/98 supplied in the box, and then
upgraded to version 1.05, support NTSC only. Current Linux driver supports
both PAL and NTSC standards.
Pinnacle Systems Inc. does not release neither Windows driver source code,
nor the card programming specifications. This makes writing the driver a bit
difficult and that's why some features are not yet supported.
Luckily, complete information is available about chipsets used in this card:
1. Philips SAA7110A video decoder;
2. Zoran ZR36060 (hardware JPEG codec) and ZR36067 (PCI controller);
3. Analog Devices ADV7176 video encoder.
If someone would like to play with the driver code and add new features,
please note that the same or similar JPEG codecs and PCI controllers are
used in the Iomega Buz and LML33 cards. You may also take a look at Zoran
H33 board (see also here). This might help somehow... However, the
programming of different modes of operation depends on specific board design
and this information for DC10plus card is still missing.
Visit http://www.cicese.mx/~mirsev/Linux/DC10plus/ for more information
and links.
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