I would have never expected this to be read as many times as it has (7700 as of today). And for Chris to make it a sticky is kinda an honor.... Thanks.

Enough mushy stuff and time for an update.

This year so far I used this setup to capture all of the local high school football games (14 games in all). Each game averaged about 24GB and about 20 clips, and captures went very well. I have also captured 2 volleyball games and a couple basketball games. Here is a list of the problems:

1. One time I must have pulled the firewire PC-Card out a little bit when I shut down the camcorder at halftime. When I went to start everything back up, the tablet had locked up and I had to power-off reset. The new tablet battery allows me to keep the tablet running and not worry about shutting it down.

2. On 2 occasions I did have drop outs from the tablet getting behind in the capture. The drop outs were very short... less than 1/2 second, and both times they happened at about 19GB free space. My guess is that since I did not put the video in it's own partition, the OS is having to do some housekeeping. Either that or drive fragmentation is starting to become a problem. Both of these could be solved by putting the video in it's own partition on the hard drive.

That's it. Thats ALL the problems I had. I honestly expected it to be a little flaky here or there but it hasn't. The entire setup has been rock solid.

I have limited hard disk space (about 40GB free) on my home computer so I started even doing some of the NLE and DVD creation directly from the tablet. It worked fine but a little slow as the 2.5" hard drive isn't that fast, and everything is running over my 100Mb network. This limited DVD compression to about 20fps. If the video is stored locally on the desktop then it runs at about 35-40fps.

I've yet to tear down the tablet and rebuild it (and maybe get a bigger hard drive, hehe). I think the dropout problem will force me to do this sometime during the Christmas holiday. If there is interest in me doing so, I will precisely document the rebuild... step-by-step, word for word.

Happy holidays

Dave

Hi David,

This is a great post!!!

I am currently following your instructions except that Fedora Core 4 is what's being offered at the main Fedora Web Page. Should I go to one of the mirror sites and get Fedora Core 3?

I plan to install this on a Dell L400 PIII 700MHz 12" Notebook. The computer has a 40GB HDD. Not sure how much to give to the OS. I do want to create a separate "/Video" partition. What do you recommend?

Also, I found a PCMCIA card that offers 1394A Firewire and USB 2.0, it's a generic brand I found at Computer Geeks for $16.99.

Anyway, I plan to get started on this project ASAP. Although I don't have the PCMCIA card yet, will installing it later be a problem?

And do you see anything wrong with what I am doing?

Thanks again for this great post,
James

I would go ahead and use Fedora Core 4. That way you will get more up to date versions of the utilities you need.

As far as partitioning, my setup uses about 12GB total for both the OS and the install files. Since you're using a laptop, you can install the OS directly from the CD, saving 4GB right there. To be on the safe side, I'd make the /Video partition about 30GB.

On the Firewire/USB combo card, make sure that it is OHCI compliant. This is important. If it isn't then you'll have a much harder time getting Linux to recognize it. Setup will probably go a little easier if the card is discovered during the install process, so I'd wait until you have the card in the laptop.

Other possible issues:

Since you're using a laptop, you won't be doing the onscreen keyboard or touchscreen stuff, which is good. Getting the touchscreen to work was by far the hardest part of the project. Everything else was pretty much plug & play.

I only have 192MB RAM in my tablet (maxed out). I would make sure that you have 256MB+ in the laptop to make everything run as smooth as possible. If it will take 512MB, then that would be the "sweet spot" IMO.

The hard drive could be an issue if it is an older 4200RPM, 2MB cache drive (which it probably is). Mine is 4200RPM but has 8MB cache and I think this is about as low as you can go. If the computer has more RAM then it may cache the writes to help make up for a slower drive. Also having the video in it's own partition should help performance as well. If you already have the drive and laptop, then I'd give it a shot before replacing anything though.

If you want to play around a bit before locking everything down then you may want to do a larger install. This will put a lot of "bells & whistles" on the computer. You may want to try some of these apps out as a lot of them are pretty good. The 10GB OS partition I recommended above is for a pretty stripped down install, leaving maybe 2GB free space.

Sounds like you have a good plan. Just don't let the differences between Windows and Linux bother you. They really aren't that different, just MS hides everything from the user, while Linux shows you all the nuts & bolts. And remember you can always ask for help.

Does it work??
 

I have an Firestore FS-4 and I really like it. I'm just wondering if your project captures as well as the Firestore does. I'm more than willing to follow your instructions and add a 100gb hard drive to say goodbye to all my mini dv tapes, but I'd like to know if it will deliver good results. Do you have any problems with your rig?

Yes it works. It works extremely well. I haven't run tape now in months. I know that this will probably bite me in the butt eventually but the video I capture generally isn't "once in a lifetime" events.

I recently re-setup my tablet with Fedora Core 4 and ran into the following problems:

The touchscreen driver still isn't fixed in FC4. The driver (fpit.o) is better but still isn't quite right (it registers position ok but often double registers taps). Fortunately I was able to copy my compiled driver from the old setup and re-use it.

There is also a problem with the video driver in FC4 on the installation CD that causes the screen to go blank. I had to force a text-based install and boot screen. After downloading the updates the problem was fixed.

Now for the good parts:

The new version of kino no longer runs in lowered-resolution mode. This allows me to review my video at full resolution, although at about 1/2 - 3/4 speed.

The newest version of dvgrab seems to do a better job of handling disconnects / reconnects on the firewire bus. I haven't scientifically tested this yet but it just acts more like USB now.

I no longer had to modify the rc.init script as Fedora now has a place early in the boot process that can be used for custom hardware drivers. This was perfect for relocating the rc.serial script, So now I don't have to change rc.init whenever RedHat updates this file (happened to me twice under FC3).

I upgraded the hard drive to a Toshiba MK6026GAXB (60 GB, 5400 rpm, 16 mb cache) and the drive definitely keeps up better. I also put the /video files on their own partition. Between both of these changes I doubt I'll drop any more frames... ever.

These were pretty minor problems for a geek like myself, but would have been bigger problems for anyone with less linux experience. I've been wanting to do a complete step-by-step for this but just haven't had the time with all of the video I've been shooting (8 basketball games in the past week alone).

If you want to tackle this, I'll be glad to help as much as I can. The end result is definitely worth it.

David

Definately Worth the Time
 

Yeah, I'd love to do this project. Adding a 100gb hard drive will make my life that much easier. I'm not sure if the video quality will be as good as with the Firestore, but I don't expect too much difference. I'm assuming your rig records only Raw DV. Would there be any way to configure the rig to record, let's say, Quicktime or Canopy AVI?

I'm not good with computer programming. I did some back in high school, but I know I have never touched on Linux. Your steps seem straight forward enough. Do you expect someone as amateur as me to run into any programming problems?

I really do appreciate all you're doing for this project. You really deserve a big applause.

Thank you!!

Vishad

from what we've seen with the fs-4, raw dv is the only format that will allow for accessible 4-channel audio recording in the dv format... at least on the pc side off the editing fence, anyway.

there have been reams written about the subject in the fs-4 forum, but if you really want a challenge, see my website for a sample clip that you can download... try to pull the 4 channels of audio out of it.

quicktime on the pc will let you hear all 4 audio channels playing at once, but it won't seperate 'em out.

anytime that you record the 1394 signal coming off of the camera, it'll be exactly the same quality as what's on the videotape... there is no transcoding, it's just a simple data copy of what is being written to the videotape.

what about HD?
 

i have a friend with a jvc hd cam he bought late last year. i mentioned that he'd rather not buy a dte until there was a viable way to save his hd format. is there any way your rig could do that?

i also saw the pictures you posted. quite frankly, i think u did an exceptional job. but is the converted tablet only a dte now, or can you still run other programs on it? u can't actually play back ur footage, can you?

Since everything is digital, the video quality is the same as a Firestore or good tape. Now if the tape has a dropout, then mine would be better. :)

The dvgrab utility that I use for capturing can format the video as dv1 AVI, dv2 AVI or RAW (.DV) which can be used by Quicktime. I left the default as dv1 AVI and my video editing software (Roxio & MS Movie Maker) liked the files just fine without conversion.

As far as needing to do programming, it really isn't necessary. I've written the only program already to display the space available. What is required is the ability to edit configuration files, but even then, I've listed which files and what changes need to be made. If you can edit a file using Notepad in Windows, you can do this. The one piece of the configuration that requires outside help is the touchscreen driver. And since I have a working version, I'll be glad to email it to anyone who needs it.

Is the JVC cam your friend has a high-def or hard-drive cam? I'll assume "hd" means high-def. The dvgrab program as far as I know, only captures the 25Mb dv video streams. These streams (dv25) are for standard-def signals. There are some working utilities for capturing high-def video in Linux (test-mpeg2 utility that comes with libiec61883) but since I don't have a high-def camera I can't test any of this... anybody wanna donate one to me?

My tablet setup is not limited to just DTE, but is still usable as a regular computer. I installed Open Office on the tablet and left the games on the tablet for my daughter to play. The kino video editor allows me to review the captured footage and edit the video. Unfortunately, kino playback is at about 3/4 speed. And since the video plays back slower than real time I disabled the audio playback as well. You have to remember that this is a 400MHz computer, not exactly "state of the art". But one big advantage of using kino is that I can capture a few seconds of test footage, and then review it to check my video gain levels. Nothing more frustrating than recording an hour of severely overexposed/underexposed video because the LCD on the camcorder solarized.

David

JVC GYHD 101E no live capture thru firewire
 

Hi, i try all settings and still no way to get live capture from no luck
JY

David, I assume this tablet has a floppy... I have found floppy based boot disk that let you access either network or cdroms to install from... that would be one way to do the install... OR a DSL linux install those are VERY small (50mb) so you don't loose much on install.

Also you should be able to keep your system partition VERY small... though fedora is somewhat bloated (and hey, I use it and like it)... debian can get pretty minimium and still full featured.

I assume you have also toyed with the option of now being able to swap the two drives in the field to extend record time... though not super fast option it's a viable one.

I'm no linux guru either, you look to be probably as proficient if not more so than I am... but like you I like fumbling with this stuff!

The tablet does have an optional external floppy. Mine was included in the auction. I originally tried to use a CD to install Linux, but the problem was the tablet came with a BackPack parallel port CD-ROM. The BackPack was such a strange device, it was not surprising that FC3 (and FC4) failed to recognize it.

Also at the time my internet connection wasn't really good enough to attempt a download install. Besides, I didn't know how much messing around I'd have to do to get Linux running. It would have been a big hassle to have to online download an installation several times. For now, I can live with the loss of a couple gigs for the install. I may yet revisit this issue with an external USB CD-ROM or hard drive.

I did consider using debian to make the installation smaller, but I am more familiar with RedHat, so that's what I used. Another option would be to setup a local FTP or SMB server with the images on the server.

Swapping hard drives was not an option that I've look at. I currently have 40GB of video storage, which is over 3 hours... plenty for any filming I need. If I wanted to go this route, I could ghost a couple of extra drives and be able to power-off swap them in about 5 minutes. The big problem would be the hard drive cable, which is a ribbon cable and too fragile for many swaps.

Enjoy the "fumbling"... it's a lot of fun. :)

Yeah, I was mainly speaking of doing net installs on future upgrades/installs.

I was hoping that the hard drive slid into a slot and wasn't so finiky.... oh well.

Hell for the price you could really just get a 2nd unit whole nother back up system ready to go if something were to go wrong... you've done the hard part... you wouldn't need to re-buy any periphials unless you wanted to run a second cam... and you got the HD sitting around.

Wow you should set those things up and sell them on ebay. You would make a killing. The cheapest DTE is $650. Not to mention you can see video on yours and you could always get a faster unit for playing video in real time. I am in awe.

search for commands usedby IEEE1394 DV
 

Hoi forummembers.
I'm a Dutch mail of 66 years en retired now and have read the whole discussion on this matter. I doe a lot of video shooting and also mounting on the computer.
I seems that David has make a goed device. However, I search a lot time to the internet to find the commando's send viceversa from camera to device, (Mediaplayer, Capture devices, recorder, etc) i.e. play,pause,rew, ff etc.
But find nothing sofar. I found this site well.
Mayby I used the wrong search strings. Can anybody gif me some clou where to look.
I will tray write directly to a HD from a different angle then david has done.
Thanks in advance and sorry for my english writing
Best regards
Ab Schuurman

Albert,

I've done quite a bit of homework on this subject, so maybe I can help. What are you looking to do? What camera do you have? How many hours of storage space needed? Battery run times? All of these questions are relevant in determining the best capture device (iPod, PDA, laptop, etc.). The main problems from a computing standpoint are handling the data rate of 25 megabits per second (8.3 megabytes per sec.) and the firewire interface.

David

Update: I'm currently starting version 3 of my tablet setup, this time using Xumbuntu Linux. I'm trying this linux because it is specifically designed for older, slower computers. It is also a very small distro that should also allow me to shrink the size of the installation partition.

David

Tanks for your reply.
Yes, your right. Handle a datastream of 25 Mb/s is not easy, but it can be done.
I'm familair with the technicals aspects. There is a lot info on the internet.

What I looking for is de commando code (or string) witch is be send by the camera when I push the Record/Stop button in de camera modus.
I use the Sony DCR-VX9000E (PAL) camera and make the film(s) with Adobe premiere 6.5.
I film small documentaries or films about a sportsclub that exist 110 jaar and ofcourse the holliday movie's.
For the holidays I use a the small Sony DCR-HC23E.

I'm able now to store the shots on a HD.
Picture it, I connect the camera trough the firewire cable on my laptop and start a program VIDAB.
(capture program running onder windows XP) The existing (VIDCAP) program is modifyed to do the job.

The progran look first, at the pointed externe 1,8" HD of 40 Gig connected true USB 2.0, to the lest file on that disk.
The name is SH(number). (SH=SHOT) Then de program wait for the start commando.
I point the camera to the scene I need to storage and press de spacebar.
The program store the data comming trough the firewire cable to the HD untill I press the spacebar again
The file wil be closed and the program wait untill I press the spacebar again.
The file counter opnumber the filename with 1.

This is the reasson that I wil find the commandstring from the start/stop button on the camera.
I d'nt need de spacebar anymore.

After I take all the needed shots (I go home). I take the HD off the laptop and connect it to my computer where I run Adobe on.
I read the files sh(1) to (x) files directly in Adobe and work the film totally on this HD.
Important time to win is that I do not have to capture the shots
After I finisd the movie I make a DVD of whatever.

In normal modus the laptop can function approx 2-2.5 hours.
I do not need the screen so I shut it down and win approx 1 - 1,5 hours extra batt power.
I do not use tapes so the recorder engine remain oke.

I hope I make it clear to you where I'm bussy with.

You can see that I have won a trofee with a 16 minut film , about a pour familie whit big deads(mony),what I have made with my companions from a small videoclub
In November our film wil be projected in a large communityhall and maybe we win again.
http://www.clubs.nl/community/default.asp?clubid=261300
scroll down and on they end I stand behind the trofee.

Greeting Ab

I'm not sure that dv video capture will work on current 1.8" drives.

Like most specifications anymore, the listed performance from the manufacturer is the HIGHEST possible transfer rate, under ideal conditions. If you go to www.tomshardware.com you can find real performance testing on hard drives. They tested several 1.8" drives and the performance drops are significant. The Toshiba MK8007GAH, 1.8", 80GB drive has a maximum write speed of 26 megabytes per second, but drops to 11.7 megabytes per second on the slower innermost cylinders. 11.7MB/s is approx. 93.6 megabits per second which is still plenty fast enough for video capture, but this is raw throughput. We have not added file system overhead, nor have we accounted for bad sector re-mapping, a feature of all current drives. The 1.8" drives also come with only 2MB cache, which would be less forgiving of performance "dropouts" than 8 or 16MB cache drives.

Using the data from the performance charts in the article, a 1.8" drive is about 33% slower than the equivalent capacity 2.5" drive. I had minor performance issues on my 40GB, 8MB cache drive in my tablet, and that was a big reason I upgraded to a 60GB 16MB cache drive. I don't know that any amount of tweaking could have overcome a 33% performance difference.

I don't like being the one who says that something can't be done, but I'm not sure the technology is there quite yet.

Article Link:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/04/..._is_beautiful/

David,

I read the mentioned articles and I agree that those drives are not good enough. Thanks for your effort.

I looked where a made my mistake in my posting.
I have look on a earlyer drawing from the first concept to make it so small as possible.

I use now a Toshiba 60Gb notebook drive 2,5", 5400 rpm. Its fit in a box with 1 usb 2.0 connection to the computer.
A second usb cable is in use for only the power for the drive.

I have taken a lot of video with my installation and de files are all oke. No dropped frames are discovered.
So I'm happy sofar. I see well that different improvements are possible.

I expected, in fact, more comment on my concept.

And can you, or anyone else, help my out with my first question about the used code strings?? for start/stop recording in the camera modus.
Where to look or wich string can give more result.
I found something on IEC 61883 (x) but they tell me a lot about making the connection IEEE 1394 and how to remain it and the the format of the data pakkets en the place of the commandostrings i.e.
but nothing about the commandoset self.
So I looking forward to hear something, If possible.

I wil now look how to strip the laptop and remove the not used parts.
First I make inquiry the possibility to run XP and my VIDAB program on a flascart.

Have all a nice weekend
Bue Ab

The dvgrab program that I use under Linux is supposed to be able to read the record commands from the camera. I haven't tried it. I found a thread on the dvgrab forum that you may want to look at:

http://www.kinodv.org/dcforum/dcforu...2&topic_id=748

Thanks, David for your quick reply.
I yhink that I need this weekend to read the treadon this \.
I must read it carefully and try to translate it to my language to understand what they really mean.

have a nice weekend
bye Ab

David or other forum members,

After I read a lot information on the Kino forum I decide to install Fedora Core 4 into my laptop and go with DVgrab and Kino.

I think you can help my

I have, I thought, installed Fedora Core 4 as Desktop on my laptop, Acer aspire 5670.

After I boot again Grub give me the chose
Fedora Core (2.6.11-1.1369_FC4smp)
Fedora Core (2.6.11-1.1369_FC4)
other (is de xp)

Since I don’t know the difference between the 2 Fedora chooses I enter on the first chose.

The boot hangs by the "Starting PCMCIA card services".

I restart the laptop with XP.
I check the PCMCIA devices in the config-system-hardware
They work normally and no drive updates found.

Hardware:
Texas Instruments PCIxx12 Cardbus Controller
Texas Instruments PCIxx12 Integrated FlashMedia Controller.

I reboot and try the second options on the bootmenu.

The same results. He did not past the starting the PCMCIA card-services.

anyone that knows how to solve this?
Thanks in advance

Greetings Ab

Albert,

The "smp" on the end means that the boot image is for a multiprocessor computer. The Core Duo chips should qualify as smp but I'm not sure of their Linux support.

For Fedora Linux questions, I usually end up at www.fedoraforum.org as pretty much any problem you'll have has already been posted there, and maybe even fixed. I went to the "Laptop" subforum and searched for "Acer Aspire 5670". There is a post there about one person who had the same problem as you with pcmcia services. The fix for him was to disable pcmcia services. This is done by booting the rescue CD, then going to the /etc/rc.5 directory, then renaming the file "S09pcmcia" to "K09pcmcia". After doing this you will not have pcmcia services. Then reboot and see if everything else is working. If it is then update FC4 to get all of the patches. There will probably be a patch to the pcmcia services somewhere buried inside another update, probably the kernel update. Then you can change the file name back and see if it starts working.

I had a similar thing happen to me with the FC4 installation on my Fujitsu tablet. The xwindows chipset driver wasn't right so I couldn't GUI install. After I updated, everything was great.

David,

Again thanks for the quick reply, (I see your local time 05:00 AM( thats mean early in te morning ?)
Do you ever sleep?

However, You said I have posted on the fedoraforum but I have only make a post on you and the
http://www.howtoforge.com/forums/member.php?u=4759 forum and you are the first answer.

So I have not yet fixed. I go to follow your answer and let you know what happened.
Thanks
Bye Ab

It was actually 7:00AM in the morning when I posted that. The forum is located 2 time zones west of where I live. And no, I don't sleep (ha ha).

I think there was a slight communication problem when I said someone else had the same problem on fedoraforum. I did not imply that you had posted there. I meant that someone else has posted about the same issue, and that by searching there, you could find the answer. I think the problem is either the word "you" or "you'll" that is causing the confusion, that plus my sloppy grammer.

Here is the posting on Fedora Forum: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showth...er+Aspire+5670

fedora -acer aspire pcmcia
 

David,

I can sayethe same about my grammer as a Dutchman.

However
I have no rescue CD, only a recovery CD making from the start bij buying.
But, when I boot from de install CD by Fedora I had a chose fore “linux rescue”
So I deed. But in that mode I had not the rights to enter the RC5.D map.
I was a user en not the admin.
Buy a accidental LINUX reboot from GRUB I say the chose for Interactive boot.
Of course I was to late to enter that.
Reboot again and type early enough a capital I and I was able by the interactive boot to skip the pcmcia device.
Now I was in the GUI and deed the change in the map RC5.D S09pcmcia to K09pcmcia.
Later I set also the chkconfig pcmcia off.
So I can boot en go to setup the internet connection for downloading kina en dvgrab.
The system recognize my Ethernet cart en set the name eth0 for it.
But by the configuratie he says
Can netwercart eth0 not to activated. Tg3 netwerkcart eth0 is parently not installed.
Well, you can shoot me.
I look at the ACER site for any file for linux. Acer has nothing for linux, maybe the acer is not the right choose afterall.
I let you now when the steps are ready.
Bye Ab

FC4 and laptop Acer aspire 5672
 

Hoi David,

Installing FC4 on my laptop was already done, now I face up the problem that my internet cart did not work at all. Tray more different drivers for the broadcom giga Ethernet cart , but nothing words. I have the small 40G HD with the USB 2.0 interface. I set de needed files (from a separate PC on the HD (fat 32 partition) en connect de HD to the laptop and so I transfer to the linux section. First, I install the needed drivers. At least I attempt. The first error was that the NOKEY as wrong. I found a solution and I tray again. Well. Many warnings en errors by the rpm the packages. I need again to internet to download other packages and versions. Switching with the HD was also a lot time and work

Since my laptop works fine under Windows XP, I decide to install a virtual monitor.
A computer in a computer.
On the VM I install FC 4 and I was directly able to internet. I download dvgrab 2.0 and the needed files again. The same errors and now I go directly to a driver site and download all the files en YES, I installed anything include Dvgrab 2.0

In Dvgrab nothing happened. I install Kino to. Now I can see something.
Searching the net teach me that the VM was not able to do anything with the IEEE1394 connection.

I had al the necessary libs etc en put them on my HD
Back the de laptop en FC. All the libs etc installed (no problems) Dvgrab en kino installed (no problems). After tray to grab input from the 1394 I learn (trough internet) that I must tell the kernel that I had that (1394) device to.

It works. My camcorder was recognized and I say on the kino screen a picture.
The red start/stop button on the camcorder did start/stop the framecounter.
So, I download the Dvgrab handbook and finally I can go to work.

Greetings from a happy Ab

It sounds like you had almost as much trouble with internet under FC4 as I did with the touchscreen on my Fujitsu. :)

Sound like you've got it working though. Congratulations!

I find it interesting that kino recognizes the record button on the camera. Which camera did you try? My guess would be your DCR-VX9000E. Did you try the DCR-HC23E as well?

In about 2 weeks I'll be done with filming the high school football games. Then I'm going to setup a website with step-by-step instructions on building my tablet setup running Xubuntu Linux. I'll also be using the latest version of dvgrab and kino. I chose Xubuntu Linux this time because it is much smaller than Fedora and is designed to run on slower hardware. I should be able to cut the installation partition to under 1GB. Stay tuned.

recognizing record button
 

David,

Thanks, but I was a little to fast. After Kino and Dvgrab works I find out that Dvgrab was designed for captured tape and there was no recognizing any key from the camera. Dan Kino came up and by capture he found my camera (there was a tape in) and show my the time code.
Pressing the start/stop button on the camera the time code came to run en stop after I press the button again.
That moment I thought oke now, I can to work further.
You say: I find it interesting that kino recognizes the record button on the camera.
Yaaa, this interesting but not trough. The next day and I removed the tape. We want tapeloss recording !!!) nothing happened by pressing the button.
Also Kino is mostly designed for capturing from tape.
I think, there is actually no need to send any commando trough the IEEE1394 cable when a start the tape to recording.
I must search for an other solution for what I want.
I used the Sony DCR 9000 and the Sony HC23E and an old JVC GR-DVL 167E, al camcorders are recognized by Kino and Dvgrab. I can see that in the preferences from Kino by there name.
From the old JVC camera, the tape unit does not work anymore. I found now that I can use this camera for digitising a lot off slides (approx. 10.000) from the Corrie ten Boom foundation.
They want to have books with thumbnails (30 per A4) with the number from the slide below the thumbnail. So it is easy to see what they have an than they pickup some slides and let a profi firm make enlarchments from it.
I have already done approx. 1000 slides (1 book) and that was a lot of work.
On my editing PC I have a DV Storm cart and it is more work for my. Now with Kino is easier to do.

I will follow your project for a smaller linux version because I do need that to for what I really want.
Suc6 en I will keep you informed.
Greet Ab (still happy)

GL2 direct to dvd?
 

Hi,

I may have missed it but the question is what/how much do I loose if I go direct (via svideo) to a dvd recorder? Putting one hour of material on 4.7 gig disk.

This question doesn't belong in this thread, but I'll answer it anyway. :)

Going from DV to S-video to a DVD recorder is possible, but there are some pretty big problems.

1. Difference in resolution: DV Video is 720 x 480 pixels in the data stream. The actual resolution of the image is much less (400 x 375 or so) but this does vary a bit from camcorder to camcorder. S-Video at its theoretical resolution is about the same, but I've seen many S-video implementations that are no better than composite. You can tell how good your camcorder's S-video implementation is by running the output of your camcorder to a good TV with both connections (S-vid & composite). There should be a big difference in picture quality. If there isn't much difference, then the camera probably has a cheap S-video implementation.

2. Digital-Analog-Digital Conversion: The camcorder is a digital device unless you are using a Hi-8 or older camera. The signal must be converted to analog to pass thru S-video. Then the DVD recorder has to convert back to digital before it can write to DVD. There will be some quality losses in this process. The better the camera and recorder, the better image quality will be at the end. Since many DVD recorders have firewire inputs, why not just use a firewire cable and skip the conversions?

3. Mpeg compression: DVD's use mpeg compression that will remove some details from the image. Since uncompressed AVI video weighs in at 13GB per hour, and you're going to smash that down to 4.7GB ON THE FLY, there will be noticable quality losses. The best DVD creation uses either very expensive dedicated hardware for realtime compression, or a computer and multiple passes to create the best possible image.

4. Editing? If you want to edit the video later, you will have to uncompress the DVD using DVD Decrypter or some other package before you can edit it. This will be a big addition to the time required to produce finished video. That plus you are starting with the already compressed video from the DVD, which is not as good as what is on tape.

Here is an alternate view.

IF the dv camcorder had the same compression as the dvd recorder, then IMO a direct digital to digital connection would be best. IN this case you have DV compression being transcoded to Mepg2 for your DVD. The 13 gig per hour Avi is NOT uncompressed, it is compressed in DV format

What I have found in some cases is that by using the Decompression in the camcorder to generate the analog signal, and then using the compression in the dvd recorder to compress the video to mpeg2 can actually result in as good as or actually better results

Here are a few point that MIGHT explain why

First, when you decompress in the camcorder, the camcorder does any error correction to create as good a picture as it can

Second is that during the recompression from DV to Mpeg2 you are in fact decompressing and re compressing

In one case where you are using the analog path, you have two processors doing the task, while in the other case you are relying on the single processor in the dvd recorder to to both tasks

On the Panasonic dvd recorders, in my experience using the analog s video in actually works better.

Again, just my experience
Sharyn

You are correct in saying that DV is a compressed format. I forget about that because each DV frame is compressed, and can be directly edited without a lengthy conversion step like mpeg requires. My bad.

I would think the decompression in the camcorder is not so much influenced by error correction than by the D-A decoding/processing matching the A-D encoding/processing. Who would know Panasonic's DV encoding better than Panasonic (the same can be said about Sony, Canon, etc.). But if you do the D-A inside the DVD recorder, there could be "rounding" (quantization) errors during conversion that would cause defects in the analog picture. This is nit-picking I know, and you may have meant quantization error correction, but it wasn't what came to my mind when I read it.

I can also see your point in that with a high quality dvd recorder, the results could be better using S-video rather than firewire. But, this may have more to do with the design of the recorder being optimized for A-D conversion than D-D (DV-mpeg) conversion. I still don't think that there is any way that the finished video will be as good as the original DV.

David

Maybe I'm missing something, but why not just use Windows and install Scenalyzer as the capture software? Seems a lot simpler than getting everything to work under Linux and I see these on eBay loaded with Windows 2K. Anyway, that's what I'm going to do and I'll report back how it works.

Hi David

Couple of points of clarification.

Based on the DV spec, all the special tricks etc are don on the encoding side and the decoding in theory should be the same. There is this little subtle point that it is during the d to a conversion that the error correction using the adjacent blocks comes into play. This is most noticable on the audio side of things where if the system does not mute a glitch, there is a pop. I saw this years ago when Fast was running some tests and decided not to impliment auto mute on the audio initially and there were these pops and clicks on occasion, that when you looked at the original data stream had errors. We tend to think of DV and digital transfer as a direct digital copy, but what is missed is that there is no error correction by retransmission, only by recreation.

My theory on the doing the dv decompression and the mpeg2 compression is that possibly the chip set has to make a trade off in doing both at the same time.

The problems with concatenation of codecs is pretty well know, so I agree, the original DV will be better than any conversion from DV to Mpeg2. What I have seen is that DV to Mpeg2 directly vs DV to analog to Mpeg2 can appear to be as good or in some cases have less errors .

Sharyn

Sharyn,

I did not know exactly how DV error correction works, so thanks for the info. Interesting stuff to be sure. Looks like we're talking the finer points of the same discussion. :)

Jeff,

The reason I went the Linux route is that the capture programs under Windows display a thumbnail view of the image during capture (at least the ones I could find). This display takes a lot more processing power than just re-routing the firewire stream to disc like dvgrab does. I went to the Scenalyzer site and the system requirements listed for Scenalyzer Live lists the processor at 800MHz minimum (1.5+GHz recommended). This is much higher than the 400MHz P3 in the Fujitsu Tablet.

Does the free version of Scenalyzer capture video? I downloaded it and at first glance it appears that it does not. Unless you can find software that captures without preview, I doubt you'll be able to get it to work... but I've been wrong before. Good luck.

David

Thanks, David. I didn't see the system requirements. I figured I must be missing something. I tried it on my laptop (Centrino 1.6) and CPU usage is rather high, and even with preview disabled (and Scenalyzer does allow preview disable) it is about the same. I may try Virtual Dub which also allows preview disable because it had much less CPU usage. But I'm thinking now that you are right and with that processor I will have to go Linux. Thanks for the detailed instructions!
The free version of Scenalyzer just does scene detection.

I thought I would give an update. I received my Stylistic 3400 loaded with Windows 2000. I installed a little free program called DVIO. It captures either AVI1 or AVI2 files. There is no preview but I don't really need one. I have captured over an hour with no dropped frames. I'm going to get a second one for my second camera. Scenalyzer Live does work but I like the simplicity of the freebie utility. At $200 this is a pretty cheap and portable capture solution. You could say that I am a happy camper!

Direct 2 disk capture
 

I ordered a Fujitsu 3400 yesterday, along with a case, and 100G hd.
It's supposed to have Win 2000.
I already own Scenalyzer, and it does preview, but yes, the system requirements are too high for the 3400, but I'll try it anyway.
I normally use Puremotion EditStudio Pro for capture and editing.
The following is from there website-

http://www.puremotion.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5464

EditStudio 5 needs the following:

- 500 MHz Pentium 2 processor, or above
- 256 MB RAM
- Windows XP
- Graphics card capable of 1024x768 resolution, full colour
- Sound card

QuickTime 6 is required in order to import and export QuickTime movies, as well as some graphics formats.

What I'm really interested in is using Linux for capture.
Art.

PS:
"Never use a funeral service video to advertise your video production skills for wedding video clients" - Someone wiser than I

I tried the demo, Art, and that is a nice little program for capture. And it installed without any problems on Windows 2000. I captured an hour of video, and even with preview not a single dropped frame. I may give this a try at my next event. I've decided I do like the ability to preview, and this program seems to make that happen. Even with the cost of it I will have about $280 invested. And without the hassles of setting up Linux. I will report back after I've done some more testing.