Chipset Conexant (BookTree) Bt878A + FC 5 + ZMLive CD

clubbing80s · Post by **clubbing80s** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 10:44 am

Hi
I have a video capture card :
Manufacutred by Velleman components
Model PV143
Chipset Conexant (BookTree) Bt878A
I have tried it with Fedora Core 5 and Mandrake Live CD 10.1 and I only get /dev/video0 where are the /dev/video1/2/3 ?
How do I cofigure it to work with all four channels ?
Or is this a windows only device ?

Many Thanks

jameswilson · Post by **jameswilson** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 10:55 am

we will need a bit more info about the card as i dont know, how many bt878 chips does it have 1 or 4
can we see a link anywhere?
what have you done to your modprobe

clubbing80s · Post by **clubbing80s** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 1:58 pm

I cant seem to find a pic.
But it has 4 inputs and one Conexant Fusion 878A chip on it.
I have tried anything with modprob yet. It's the first time I'm using video capture cards ..

jameswilson · Post by **jameswilson** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 2:38 pm

if its only got a single chip you wont get anything other than dev/video0 as it only has the one chip. You do have channels on that chip though 0-3 i would think. Try editing your modprobe.conf and adding
options bttv card=77
and rebooting

RedFlyer · Post by **RedFlyer** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 6:49 pm

You're right James, this must work with this parameter.
But he can test this without rebooting.

1- Modify modprobe.conf and add 'options bttv card=77 tuner=-1' (as you mention)
2- open an other terminal as root and type the command 'tail - f /var/log/messages', you will see the last messages in the log.
3- Stop ZM by typing 'service zm stop' in the first terminal window
4- Type 'rmmod bt878' and after 'rmmod bttv'
You should see some message regarding the unloading of the modules
5- Type 'modprobe bttv' and you will see in the other terminal (tail) your board detected as a Grantech card.
6- Type 'modprobe bt878'
7- Restart ZM by typing in the terminal 'service zm start'

And now in ZM, in the monitor source definition use '/dev/video0' as Device Path and use 0 for Device Channel. You can also create other monitors with Device Channel 1,2 and finally 3.
The more you add channels, less fps you will have. The chips is only 25/30 fps total (PAL/NTSC), if you define two monitor, you will (in theory) have max 12fps per channel, and with 4 channels, 6fps (again in theory as this depend of the performance of your computer)

Enjoy

Regards,

Oliver
________
MAGIC FLIGHT