Homemade Direct-to-Disc on the cheap
 

After reading these forums for a while I decided to tackle my own direct-to-disc project. The main reason I wanted to do this was because I capture video at football games and the amount of time spent "paused" was starting to gum-up my camcorder's heads. I also had several games that came very close to the end of my tape (57+ minutes).

I looked at many different devices including iPods & similar devices, single board computers, Palm Pilots & WinCe computers, but did not see one that was within my abilities and price range. So I looked at older tablet pc's and found a used model that might just work. I then set off and got all of the parts to build my very own portable DV capture system.

Parts:
Used Fujitsu Stylistic 3400 - $175 off ebay
Case for Fujitsu - $25 off ebay
USB 2.0 laptop hard drive enclosure - $18 from Newegg
Toshiba 40GB laptop hard drive - $72 from Newegg
PCMCIA Firewire adapter - $19 from Newegg
Redhat Fedora Core 3 Linux - Free

Total Cost: $309

After installing & configuring Linux, I have a very small computer (approx 8.5" x 11" x 1.5") that can capture about 2.5 hours of video. If I stripped Linux down to the bare minimum, I could probably get it up to 3 hours. Of course a larger hard drive would give me more recording time.

I just recently got the unit finished because the touchscreen drivers were a problem. This setup does not show you the video as it is being captured, but you are alerted if any frames are dropped. When finished, I simply put the Fujitsu back on it's cradle, and access the hard drive from my Windows PC.

If there is enough interest, I'll do a write-up on the step-by-step of how I made this work.

Later,

David Suthers

Well done. I'm interested.

Sounds good! Congratulations! I'm interested too.

Cheers.

Good stuff David, please post!

OK, since there seems to be a bit of interest in this subject, I'll start posting about "How I did it". Please do not take this as absolute step-by-step instructions as I had to do a bit of experimentation to get everything to work. I've tried to cover each topic thoroughly, but I make no guarantees. In other words, if you break it, I warned you. I've also broken down the instructions into different steps to keep things better organized and so you'll have milestones to show your accomplishments.

STEP 1: Installing Linux

I Downloaded the RedHat Fedora Core 3 (FC3) ISO images and burned the CD's. Keep the ISO images as well as you'll need them later.

I tried the obvious way to install Linux by trying to boot from the CDROM. No luck as the CDROM that comes with the Fujitsu 3400 is an old BackPack parallel port model. Hmmmm, let's see what Google says on the subject. My search turned up a way to install from a hard disk using a program called "loadlin". Loadlin allows you to boot another operating system (ie DOS) and then switch over to the Linux installer... exactly what I needed.

I took the new 40GB drive and put it in an external USB drive enclosure so I could copy the files from my WinXP box. I created a 4GB FAT32 partition on the drive (3GB would have been enough) to use as my "installation" partition and left the rest of the drive unpartitioned for Linux. After formatting my new installation partition, I copied the following files to it:
Fedora Core ISO disc 1
Fedora Core ISO disc 2
Fedora Core ISO disc 3
Fedora Core ISO disc 4
Fedora Core Rescue CD ISO
initrd.img from Fedoa Core CD 1
vmlinuz from Fedora Core CD 1
loadlin.exe downloaded from the internet

The last file needed is a batch file to start loadlin. Using a text editor (Notepad), I created a file named "autoboot.bat" that contains the following command line:

Now I have all of the installation files ready, but my new installation partition won't boot. WinXP wouldn't format it and put system files on it (I didn't play with this much, so there probably is a way to do it... I'm just lazy). So I found an old WIN95 boot floppy laying around and decide that it will do nicely.

The new hard drive is ready to install Linux so I disconnect the drive, remove it from the USB enclosure and put it in the Fujitsu tablet. This is actually very easy to do, just take your time and don't damage the cable on the drive.

Note: One area that could be a real problem during the Linux installation is the keyboard and mouse, since the touchscreen doesn't work immediately. My tablet came with a docking station that has a mouse, keyboard, and Ethernet adapter so I was very lucky there. I'd suggest getting one that has this option as well.

Now I'm finally ready to install Linux. I placed the tablet in the docking station, attach a keyboard, mouse, ethernet cable, floppy drive, and power adapter to the docking station. I also put the PCMCIA firewire card in the computer, hoping that Linux would recognize it (it did).

I turn the computer on and boot the old WIN95 boot disc. After the computer finishes booting up, change to the C: drive and type "autoboot" and press [Enter]. If everything is Ok so far, then the Fedora Core 3 installer will start.

I knew there were certain programs that I wanted, and since I'm lazy I'll let the FC3 installer handle all the difficult parts. I selected a custom install and added the following packages:
SMB Server (Samba)
XWindows
Gnome
dvgrab
Development Tools
X Software Development
GNOME Software Development

During the installation, you will be asked a lot of questions about partitioning your hard drive. I did not do anything special as I was just testing my setup. If you are serious about dedicating space just for video then I would at least create a /video partition. This way the video space will not become fragmented, even though the Linux ext3 file system doesn't suffer large performance hits from fragmentation.

While FC3 is installing, pop open a cold one... this will take a while.

When you are asked for the type of startup, DO NOT CHOOSE GRAPHIC LOGIN. I tried this and could not get the touchscreen to work correctly as the serial port used would not initialize. If you accidently set this wrong, you can go back and change it by editing the file /etc/inittab and changing the line:

id:5:initdefault

to this

id:3:initdefault


STEP 2: Capturing Video

Now onto configuring the firewire card... RedHat FC3 does not have a necessary device pre-defined for raw data transferred via firewire (1394). To add the support for this, I modified the file /etc/rc.d/rc.local and added the following lines:

Restart the computer to let these settings take effect. After restarting the computer, you are ready to test the video capture.

After logging in for the first time, I created a folder called /video to keep all of my video files (real creative I know). Here are the commands to create this folder:

Since most of us are used to using Windows or Mac to do our daily work, I'll do the rest of the work from XWindows. Type "startx" and press [Enter]. Soon you'll see a nice pretty graphical user interface that will hide you from that mean ole command line.

Anyway, back to testing the video capture. I have a Panasonic PV-DV53D but this should work the same for your camcorder.
1. Take the tape out of your camcorder.
2. Turn on the camcorder and switch it to "Camera" or "Record" mode.
3. connect the firewire cable from the camcorder to the firewire card on the tablet computer.
4. On the computer, go to the "Applications" menu, select the "System Tools" sub menu, and select "Terminal".
5. Type "cd /video" and press [Enter].
6. Type "dvgrab --interactive --noavc" and press [Enter].

If everything is correct, you should see the message "Going interactive. Press '?' for help."

Experiment with capturing some video using the following comands:
Press "c" to start capturing video
Press "Esc" to stop capturing video
Press "q" to quit dvgrab

When you're done, close the terminal window. You have now sucessfully captured your first video direct to disk.

STEP 3: Getting the video off the tablet

This step was surprisingly easy after I figured out why it wasn't working in the first place. The first thing we need to do is turn off the firewall. This is not a good idea from a security standpoint, but since this computer is not going to be surfing the internet or connected to an unsecure network, it is an acceptable risk. Here's how to turn it off:

From XWindows,
click on "Applications"
choose the "System Settings" menu
select "Server Settings"
click on "Services".
This will start the Service Configuration program. Scroll down the list on the left until you see the entry "iptables". Uncheck this entry, click on the "Stop" icon, and finally click on the "Save" icon.

While we are here, scroll down the list to the entry "smb". This entry should be checked, and the status for smbd should be "running". If it is not, then check the entry, click on the "Start" icon, and click the "Save" icon. You can now close the Service Configuration program.

Now we can setup the smb server. This will let Windows computers "see" the tablet just like it was any other computer on the network.

From XWindows,
click on "Applications"
choose the "System Settings" menu
select "Server Settings"
click on "Samba"
This brings up the Samba Server Configuration program. From the Preferences menu, select "Server Settings..." The Workgroup should be the name of your home network if you have one (the default workgroup for WindowsXP is "MSHOME"). Here are my settings:
"Basic" tab
Workgroup: MSHOME
Description: Fujitsu tablet
"Security" tab
Authentication Mode: Share
Authentication Server: None (grayed out)
Kerberos Realm: (blank)
Encrypt Passwords: Yes
Guest Account: No guest account

Next we need to add a folder to share. This will be the /video folder we added back in Step 2.
Click on the "Add" icon
"Basic" tab
Directory: /video
Share name: video_clips
Description: (blank)
Basic Permissions: Read / Write
"Access" tab
Allow access to everyone
That should complete the setup of the Samba server. If you go to Windows Explorer on your WinXP box, the Fujitsu tablet and your captured video files should now show up under "My Network Places" / "Microsoft Windows Network" / "Mshome" / "FujitsuTablet" / "video_clips". Double click on the dvgrab .avi file you captured earlier. It should play just like it was on your computer.

Pretty cool huh?

Step 4: Onscreen keyboard

If you've followed along so far, you now have a pretty cool toy that can capture and share video. The only problem is that this thing isn't nearly portable enough. We still need to get the touchscreen working and an onscreen keyboard. Since the keyboard is easier, we'll tackle that first. The one keyboard program that I was able to find was xvkbd. Unfortunately, it is only available as source code so we'll have to compile it ourselves.

The source file is located at this internet address:

http://homepage3.nifty.com/tsato/xvkbd/xvkbd-2.6.tar.gz

I found it easiest to download the file on my WinXP box and then copy it to the /video folder on the Fujitsu, then cut & paste the file to the /usr/src folder. This folder is commonly used as the place to compile new software on Linux systems. Then from a Terminal window, type the following lines to compile & install the keyboard software.

Now that the program is installed, we need a shortcut to it. In Gnome, a shortcut is called a "Launcher". Here's how to create a Launcher...

Right click on the desktop
Choose "Create Launcher" from the pop-up menu
The Create Launcher window will be displayed, fill in the fields like below.
"Basic" tab
Name: XKeyboard (sounds better than xvkbd doesn't it)
Generic Name: (blank)
Comment: (blank)
Command: /usr/X11R6/bin/xvkbd -no-keypad
Icon: (any suitable icon, I chose a typewriter)

Now to make this icon even easier to get to, I placed it on the panel (the top bar where the Applications, Actions, Battery Status & Clock). Simply click & drag the XKeyboard icon up to the panel to add it there. I did the same thing with the Terminal program by dragging it from the "Applications" / "System Tools" menu.

Now to test our new program. Open a Terminal window ("Applications" / "System Tools" / "Terminal" or your new Terminal icon on the panel) and also click on the XKeyboard icon on the panel. Resize the keyboard and terminal windows so that they do not overlap (top half is terminal, bottom half is keyboard).

Click on down arrow (upper left corner) of XKeyboard program and check "On Top". This will keep the Keyboard program in front of any other windows. Click on the "Focus" button (it will stay highlighted) and then click on the terminal window. Now whatever you type on the XKeyboard will show up in the terminal window just like you typed it on a regular keyboard.

Customizing xvkbd: One really nice feature of xvkbd is that it allows you to assign keyboard shortcuts to the function keys. I setup F12 to start the dvgrab program with all the options I wanted. Here's how:

After starting xvkbd, click on the "xvkbd" icon in the lower left cordner and hold the mouse button down. While still holding the mouse button, scroll down to "Edit Function Keys..." and release the mouse button. Select the function key you want to assign the shortcut to by using the same "click & hold + scroll" technique. For the assigned string, type the following line:

And press the "Save" button. You will not be able to see the whole assignment, but if you type it correctly it will be fine. Press F12 on the XKeyboard to try it out.

Step 5: Touchscreen

This is the final piece to the puzzle. When I first started working on my little experiment, there was a problem with the touchscreen driver (fpit)... mainly it didn't work. But in late Feb. 2005 an update was released (A big thanks to David M. Clay for the fix). This patch should now be available with the update to X.org that is available via the RedHat updater (the red circle with the exclamation mark next to the time & date). If it is then just download the updates and you're golden. If not, then you will have to compile XWindows with the updated copy of the fpit driver, which is a pain in the butt. This is what I had to do.

Since the touchscreen is nothing more than a special type of mouse, it uses a serial port. Because it is a non-standard serial port, Linux does not recognize it out of the box. To get it setup correctly, we again need to edit the file /etc/rc.d/rc.local and add the following lines: (Be sure to type the lines exactly as case matters)

Now save the file and restart the computer for these settings to take effect.

The last item is telling XWindows how to handle the touchscreen. This is handled by the /etc/X11/xorg.conf settings file. I wanted to have both the mouse and the touchscreen working so that I could use a mouse when the tablet is in the docking station. After some trial and error, I came up with the following settings. A word of warning: if you mess up the settings in this file you can foul up XWindows and then the only way to correct it is from the command line. I highly recommend making a backup copy of this file BEFORE you make any changes. I learned this lesson the hard way. The changes are only to the "InputDevice" sections. Here are my settings:

Save the file and exit XWindows. Type "startx" and press [Enter]. If everything went well, you should now have a working touchscreen. Try it and see if the touchscreen is now working. If the mouse pointer jumps around then you've probably got the older version of the fpit driver. I also had to adjust the MaximumXPosition and MaximumYPosition numbers to make the mouse pointer matchup better with the pen position on the touchscreen.

Using the completed unit:

Setup to capture video...
Put the tablet in its slipcase
Hang slipcase on tripod
Startup the tablet and login
Type "startx" and press [Enter] to start XWindows.
Open the Terminal and XKeyboard windows resizing as necessary
Turn on the camcorder.
Connect the Firewire cable.
Press F12 on the XKeyboard to start dvgrab.
Press "c" to start capturing video
Press "Esc" to stop capturing video
Press "q" to quit dvgrab

When finished capturing video....
Press "q" to quit dvgrab
close the Terminal and XKeyboard windows
On the "Actions" menu, choose Logout
Shut down the tablet
Disconnect the cables and pack everything away

Back at home...
Put tablet in docking station
Startup the tablet and login
Type "startx" and press [Enter] to start XWindows.
On WindowsXP computer, copy video off the tablet using Windows Explorer
On the tablet computer, from the "Actions" menu, choose Logout
Shut down the tablet

I recently bought a Fujitsu wireless keyboard for my tablet to make it even more portable (I LOVE EBAY!!). The keyboard is only needed to type in the initial login, and start XWindows. After that it can be put back in my gearbag.

If I want to capture video solely on my tablet, I do not use tape but the controls on dvgrab to start & stop recording. Since each segment is time stamped, reassembling the video clips later is easy. Things are a bit more complicated if you use a tape as you need to control 2 devices. I usually just leave the tablet recording during short pauses and stop it during longer ones.

Conclusion:

If you've gotten this far and everything works then congratulations. Have another cold one... you've earned it. You've just built a Linux computer for $300 that does digital video capture very well. I've captured several hours of video without a single frame dropped. To do the same in the MS Windows or Mac worlds would cost much more, and not really provide you with any additional features.

Wishlist:

Remove the need for external keyboard.
Have computer automatically startup the Terminal and XKeyboard programs, properly resized of course.
Onscreen display of remaining disk space.

Do you have a picture of the unit when used with your camera?

I currently use a laptop with DVrack. Total cost was $200. I already own a laptop. It's not very portable. I attach it to my tripod.

Jon

Why not put the laptop on something else? See this picture:

http://www.ladyxfilms.com/theater/e14/ps09.jpg

It was taken on my Lady X shoot. The laptop is on a storage
unit for my camera (which is a tool "box" on wheels with very
sturdy plastic I can sit and stand on, bought at the local hardware
store).

Or you can take some sort of trolley etc. with you if you need it
higher (like watching it sitting or standing).

Here are pictures of my capture setup.

http://img232.exs.cx/img232/1746/vidcaprig13aq.jpg

http://img232.exs.cx/img232/8464/vidcaprig26gp.jpg


Close up of the screen.

http://img232.exs.cx/img232/8180/vidcapscreen2fw.jpg

I bought a fujitsu 3400 on eBay. I love tinkering with linux. My tivo has been upgraded with all kinds of goodies.

Before I bought a firestore FS-4 I actually put my laptop in a backpack and ran a firewire cable to the camera. I have a small dell laptop m600, it's very light. I taped my firewire cable to the laptop just to make sure the cable wouldn't come out. It was definitely worth the money for the fs-4. I can see that the cable is plugged in at all times.

Thanks for posting a how to. It's going to be a fun project once my eBay acquisition arrives.

Wow... Thanks for posting pictures. I attach my laptop to my tripod with a field monitor stand. That's awesome. For a little more than what DV Rack express costs you can have a portable solution without purchasing a 1000 laptop.

Great work!

Thanks, the one thing that I have not been able to do with this setup is review my video. I've tried the Kino video editing program, Helix player, and mplayer, all with the same result.... the program crashes.

I think this is an issue with the amount of memory on the tablet. The Fujitsu Stylistic I have is maxed out at 192MB RAM, but if I do a check of available memory when Kino is running I only have about 5MB free. It's either that or a problem with the Trident video adapter that Fujitsu used. Either way, there isn't much I can do about it.

On the other hand, I have a very portable unit that has 90+% of the capabilities of a dedicated video capture device for a lot less money. Now if I can just find someone with an expensive camcorder that has junk heads....

Yes, that would be cool. Rare to find one with completely junk heads. Give it some time :)

Where does the external USB enclosure sit, and how do you power it? I'm assuming the 'laptop' from it's battery. How long does it last?

The USB enclosure is only used when copying the installation files to the new 40GB hard drive. After that I put the original 6GB drive out of the Fujitsu in the enclosure and use it as portable storage for my other junk (no video).

The actual transfer of DV video from the tablet to my editing computer is accomplished using ethernet. My transfer speed is not that fast (about 1.5x, 45fps) but that is still much better than playing the video on the camcorder again to direct capture. Especially when you factor in wear & tear on the camcorder.

linux
 

David, great information and detailed instructions. It might be more of a project that I can proceed with at the moment.

I am interested in learning Linux. Can you provide any information on the different releases available?

The recent edition of cpu magazine details the os and recommends xandros desktop for users with a windows background. Any info you can provide is appreciated.

Thanks

I've mostly been working with RedHat, just because that's what I was first exposed to. I started with RedHat 6.0 and I'm currently using the Fedora Core 3 version. I work in the Windows world most of the time as well, but this project wouldn't work under Windows on the hardware I have.

You may want to try Linspire as it supposedly has a lot of Windows style utilities, and is designed for Windows users. If you do not want to spend any time actually setting up a computer to run Linux, look at Knoppix. Knoppix is a boot CD that does not actually install anything. You can't do any work in Knoppix, but it will let you see how Linux looks & feels.

But my best advice would be to find an old desktop computer and install a "real" Linux like RedHat, Debian, Suse, Mandrake, or any of a dozen different flavors. Even if you screw up the installation, it's a spare computer, so who cares.

Update: I originally posted that I could not get the kino video editing program to work on my Fujitsu tablet. It turns out that there is a setting to allow kino to run on video cards with less memory, and this was the problem. The setting is in kino under the following menu:
On the Audio tab, uncheck the "Enable Audio Output" checkbox as the audio is very choppy, probably due to the slower CPU. This will help performance slightly.

After changing these settings, kino ran fine. I even opened a 20 minute video clip (4.3GB) and edited it with no problems.

As an experiment, I wanted to see if I could capture video and edit at the same time on this computer. After about 2 minutes the capture would overrun the buffer and start dropping frames. Dvgrab did note that frames had been dropped, and also stopped dropping frames when I stopped editing. The hard drive was churning pretty hard when I was trying to edit so it wasn't a surprise that I had problems. FYI: The hard drive I used is a Toshiba 40GB 4200RPM, 8MB cache drive (MK4025GAS).

More Tweaks
 

One of the things on my wish list was to be able to completely eliminate the need for a keyboard. This means that I had to get the touchscreen working from the graphical login (/etc/inittab, runlevel 5). I played and played with this and finally figured out that there was a minor bug in the way Fedora Core 3 Linux starts the serial ports (the touchscreen is nothing more than a fancy serial port). Essentially, Linux had started using the touchscreen before I could properly configure it. The solution was to move the configuring of the serial port to a point BEFORE Linux started using it.

WARNING: This change is one that could really screw up your computer if you do it wrong. The file that I changed is /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit... the main startup script in Linux.

Step 1: Remove old startup script for the serial port.

I had originally setup the serial ports for the touchscreen in the /etc/rc.d/rc.local file. This script is run after everything else, so it is too late to do any good. Edit this file and put a # character in front of the two "setserial" commands. The # sign denotes a comment in a Linux shell script, similar to a REM statement in an MS-DOS batch file.

Step 2: Create new startup script for the serial port.

The proper way to configure a serial port in FC3 Linux is to create the file /etc/rc.serial (other flavors of Linux do this differently). I did not know this when I first posted this "How-to". The easiest way to create this file is to open the /etc/rc.d/rc.local file in a text editor and save to the /etc folder renamed as "rc.serial". Then edit the file until it looks like this:
Step 3: Move the serial port initialization in the main system startup script.

While I've warned you that you can screw up your computer doing this, it really isn't a diffucult change. If you follow these directions and they don't match up or make sense, then don't save any changes to the file and you'll be fine.

Ok, here we go...

Open the file /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit in a text editor.

Search for the word "serial", it will find this in a comment line that says "# Initialize the serial ports." (somewhere near line 840)

Copy this line and the next 3 lines.

Go ahead and put a # sign at the beginning of these 3 lines. This will keep them from running, and also mark where they originally were.

Search for the word "graphical", it will find this in a comment line that says "# Start the graphical boot, if necessary; /usr may not be mounted yet, so we" (somewhere near line 230)
NOTE: If you find this near line 700, you have the wrong section.

Just above this comment line, paste the 4 lines that you copied earlier.

Above the pasted serial port initialization lines, I added some more comments (don't forget the #'s) stating what change I had made, and put my name there so I could find it easier. This is entirely optional.

If everything looks Ok, save the changes.

Go ahead and restart the computer, if you did everything correctly, the touchscreen will still work when you start XWindows.

Step 4: Switch to a graphical bootup

Open the file /etc/inittab in a text editor, change the line that says:

id:3:initdefault

to this

id:5:initdefault

and save the file. Restart the computer and you should boot straight into XWindows with a working touchscreen.

By now you're probably thinking "Great, I went through all these steps just to change my login from text to a pretty GUI.... big woop. I still gotta type it in." Well, there is another trick up Dave's sleeve...

Step 6: Automatic login

Yes boys & girls, you can bypass the login screen all together. Here's how:

From within XWindows, go to the "System Settings" menu and select "Login Screen". At the bottom of the "General" tab is a section called "Timed Login". I selected "dave" as my Timed login username, and set the Seconds before login to 15. This way I can still login as a different user if I need to, otherwise 15 seconds later... poof... auto login. Now you are completely free from the need for a keyboard. I carry mine in my kit bag, just in case, but I don't use it.

This is the current state of my setup today and I'm very happy with how it performs. I recorded my daughter's basketball games yesterday as a test of the full system, in the field. It worked extremely well. I had only 1 problem, and that wasn't the tablet's fault. The camcorder went to power off standby mode during halftime and I had to unplug/replug the firewire cable and restart dvgrab. I still captured the scene on tape, but if I hadn't been using tape the camcorder wouldn't have shut off in the first place.

David, I'm thinking of recording to hard drive as well (laptop+dvrack) but my main concern is how reliable the hard drive is when you are walking with it. Can one carry a hard drive around while recording without getting write errors or are you strictly anchored to one spot? I know the operating shock tolerance of laptop hd's are around 160-200 G, akin to dropping the hd to a hard surface from 4 inches, so theoretically, if you walk around softly the data stream should be unaffected.

However in the real world...I have digital wallet type device (CF card -> hard drive) for still photography. I don't know the shock tolerance of the 40 gb fujitsu inside but if I took a couple of steps while it was transferring files the unit would consistently get a write failure. The only way to use it is to set it down, tap your toes and wait for it to finish before moving anywhere.

The FS has a 10 second shock buffer to protect the data stream...without it, I'm not sure how safe I'd be shooting/recording on the go. I wonder if there is a way to emulate this 10 second buffer...

If you're having that type of problem with a Cf drive, it sounds more like a faulty electrical/data connection than an actual hard drive problem. Every hard drive I've ever used was either good or bad, not just good if stationary. On laptops I've seen similar behavior and it's always been a loose cable.

With the setup I have, the disk writes are only occuring every 3-4 seconds, not continously. This is a function of both the internal cache on the hard drive (mine is 8MB) and the amout of cacheing the operating system does.

As far as being able to move and use a setup like mine.... I'd think it would work OK as physically it is no different than carrying a laptop and recording. Several people here have said they've done that without hard drive issues. I don't know if I'd film a demolition derby from inside the car with this setup though. Really my biggest concern trying to move & shoot would be the firewire cable coming loose.

I'll be connecting laptop to camcorder later this week...and I'm sure there'll be a lot of kinks to work out. I'll let you know how it goes.

Knoppix
 

Dear David, you can install Knoppix and blow up to a full Debian system, all on the knoppix page, I use it to write this posting

BUT for editing and Sound there is dynabolic it can be installed too and has all for sound and video that might exist in the linux world on board no compiling

hvae fun

I was suggesting Knoppix for George as a way to experiment with Linux without any fears or worries. If I were actually installing a version, I wouldn't start with Knoppix. I'd start with a RedHat, Debian, or another distro.

I'm not some big Linux guru, so please don't think that I am. I'm just a fan of the OS and what it can do. Heck, I just figured out what "yum" is this week. :)

Re linux
 

Fine I do know over the pond is redhat country...
Only to mention Knoppix, there is a version on DVD is Debian based so called Debian unstable and has all tools.I do use it as it has even the Redhat ISDN config as ISDN, Europe..old Europe is la merde with Debian... it can be updated easily and you have the latest Debia Distro rocksolid not so sexy as gentoo but ...there are so many distros out know to be lost...

You're right about that.

My laptop's fw port (4 pin) kept giving me trouble. If the cable moved an inch my connection would die. Probably a few more tugs and the whole port might detach from the motherboard.

Anyways, even though my dell warranty is good for another year I went out and got a bytecc PCMCIA fw adapter. Now I have 2 fw ports (of the 6 pin variety) and the connection never fails no matter how hard wag the cable - also accidental unplugging is not as easy with the 6 pin, being a wider and deeper plug than the 4 pin.

Glad you were able to work through the problem with your Dell's firewire port. So, how well did the setup work? Any dropped frames?

One thing I've started doing is transferring all of my video from tape to the Linux tablet first. I've been having some trouble with my WinXP desktop box doing these transfers. I've noticed momentary jitter on several transfers caused by a bad capture. And during capture I get no indication of any problems. This could be the crappy software I'm using (Roxio DVD Builder & Windows Movie Maker). But I've tried a couple other consumer-grade packages and they don't tell you either. :( Since I started using the tablet, I get no transfer errors. With dvgrab, if even 1 frame gets dropped I'll know about it and that's one less thing to worry about.

Even more tweaks
 

After my second outing with the tablet, I made a few changes to the setup... again.

Automatically Start Terminal & XKeyboard

When I first started my little project, I wanted to be able to turn on the tablet, and after booting up, be ready to go. I think I have it about as close as I can get right now. I've got the Terminal window automatically opening up in the right place on the screen, and the XKeyboard starting directly below that. But I still have to resize the XKeyboard window to make the keys bigger. Here are the changes I made:

From the Desktop:
Applications / Preferences / More Preferences / Sessions
This opens the "Sessions" screen.

Click on the "Startup Programs" tab.
Click "Add" to add a new startup program.
Type in the following for the "Startup Command"In the "Order" box, enter "50"
Press "OK"

Click "Add" to add a new startup program.
Type in the following for the "Startup Command"In the "Order" box, enter "60"
Press "OK"

Press "Close" to close the Sessions preferences screen.

I also changed the Launchers (shortcuts) for both the Terminal & XKeyboard programs as well. To do this, right click on the Terminal Laucher and select "Properties". Add "--geometry=96x12" to the end of the Command entry. Be sure to leave a space after "gnome-terminal". Click "Close" to save your changes.

To change XKeyboard, right click on the XKeyboard Laucher and select "Properties". Add "-geometry -200-95" to the end of the Command entry. Be sure to leave a space after "xvkbd". Click "Close" to save your changes.

More XKeyboard Shortcuts

As I use the tablet more, I find myself wanting to do the same things over and over. Things like check the amount of free space on the hard drive, displaying the directory of captured video files, and clearing the terminal screen. I decided to put these commands as function key shortcuts on xvkbd (XKeyboard).

After starting xvkbd, click on the "xvkbd" icon in the lower left corner and hold the mouse button down. While still holding the mouse button, scroll down to "Edit Function Keys..." and release the mouse button. Select the function key you want to assign the shortcut to by using the same "click & hold + scroll" technique. For the assigned string, type the following line:

To display directory of captured video files:To display the amount of disc space used/available:To clear the Terminal screen:I put these on the F5, F6, and F7 function keys to group them together, but you can put them wherever you like.

Problems in Paradise

My daughter had more basketball games this weekend, so I decided more field testing was in order. This time I did have a problem with the video capture. During half-time in the first game, I switched the camcorder off before I stopped dvgrab. I had already stopped capturing, but I had not exited the program (I pressed "ESC" instead of "Q"). This locked up dvgrab where I could not exit the program. When I pressed "Q" to quit dvgrab, a "Q" was displayed on the screen. I had to close the Terminal window and re-open it.

When I restarted dvgrab, it did not work. After a little "frantic research" I figured out that the locked up dvgrab was still running. I had to do a "killall dvgrab" to get it to stop, then everything would work again. Since this is not something I wanted to go through again, I decided to assign this command to a function key on XKeyboard, and also include it in the startup for dvgrab (F12). My new F12 shortcut on XKeyboard now reads like this:
Final Thoughts

Now that I've used this setup in the field a few times, I'll share my feelings on the setup, both good and bad.

The Good:

Longer record times: I have about 2 hours recording capacity now and I still want more. Guess I should have bought the 60GB drive.

Immediate playback: If I need to see an "instant replay" of something, I've got it right there. Without having to "rewind & find".

Reduced wear & tear on camcorder: This pretty much speaks for itself. I can eliminate about half the wear on the tape heads by not having to playback the tapes for capture. All of the head wear if I went totally tapeless (see below)

The Bad:

Setup & tear down: It takes me about 10 minutes to setup this rig for recording. Not too bad for single position filming, but doesn't work for "run & gun" filming. I haven't tried to to wear the tablet yet.

Still need tape: After yesterday's problems, I became a firm beleiver in making a tape copy for backup. I would have lost several minutes of the ballgame without my tape copy.

Power requirements: The tablet I have does not have the best battery in the world. If I relied on the battery without AC backup, I'd only get about 45 minutes of record time... not nearly enough. I'll either need to find a battery pack for this, or I'm stuck with drop cords.

Resizing XKeyboard
 

I was so close to having the setup exactly like I wanted it after my last post that it bothered me... I had to get XKeyboard (xvkdb) to startup in the size I wanted. After deciphering the documentation, I did figure it out. Here's how to get XKeyboard resized and positioned exactly where you want it.

You'll need to do this change logged in as the root (administrator) account.

From a text editor, open the file "/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/XVkbd"

Add the following 2 lines to the bottom of the file:xvkbd.windowGeometry sets the default window size
xvkdb.geometry sets the default window position

Save the file and that takes care of the first part.

Log out and log back in as your regular user as the rest of the changes needed are user specific.

Since I was already telling XKeyboard a starting position in the startup application and in the launcher icons, I needed to edit them as well.

To change the startup XKeyboard program:
From the Desktop:
Applications / Preferences / More Preferences / Sessions
This opens the "Sessions" screen.
Click on the "Startup Programs" tab.
Click on the program line for xvkdb
Click "Edit" to change this startup program.
Change the "Startup Command" to the following:Press "OK"
Press "Close" to close the Sessions preferences screen.

To change the Launcher (shortcut) for XKeyboard:
Right click on the XKeyboard Laucher and select "Properties". Change the command entry to readBe sure to leave a space after "xvkbd". Click "Close" to save your changes.

To test the new changes, restart the tablet. Now when the tablet comes up, it is ready to roll... 4 taps and you're recording (Focus button on XKeyboard, Terminal Window, F12 on XKeyboard to start dvgrab, C on XKeyboard to start capturing).

Apparently, I'm gonna keep fixing this till it's broken :)

I think that is an *excellent* discipline. Hard drives can and do go down (you're a computer-savvy guy, I'm sure you know that) and computers *will* crash!

On the other hand tapes can and do get chewed up, drop frames, stretch, put lots of wear on the heads (as you say, particularly when scrubbing and capturing).

If you've got a drop-frame-free, no-need-to-capture HDD source with a recorded-once-and-never-touched tape backup, you're in a good position all round, I think.

Congratulations, top job mate!...

Thanks for the nice comments. This setup continues to impress me with what it can do. This past week I used it to record events at a track meet, no tape at all (the footage was not important). This time I ran on battery power only. Worked perfectly, although I was limited to about 25 minutes record time because of the weak tablet batteries. (I found a post on here about a NiMH battery pack for about $100 that would REALLY extend my run time though).

I haven't had any troubles with hard drives themselves, but I do not trust the connectors used for firewire. Without secure connectors that screw down or twist-lock, firewire connections will always be a weak link in my book. Also when the camcorder switched off while dvgrab was running (described in an ealier post), the firewire link went down without warning. All of these together make relying on hard drive alone an unwise choice for important video. Also, if you do something stupid like erase the hard drive copy, you can always go back to the tape. I know because I did this... it was late at night, I was tired, and that's all I'm saying.

Really, I think that within the next 5-10 years, a setup like I've built will be obsolete as all camcorders will switch over to either hard drive, optical, or solid state media. But maybe, just maybe, the manufacturers will see products like the FireStore (and to a MUCH lesser extent, mine) and use that as a template for where they need to go.

Hey, Dave, it was fun and educational reading about your reroutes to get to where you wanted to get to, even if I didn't know a thing about linux and tablet pcs. But your hard work, creativity and willingness to get the word out exemplify what this community is all about.

Thanks Roger, glad you found the journey interesting... I sure did. :)

I will probably setup the tablet again in the next few weeks to see if I can get it up over 30GB of recording space That and to see if the current updated state of RedHat's Fedora Core 3 will work without a bunch of messing around.

Here are the changes I want to do this time:

1. Decrease the installation partition. Right now I'm wasting a full gigabyte with unused space in the install partition.

2. Put video files in their own partition to keep them from getting mixed in with the Linux OS files.

3. Strip the operating system down to make it as small as possible. No browsers, games, or other "fluff".

4. See if I can install all the software I need without having to compile anything. The only software I think I'll have trouble finding is xvkbd.

5. Keep the firewall turned on, for extra security.

Now that I know exactly what needs to be done, it should be pretty simple. When I do this I'll post another article here that will go step-by-step through the whole process.

David

More Tweaks
 

One of the things I wanted to have on the tablet was an on-screen display of the disk space remaining. I'd been kicking this around for a while and finally decided to see if I could write it. Since I'm not very familiar with many of the languages that come with Linux, I decided to see if I could write a script file to do what I wanted. Scripts are similar to MS-DOS batch files, but much more powerful. If there are any Linux gurus out there don't laugh... well, not to my face anyway.

Here's the script:
This progam will display the amount of hard disk space available in an easy to read format, in large type, as well as change the background color depending on the amount of space remaining.

30+ minutes record time available, green background
10-30 minutes record time left, cyan background
under 10 minutes, red background

The program will automatically refresh the display every 15 seconds.

I created this file by typing in the text above into the Text Editor (Applications / Accessories / Text Editor). I called the file "Free-Space" and saved it on my desktop. The next thing was to make the file executable. Right-click the mouse on the file and go to "Properties". Then click on the "Permissions" tab and click the "Execute" boxes for Owner, Group, and Others.

The next step is to add this to the startup programs in "Applications / Preferences / More Preferences / Sessions". Go to the "Startup Programs" tab and press "Add" to add this program. I typed the following into the "Startup Command:" box: In the "Order" box, I set it to 70. Press "OK" to save the new startup program.

Press "Close" to close the Sessions window.

Next I created a Launcher so that I could put this program, setup properly, on the panel for easy access. Here's how: Right-click on the desktop and choose "Create Launcher". A Create Launcher window opens. For the "Name:" entry I put "Disk Status". In the "Command:" entry I typed the gnome-terminal command quoted above. I clicked on the Icon button and chose a toolbox icon. Click on "OK" to save this new launcher.

Drag the newly created "Disk Status" icon up to the panel, next to the XKeyboard and Terminal icons. Now if you accidently close the disk status screen, you can restart it with a single click, or tap in this case.

The problem now is that I still have not found a good way to position the terminal screens in Linux. They open wherever they want. This worked OK when there was only one, but now that there are 2, they open overlapped and in the wrong positions. I'll do some more research and get this working, as there has to be a way.

I have a little more to add to this post, but I've gotta go right now. Stay tuned.

Found it!!
 

In my previous post I was having trouble getting the terminal windows aligned the way I wanted. But like most things I've tried in Linux, the solution was simple, but finding it was much harder. There are more options in the "--geometry" parameter that will do just what I want. So, here are the new settings...

Note: I forgot that I resized the main terminal window in the last post, so I'll include the changes here.

Changing the startup windows:
From "Applications / Preferences / More Preferences / Sessions".
Select the "Startup Programs" tab
Highlight the first item (Order: 50, gnome-terminal) and press "Edit"
Change the Startup Command to this:Press OK to save these changes

Highlight the last item (Order: 70, gnome-terminal) and press "Edit"
Change the Startup Command to this:Press OK to save these changes

Press "Close" to close the Sessions window.

These same changes will need to be done to the icons on the panel.

Right click on the "Disk Status" icon and select "Properties"
Change Command to this:Press "Close" to save the changes

Right click on the "Terminal" icon created a long time ago and select "Properties"
Change the Command to this:Press "Close" to save these changes.

Here is a picture of the screen of the tablet as its configured now:
http://img204.echo.cx/img204/1517/screenshot16hg.png

ipod w/ linux as tapeless solution?
 

i was reading this thread and wondered if it would be possible to hook up an ipod, since they have high capacity, built in easily charged battery, and are set up for firewire already, and you can now run linux on most of the models? or is the harddrive too slow for video capture?

The ipod was actually the first device I thought of when trying to build a DIY video capture rig. If I remember correctly, the problem was system throughput and not the hard disk speed. From the specs I found the ipod uses dual 80MHz ARM 7TDMI processors. Not exactly speed demons.

Digital video capture requires 25Mbits per second of throughput (3.1MBytes per second). This is roughly equivalent to copying a 3 minute song every second to the ipod... continuously. If the ipod can do this then, in theory, it could capture video. But it would have to be an older ipod with Firewire to connect to a video camera (newer ipods use USB).

ipod
 

on the new ones you just have to buy a firewire cord separately, they only include a usb cord, but are most definantly firewire cabable, and i couldn't find any stats on the latest color screen 60gb models

I stand corrected on the Firewire adapter. I was reading some newsgroup postings and kept seeing stuff about USB on the new units in reference to video. I should have checked more closely... sorry.

I did a little more searching and re-found an article about video capture on an ipod. In the article the author tried to capture video using his G3 Powerbook as an intermediate and the ipod as a plain external drive. The hard drive spec'ed fast enough but in a real-world test, failed badly. This was the article that made me give up on the idea of using an ipod. This is an older article (May 2002), and if someone has a newer ipod they could probably perform this test again easily. I don't own an ipod or I would have already tried it myself.

Here's the link to the article:

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/art...video-capture/

"In The Field" tapeless test - September 16
 

I haven't posted to this thread in a while and I thought this would be a good time for an update. On the tablet I uninstalled a lot of the extra programs that came with my installation of Linux and got my free space up to 28GB (around 2.25 hours).

To solve my limited battery life problem, I just bought an external battery pack (133WH, 16v/19v) off ebay for $150 plus shipping. The one I bought was from "Battery Inc" and I had no problem with the auction at all. Although this has doubled the weight of my tablet (now at about 4-5 lbs. with battery), I estimate that I have 10-12 hours of run time now. I mounted the battery pack in the back of the tablet's carrying case. Although you can't see the battery, here's an older pic for reference.

http://img232.exs.cx/img232/1746/vidcaprig13aq.jpg

So I now had all the pieces to do a long, tapeless run. Since I normally tape the Friday night high school football game for my nephew anyway, I thought this would be a good test. My sister-in-law was taping on her camcorder so it gave me a backup in case I had "technical difficulties".

I taped 23.5GB of video to the hard drive in 17 clips, with the largest clip being over 6GB. There were no problems during capture at all. I basically let the recorder run except during timeouts, halftime, and after touchdowns. I was able to concentrate more on the subject material and not so much on the minutia of "did I press the record button hard enough?" An unexpected side effect was that I actually had more fun running the camcorder this way than with tape.

I transferred the files back to my editing computer without incident. But I did run into one oddity when I went to edit. Several of the clips showed incorrect run times under Windows Movie Maker. Every other program returned the correct video clip length. Including the MS Windows Media Player... odd.

I use this video to create a highlight reel so I usually just hack the clips and don't spend a lot of time making it pretty. I had been using Windows Movie Maker this program to edit with. So this time I had to break the clips apart using Roxio's DVD Creator. It took a bit longer to edit but I still got good results.