Capturing video with Intel Smart Video Recorder III

[Steve O'Hara-Smith]

On Tue, 14 Jun 2005 9:59:34 -0400
<dmwassman at cox.net> wrote:

> Steve,
> 
> Thanks for the help. I haven't had too much experience with video capture and the handbook is a little thin on this.

	Hmm - perhaps I should write a chapter and submit it. I'll try and
find a round tuit.

> I have the card hooked up to a VCR thru a composite cable. I didn't do the research when I bought the card on Ebay and was under the impression it came with a tuner until I received it. Is this going to be a problem (other than I have to set the VCR to anything I want to capture)?

	No it should be fine apart from that - I was just eliminating the
possibility that you were trying to use a tuner that hadn't been recognised.

> So it is an environment variable and not the two devices setup thru bktr (ie bktr and bktr0)?

	Yes - if you had several bktr cards (or one of the quad tuner cards
that I've heard about but never seen) you would see them as bktr0, bktr1 and
so forth. Having separate nodes for the inputs would provide the illusion that
you could use two inputs at once - which you can't.

> I will try this when I get home. I will let you know how it works out. Is this set in /etc/profile or is there another config I need to set this variable in to use it after system start up?

	You can set it wherever you like - or for ffmpeg you can compile
in the default by using WITH_BKTR_DEV=<number>. I usually set it in a
script along with all the parameters for ffmpeg.

> >	Now for the ffmpeg warning - ffmpeg-049pre1 has dreadful A/V sync
> >problems when capturing, ffmpeg-devel is much better but still slips. The
> >golden version of ffmpeg for capture is 0.48 which won't slip sync no matter
> >what you do (i've tried with a make buildworld running at the same time, it
> >drops lots of frams and looks awful but the sync is good).
> >
> >	If you like I can send you a port skeleton and distfile for
> >ffmpeg-0.48.
> >
> I rather get NuppelVideo working as it uses less CPU. I am using a old

	It uses *much* less CPU - I once managed a perfect recording
at 768x576 while make buildworld was running with nuppelvideo piped into
a buffering script and then into mencoder to make an avi. Very soon after
that mencoder took to core dumping when I tried it :(

> computer (PII 400 w 256MB) to do this capture and am concerned with the

	PII 400 is definitely low on CPU for capture, nuppelvideo is
almost certainly your best bet. If the captured file is too big recode
it offline with mencoder.

> capture rate and quality. Again, I am completely new to this video stuff, so if you think ffmpeg is better, I will give it a try.

	ffmpeg is better - provided you have enough CPU for it. The slowest
box I have that will do full size (768x576) 25fps capture is an AMD XP2000,
my Athlon 1200 would /almost/ do it provided I set -me 0 and -intra (which
removed all time based compression). A PII 400 should just about manage
384x288 with similar settings in ffmpeg - I think it will manage full
size capture with nuppelvideo though.

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