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

[Samuel N. Merritt]

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On Mon, Oct 13, 2003 at 11:19:08PM -0700, p@dirac.org wrote:
> 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:
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>    samplerate: 44100=20
>    frames: 12 fps
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> 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.
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> 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:
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>    samplerate: 44100=20
>    frames: 20 fps
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> 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:
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>    samplerate: 44100=20
>    frames: 30 fps
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> i'm exhausted and about to call it a night.  does anybody have
> suggestions on how to get good quality video at reasonable filesize?
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> should i be working in a format other than AVI?

As far as I know, AVI is a container format, not an encoding format.
Your software is probably just saving raw frames with a little AVI
container data. You'll need to compress them with a real video codec.
MPEG-2 isn't the highest-compression thing in the world, but there are
good open-source implementations.=20

I've never used it, but I think mencoder (part of mplayer) can do this.=20
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> pete
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> On Mon 13 Oct 03,  9:06 PM, Mark K. Kim <markslist@cbreak.org> said:
> > I think the driver needs to support saving videos.
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> > 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...
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> > Good luck!
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> > -Mark
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> > On Mon, 13 Oct 2003 p@dirac.org wrote:
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> > > 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 linu=
x,
> > > 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 f=
or
> > > some reason, it doesn't want to record.  it refuses to record the mov=
ie
> > > 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 ki=
nd
> > > 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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Samuel Merritt
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