[vox-tech] wincast tv: video4linux and copying movies

Mon, 13 Oct 2003 23:19:08 -0700

ok, i've been playing around with this for awhile, and the results are
not great.  i recorded the opening theme of southpark under different
settings.  the default settings of:

   samplerate: 44100 
   frames: 12 fps

produce a file of 72MB for about 26s of video.  the video is bad,
but watchable if i'm jonesing for southpark.  if it weren't a cartoon,
it would truly be unwatchable.

i bumped the sample rate up to 48000, however both the video quality and
filesize don't change.  what exactly is the difference between
samplerate and fps anyhow?  so then i bumped it up:

   samplerate: 44100 
   frames: 20 fps

the video quality was ok.  certainly watchable, but not "high quality"
by any stretch of the imagination.  the filesize is 120MB for 26s.  i'm
already at about 1/6 - 1/7 of the capacity of a CD.  there's no way a 20
minute video will fit on a CD.  just out of curiosity, i bumped it up
again to:

   samplerate: 44100 
   frames: 30 fps

the video was good, but still not high quality.  the filesize is a
whopping 183MB for 26s.  my computer (1.4MHz athlon) is working hard to
keep sync with audio.

i just upgraded my kernel to 2.4.22, and didn't bother installing the
low latency patch this time around.  i guess i can try that tomorrow
evening.

i'm a little disheartened.  quake3 can get to very high framerates with
ease; my machine does q3 very nicely.  but then again, that's all
hardware accelerated opengl stuff.

but in any event, it's filesize that seems to be the show stopper here.
at this rate, a 20min video will take somewhere between 5GB and 8GB.
this is unreasonable.

i'm exhausted and about to call it a night.  does anybody have
suggestions on how to get good quality video at reasonable filesize?

should i be working in a format other than AVI?

pete

On Mon 13 Oct 03,  9:06 PM, Mark K. Kim <markslist@cbreak.org> said:
> I think the driver needs to support saving videos.
> 
> Assuming it does, run xawtv with -noxv option, 'cuz it can't save videos
> when the video is coming through the xvideo extension.  Then select
> "Record Movie" from the menu, then change "movie driver: multiple image
> files" to one of the valid movie formats.  Supply the "movie/images
> filename", then click "start/stop recording."  That works for me but I
> don't use hauppauge so...
> 
> Good luck!
> 
> -Mark
> 
> 
> On Mon, 13 Oct 2003 p@dirac.org wrote:
> 
> > hi all,
> >
> > i owned a microsoft OS for a few weeks before switching to linux.  in
> > those few weeks, i bought a hauppauge wincast TV card.  it worked
> > marginarlly well, but the driver had "issues".
> >
> > anyway, i installed linux soon after and completely forgot about the
> > card, giving up on it ever being supported by linux.  that was back in
> > the redhat 5.1 days, and supported hardware was ... sparse.
> >
> > anyway, i recently came across the card and did some research.  it's now
> > supported by linux!  hooray!  after...
> >
> > reading ~linux/Documentation/video4linux/bttv
> > recompiling the kernel
> > figuring out how to connect the card to my soundcard
> > playing with sound settings
> > hooking the card up to my VCR
> >
> > i got the card to work.  it took a bit long to get working under linux,
> > but it's much less flakey.  the windows driver crashed very often,
> > making the card painful to use (one of the reasons why i forgot about
> > the card).
> >
> > anyway, i want to put some of my old VCR tapes onto hard drive and
> > perhaps eventually burn them to DVD.
> >
> >
> > has anybody ever done this?  i can use xawtv to watch my tapes, but for
> > some reason, it doesn't want to record.  it refuses to record the movie
> > to disk (although i can get screenshots).
> >
> > i'm about to go to freshmeat, but if anybody does this kind of thing,
> > i'd like to hear what you use and about your experiences with this kind
> > of software.  i'm a TOTAL newbie with video on linux, but i'd like to
> > get acquainted with it.
> >
> > thanks!
> > pete

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