IVTV Proof of concept

[Adam Sulmicki]

Hello folks,

Here's a proof-of-concept patch for using IVTV cards with ZM.

http://www.eax.com/patches/zm-1.22.2-ivtv-hm12.1.patch

see comments at top of the patch.

improvemnets welcome.

[Adam Sulmicki]

now with color support.

http://www.cs.unm.edu/~sulmicki/eax/pat ... 12.2.patch

[cordel]

Thank you for your work and contribution effort to the project Adam

Just one question (because I know some one else might ask or worse just apply the patch and assume that it will work), How will this patch affect bttv based cards and can you run a combination of cards?

If your not sure, I think I have a card here that requires ivtv and have a few bttv cards, so I could test in a couple weeks if it would assist you in any way. I could also just put a box together and give you root access if you would like a test platform, just name your flavor

Also you might consider at some point adding a thread to contrib topic or I could split this topic to contrib's.

Regards,
Corey

[Adam Sulmicki]

Just one question (because I know some one else might ask or worse just apply the patch and assume that it will work), How will this patch affect bttv based cards and can you run a combination of cards?

The basic idea was to increase theoretical number of cams from 4 to 6.

lspci:
00:08.0 Multimedia video controller: Internext Compression Inc iTVC16 (CX23416) MPEG-2 Encoder (rev 01)
00:09.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)
00:09.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 11)
00:0b.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt848 Video Capture (rev 12)

In my test system I have those 3 cards above. I don't see any problems with running ivtv and bttv alongside. At the moment I do not own any cx88 card.

However, to tell truth so far I only tested zoneminder with TV channels and no cams. It also should be noted that ATM you need to use external programs to switch between tv/composite/s-video in the ivtv driver.

[cordel]

Great Adam,
Thanks for the info and just let us know if we can do anything to help.

Cheers,
Corey

[Adam Sulmicki]

I found this interesting explanation on difference between various cards with hardware mpeg encoder. In particular between ivtv cards and other mpeg based cards. It is at :

http://www.linuxtv.org/v4lwiki/index.ph ... e_encoders

I took liberty to quote part of the above url below:

Can you get raw video from hardware encoder cards?

* For card combos where the decoder is on the PCI bus (Conexant Blackbird, Philips Empress, ATI Theatre, etc.), you can grab either the raw video or the compressed (MPEG2) video. These cards register two devices, one for raw video (/dev/video0) and one for compressed (/dev/video1).

* Cards with the encoder on the PCI bus (PVR-350/250, DVB, etc.) only provide compressed streams. This is because the decoder is not accessable on the PCI bus, so you can't grab the raw stream from it.

The above info is not entirely correct since you can extract raw data from ivtv cards using the said HM12 format. However, it is cumbersome and tricky, but overall the above info is mostly correct.

Also, you can find more older info on running ivtv wtih zm at :

http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6963

Adam Sulmicki

[zoowiez]

I've been reading this thread trying to get my Hauppage PVR-150 to work with ivtv on Gentoo kernel 2.16.18-r3. IVTV works with mplayer. I applied the patch to the ebuild and it compiled ok. When I start zoneminder and look at the logs I still get these errors though.

Code: Select all

Dec  2 04:17:03 localhost zmdc[19988]: ERR ['zmc -d /dev/video32' exited abnormally, exit status 255]
Dec  2 04:17:08 localhost zmdc[19988]: INF [Starting pending process, zma -m 2]
Dec  2 04:17:08 localhost zmdc[20058]: INF ['zma -m 2' started at 06/12/02 04:17:08]
Dec  2 04:17:08 localhost zmdc[19988]: INF ['zma -m 2' starting at 06/12/02 04:17:08, pid = 20058]
Dec  2 04:17:08 localhost zma_m2[20058]: INF [Debug Level = 0, Debug Log = <none>]
Dec  2 04:17:08 localhost zma_m2[20058]: ERR [Shared memory not initialised by capture daemon]
Dec  2 04:17:08 localhost zmdc[19988]: ERR ['zma -m 2' exited abnormally, exit status 255]

Also, the patch says to:

setup new zoneminder camera ZoneMinder _exactly_ like this:

Source Type : File
File Path : /dev/video32
File Colours : 24 bit colour
Capture Width : 720
Capture Height : 576

Where am I supposed to do this. The zonminder console has some of these options in the source tab, but not the "Source Type" and "File colors" (it does have capture pallete which seems to me to be the same thing). Is that the right place or is there some other file that I need to edit?

[Adam Sulmicki]

Also, the patch says to:

setup new zoneminder camera ZoneMinder _exactly_ like this:

Source Type : File
File Path : /dev/video32
File Colours : 24 bit colour
Capture Width : 720
Capture Height : 576

Where am I supposed to do this. The zonminder console has some of these options in the source tab, but not the "Source Type" and "File colors" (it does have capture pallete which seems to me to be the same thing). Is that the right place or is there some other file that I need to edit?

In the "Monitor Tab" set up "Source Type" to File. Then you will see remianing options under "Source Tab" for a file device. See :

http://www.zoneminder.com/fileadmin/dow ... c151468570

Setting those right, should get rid of the error you pasted.

Also note that you need to use external program to set up input (tv/composite/svideo).

ps: I'm planning a 3rd revision of patch which will support different image sizes. However, since right now i'm hacking entirely different things, do not hold breath for this.

[zoowiez]

I found the "Source Type" in the "General Tab". I didn't see a "Monitor Tab". Once, I changed that, the errors went away. Thanks for the help. Now, I just need to figure out why I'm getting distorted video from /dev/video32 while /dev/video0 is working ok. I guess it's a problem related to ivtv.

[Adam Sulmicki]

I found the "Source Type" in the "General Tab". I didn't see a "Monitor Tab". Once, I changed that, the errors went away. Thanks for the help. Now, I just need to figure out why I'm getting distorted video from /dev/video32 while /dev/video0 is working ok. I guess it's a problem related to ivtv.

Glad to hear it works! It is weird thought, since I did not get email notification of this post.

What kind of dissortion?

The one I know of is that sometimes top of screen starts flashing.

Either way I would suggest to bring up this problem on ivtv mailig list.

Adam

--
Adam Sulmicki
http://www.eax.com The Supreme Headquarters of the 32 bit registers

[madmax]

Is there an advantage of using a HARDWARE MPEG-2 Caputure card over bttv? Would this reduce CPU usage or allow for higher resolution caputure than the standard bttv based capture cards?

[Adam Sulmicki]

Is there an advantage of using a HARDWARE MPEG-2 Caputure card over bttv? Would this reduce CPU usage or allow for higher resolution caputure than the standard bttv based capture cards?

At the moment, none whatsover. In fact, you might be at disadvantage at the moment since the drivers are largely untested.

[db_404]

Is there an update to the ivtv patch that will work with version 1.23.1 - I can't get the patch above to apply cleanly.

Currently I'm using ffmpeg to create a 1 frame per second file that I then use as a file source, however this is a little sub-optimal.

[execcr]

hi i've the same problem.

Someone can tell me ho apply the patch? Beacouse i use ubuntu and i install zm trough deb package or apt.
Apt versione of zm is 1.22.3
the .deb i use is 1.23

I want even a workaround, becouse i need only to takes the system funcional for 3 days, then i shut it down!

BTW, how i can apply the patch? I'm not so good with linux/unix system
thanks in advance

[beerygaz]

I have a PVR-500 - a dmesg returns:
ivtv: Start initialization, version 1.4.1
ivtv0: Initializing card 0
ivtv0: Autodetected Hauppauge card (cx23416 based)
ivtv 0000:05:08.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LNKB] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
tveeprom 2-0050: Hauppauge model 23559, rev E491, serial# 9413816
tveeprom 2-0050: tuner model is Philips FQ1216AME MK4 (idx 91, type 56)
tveeprom 2-0050: TV standards PAL(B/G) PAL(I) SECAM(L/L') PAL(D/D1/K) (eeprom 0x74)
tveeprom 2-0050: second tuner model is Philips TEA5768HL FM Radio (idx 101, type 62)
tveeprom 2-0050: audio processor is CX25843 (idx 37)
tveeprom 2-0050: decoder processor is CX25843 (idx 30)
tveeprom 2-0050: has radio
ivtv0: Autodetected WinTV PVR 500 (unit #1)

From the looks of things folks have had mixed success getting this card to work - being relatively inexperienced in Linux and a complete newbie to v4l and ZM I wondered if folks could point me in the right direction to getting the card to work?

Fedora 11 2.6.29