Does anyone here have any experience of digitising analogue video in linux? I am looking for advice on what capture card (mid-range e.g. Pinnacle DC10plus) to use and possibly a tv tuner card.
In particular, if anyone does use a DC10plus I'd be very interested to make contact as I'd like to see one in use if possible.
Also can anyone comment on the current state of play with ATI graphic cards and linux? Some of their cards seem to do all that I want but...
Thanks Syd
Syd Hancock writes:
Does anyone here have any experience of digitising analogue video in linux? I am looking for advice on what capture card (mid-range e.g. Pinnacle DC10plus) to use and possibly a tv tuner card.
We've used Hauppage WinTV cards under Linux for about 4 years now. They're a bit noisy but the bttv support is rock solid now. You can use them either as a tuner/display to watch TV in a window or connect them to a video camera and capture the images; we mostly do the latter.
Hey, I even have breakfast TV on my screen as I write this. ;-)
..Adrian
Syd Hancock wrote:
Does anyone here have any experience of digitising analogue video in linux? I am looking for advice on what capture card (mid-range e.g. Pinnacle DC10plus) to use and possibly a tv tuner card.
In particular, if anyone does use a DC10plus I'd be very interested to make contact as I'd like to see one in use if possible.
As Adrian said, we used to use winTV cards about 4 years ago, the ones without tuners were very cheap (about £25 from CPC) and the quality was VHS like.. Adrian is doing image procesing, so video quality is of top priority, but for the average person the winTV cards (and similar) will do all you want...
Also can anyone comment on the current state of play with ATI graphic cards and linux? Some of their cards seem to do all that I want but...
it depends on what ATI graphics cards you are thinking of.. a few years ago ATI refused to release the spec of their cards, and some of them don't work too well.. best to check with the Xfree86.org people
hth Sz
Thanks Syd
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Neill Newman wrote:
As Adrian said, we used to use winTV cards about 4 years ago, the ones without tuners were very cheap (about £25 from CPC) and the quality was VHS like.. Adrian is doing image procesing, so video quality is of top priority, but for the average person the winTV cards (and similar) will do all you want...
oops, I didn't mean that the wintv (bt848/878) cards give the kind of quality Adrian needs ! the BT848/878 stuff has been in the kernel since 2.2.x I believe, before that it was a kernel hack ;) Sz
On Fri, 5 Oct 2001, Neill Newman wrote:
Also can anyone comment on the current state of play with ATI graphic cards and linux? Some of their cards seem to do all that I want but...
it depends on what ATI graphics cards you are thinking of.. a few years ago ATI refused to release the spec of their cards, and some of them don't work too well.. best to check with the Xfree86.org people
Not true, NVIDIA are the evil empire when it comes to this, ATI are one of the few manufacturers (i think alongside Matrox) who actually encourage development for Linux.
http://www.ati.com/na/pages/resource_centre/dev_rel/linux.html
Tells you the real lowdown, what is a shame is that Nvidia only provide binary modules for their drivers as I prefer there kit no end compared to other manufacturers.
Adam
On Fri, 05 Oct 2001 10:27:27 Adam Bower wrote:
Tells you the real lowdown, what is a shame is that Nvidia only provide binary modules for their drivers as I prefer there kit no end compared to other manufacturers.
I always wonder when a hardware manufactuer won't release documentation for a piece of their hardware, if it because the hardware is much simpler than they would want us to beleive and that most of the features are in the driver for it.
Certainly this would be the case with an HSP WinModem - the hardware is a sound card with a telephone lineterface and the "modem" functionality is in the driver.
Steve.
Steve Fosdick wrote:
I always wonder when a hardware manufactuer won't release documentation for a piece of their hardware, if it because the hardware is much simpler than they would want us to beleive and that most of the features are in the driver for it.
nope, it's usually to stop the competition getting any info about their intellectual property.. alla 3dfx.. hhmm not a good example methinks ;)
a slight change of subject, could people please only reply to the alug list rather than reply to all.. I'm getting 2/3 emails with exactly the same thing in.. I'm not that bothered, it's just niggling me...
Cheers Sz
What the alug list needs is a replyto: in the header... Mike
Neill Newman wrote:
Steve Fosdick wrote:
I always wonder when a hardware manufactuer won't release documentation for a piece of their hardware, if it because the hardware is much simpler than they would want us to beleive and that most of the features are in the driver for it.
nope, it's usually to stop the competition getting any info about their intellectual property.. alla 3dfx.. hhmm not a good example methinks ;)
a slight change of subject, could people please only reply to the alug list rather than reply to all.. I'm getting 2/3 emails with exactly the same thing in.. I'm not that bothered, it's just niggling me...
Cheers Sz
Well I guess its time to thowing my 2p worth...
Neill Newman wrote:
Syd Hancock wrote:
Does anyone here have any experience of digitising analogue video in linux? I am looking for advice on what capture card (mid-range e.g. Pinnacle DC10plus) to use and possibly a tv tuner card.
In particular, if anyone does use a DC10plus I'd be very interested to make contact as I'd like to see one in use if possible.
As Adrian said, we used to use winTV cards about 4 years ago, the ones without tuners were very cheap (about £25 from CPC) and the quality was VHS like..
VHS like isn't really a very good description of the quality. The resolution of these cards is full broadcast PAL or NTSC as is the frame rate (not VHS). The cards can have poor signal to noise ratios. Poor is a bit subjective and depends on what your going to do with it. If your just going to watch TV on them, then I'd say the noise level is fine, even good. But if your doing broadcast quality or image processing then it's not so hot. It also seems to depend on the motherboard you plug them into. Another thing to watch is on one chipsets the DMA engine will start to drop parts of scan lines if the PCI bus becomes overloaded. I've *never* seen this happen on a BX chipset, but if occasionally get it with an AMD761. It maybe I have something hogging the bus and a bios tweek will fix it.
They have no video compression hardware. But they can do colour space conversions in hardware.
Firewire capture from a DV source seems to be popular under linux these days. And it's where I'd look next. It may be a bit bleeding edge so your YMMV.
Adrian is doing image processing, so video quality is of top
priority, but for the average person the winTV cards (and similar) will do all you want...
Depends what you want. If you want to record near broadcast quality stuff to MPEG or the like, they aren't what you want.
Also can anyone comment on the current state of play with ATI graphic cards and linux? Some of their cards seem to do all that I want but...
it depends on what ATI graphics cards you are thinking of.. a few years ago ATI refused to release the spec of their cards, and some of them don't work too well.. best to check with the Xfree86.org people
If your referring to the "all-in-wonder" then I think the name aptly applies to what will happen if you actually make it work. Seriously I've seen some very buggy servers for ATI cards but not for the most resent cards. I know someone with one of these (under windoze mostly) , if I remember I'll ask how it fairs under linux. I think the radon has some 3D support BTW.
If you've not seen it , this is a good place to start:-
Mike
hth Sz
Thanks Syd
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On Fri, 05 Oct 2001 10:32:04 "Lincoln, Michael C" wrote:
Another thing to watch is on one chipsets the DMA engine - It will start to drop parts of scan lines if the PCI bus becomes overloaded. I've *never* seen this happen on a BX chipset, but if occasionally get it with an AMD761. It maybe I have something hogging the bus and a bios tweek will fix it.
I have seen this behaviour with the AMD 761 and a BT878 based card (Haupage TV-Go) and it was solved by updating the driver for the card.
Steve.
Many thanks to all who responded, for all the info and links.
My needs are modest - simple home video editing from an analog camcorder. Most of what I really want to do is get rid of sections such as forgetting to turn the camcorder off and getting a few minutes of shoes, mud etc :)
I've been digging around for a couple of weeks now - the Hauppage and also the Pinnacle (Miro) PCTV tv tuner cards seem to be well supported and work well (well enough for my non-pro needs anyway).
For digitising, the Pinnacle DC10plus is a mid-range board that seems to have a good rep for analog digitising and writing out.
The ATI All-In-Wonder range apparently do not have any VIVO (video-in video-out) support under linux, often freeze X and under the supplied windows drivers are pretty flaky as well. Just too cheap'n'cheerful to be useful I think - tempting, yes, but not if it is going to be constant frustration - I've been there too often before.
I am planning to build up a new PC fairly soon for linux and W98se use with the intention of moving in stages to all-linux. I am at the 'thinking what to buy' window-shopping stage and have made most decisions.
For graphics I shall probably use a cheap generic TNT graphics card. I am not a gamer so don't need lots of high-quality 3D power and compared to what I'm using at present the TNT should be a good upgrade. Xfree support is said to be rock-solid.
I shall avoid the All-in Wonder cards for all of the above reasons plus the upgrading flexibility gained by separating functions between different cards.
For the digitising etc I think I will probably try one of the cheap TV tuner cards as that may do all that I want - if not then I will look again at the extra money for the DC10plus.
If anyone *does* know someone who is using a DC10plus, even under windows, I would really like to get in touch as I want to check some of the functionality in the version sold in the UK. Specifically if it will accept SECAM input ( I watch a lot of French TV using a french sat dish, tuner and tv). If not then I will have to consider sourcing one from France.
Regards Syd
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Adam Bower -
Adrian Clark -
Lincoln, Michael C -
Neill Newman -
Steve Fosdick -
Syd Hancock