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TV Tuner Cards For Unix?
Marooned asks: "I've been wondering what a good TV tuner card would be, preferably with good Linux compatability (preferably working under 2.4). Yes, someone already asked about this but it was a while ago, but he got few replies. There are a lot more options now (ATI Radeon All-in-One, GeForce w/tvout, etc.), and since we're all richer and wiser now (than when the first article was posted, I wanted to know if anyone can recommend a good card to go along with my SBLive! and Cambridge DTT 3500. Any takers?
(Advice on a DVD drive would be welcome too)" Most of the video features on these cards are supported, but I'm not quite sure as to the extent of Linux support available for the TV tuning features on today's cards.
Other people have suggested the BT848 chipset, which I use (via a WinTV GO! card). You didn't ask, but I have to imagine you'll want some good software to go with it.
Broadcast 2000 (http://heroines.sourceforge.net) provides excellent video editing support. It can record from any Video4Linux device (including the BT cards) and output to Quicktime. Heroines also has a good MPEG-2 package that can re-encode the Quicktime movies to MPEG-1 or MPEG-2. If you want even smaller files, RealProducer will read bcast's Quicktime files.
One thing about bcast: You need the latest kernel and glibc 2.2. RedHat 7.0 and (I think) Debian support glibc 2.2. Bcst will work with older versions, but will crash when your file exceeds 2Gig.
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
Actually you can record at 640x480 with the hauppage cards, they only advertise 320x240 for some reason. I use virtuadub in windows to do it. Recording at 640x480, applying some filters, then mpeg4'ing it can result in some really high quality caps (if you have a clean source).
I just wish I had the wintv-pvr so I didn't have to have my computer tied up compressing to mpeg.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
This is some-what related...
Is there any good software out there to enable the TV out support on my GeForce II? I can display n my TV if I startup my computer with no monitor plugged in (and it'll then default to TV out port) - but that only works in text and switching to X just doesn't happen.
Any help would be appreciated - thanks
Thanks dude - you make my week. :)
..don't panic
If you've managed to get the PCI bt878 based ATI TV wonder working with linux, could you tell me how and what software you were using? I've tried everything to get this card detected by the kernel, with absolutely no luck. That would make my day, bigtime, because I have to leave my machine on in windows to tape shows during the day. :)
Anyone else had success with this card? (ATI TV Wonder PCI)
..don't panic
The BT8x8 cards are not particularly suited to capturing video of any length, since they have no hardware compression, and reliable realtime software MPEG-1/MPEG-2/MJPEG compression is not viable, AFAIK under Linux (Maybe the Alpha's vector processor would make this possible?)
No, this is incorrect. My ATI TV Wonder PCI (bt878) is more than capable of realtime mpeg-1 and mpeg-2 (less extensively tested than mpeg-1, since the native software only supports mpeg 1) encoding on a duron 600 oc'd to 900. It does so quite reliably, but I haven't been able to get the card running in linux.
If youre looking for a card to capture video, look for something a little more pwerful with an onboard hardware compresion engine.
My $80 Duron does a great job with mpeg 1 with cycles to spare right now, if you're just going after NTSC television capture.
..don't panic
Radeon's don't offer support for anything but windows, and if you do run one on windows the software is laughably bad.
Yeah, this is off-topic, but it's valid to the discussion.
I have an ATI All-in-Wonder Pro. (Rage Pro, as opposed to the Rage 128 Pro.)
It's in my main machine, which, I'm sorry guys, runs Windows. I need Windows for work more than anything else.
Under Windows 95B, the TV application would occasionally crash. It was one of my more unstable applications on an otherwise very stable Windows box.
Under Windows 2000, the drivers and TV application are still in Beta. No information posted to their website since October 16th. Currently, the TV application sucks back 25% or so of my CPU and then causes a variety of crashes ranging from total lockups to spontaneous system reboots. I've never seen a GPF or other message out of this thing: it just stops.
For one thing, it proves that Windows 2000 is about as uncrashable as the Titanic was unsinkable.
Fine, it's in beta. I expect it to crash occasionally. But this behavior is coming from several beta releases into the process, and there's been no word from ATI about when they're going to resolve this.
So, as if we didn't already know that Windows could be broken, as one who is stuck with either a $300 paperweight or a computer that crashes more frequently than a kernel development workstation, I will never buy another ATI product again.
I bought 53 computers last month. Every last one of them was specified with a variety of non-ATI video cards.
ATI's Toronto-area world headquarters are just 20 minutes down the street from my house. Does anyone want to join with me, call the press, and have a video card bonfire in their parking lot, to protest the apparently complete ineptitude of the programmers that they hire?
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
ATI All-In-Wonder Pro This card is an oldie but goodie. Perhaps you could simply get this as a pci card and supplement your primary agp card/display (if you need 3d power for games, or have some badass big monitor). The tv support is excellent in linux through gatos. The card is also has excellent 2d. I use it in my dorm room as my only tv and only display adapter (I do not play games).
I have 2 of these. Perhaps someone would want to trade them for TV tuner cards where the Windows 2000 drivers and TV applications aren't in permanent beta?
Both PCI Rage Pro, both with 8 megs RAM, both with great hardware but ATI's typically abysmal software.
And, unfortunately, I need to run these in Windows.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
You don't even know the half of it. I bought a Ati Rage Fury Maxx. Works wine in 98, but in 2k or Me, it sucks cycles all the time. Can even get it to work in linux. And from ati, no new drives and they said they would be out with 2k. What a joke!
Microsoft includes drivers for my Rage Pro on the Windows 2000 CD. Unfortunately, they don't support the advanced features of the All-in-Wonder card, so I have to run the ATI drivers.
This is about the only time any rational, intelligent person will ever utter these words, with not a hint of sarcasm: How I long for the stability of Microsoft software. But it's true.
Coming to the protest?
Bring your unsupported or crash-prone ATI video cards, fly to Toronto.
Watch for a forest green 1976 Dodge Ram pickup truck, with a large gas barbecue in the back, driving slowly through the arrivals level at the terminal.
Hop in, we'll go to Markham, call the media, and cook a few video cards in ATI's parking lot, as a protest to their software quality.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
My cheap-ass BT848 card has worked since the heady days of the 2.0 kernel, and never given any trouble. Its supported under 2.2 and 2.4 kernels.
Mostly i use mine for capturing frames for claymation from various video cameras. XawTV provides realtime preview and image capture, and i use a couple of little shell scripts and command line tools to turn a folder full of individual frames into an MPG or AVI file.
I also use XawTV to watch TV both on the root window and in smaller mini-windows.
Only mono audio, but you can use an external tuner - i.e. VCR and just use the capture card as a composite/SVideo input.
Be sure you have a main video card that supports external overlay (most modern PCI/AGP cards do, though there are some that are a pain in the ass)
The BT8x8 cards are not particularly suited to capturing video of any length, since they have no hardware compression, and reliable realtime software MPEG-1/MPEG-2/MJPEG compression is not viable, AFAIK under Linux (Maybe the Alpha's vector processor would make this possible?)
If youre looking for a card to capture video, look for something a little more pwerful with an onboard hardware compresion engine.
I also have an Iomega Buz which is now supported under Linux - this will MJPEG compress your video in realtime, enabling you to capture full-frame, 25/30fps PAL/NTSC video at a rate of around 3-5MB/second. The Miro DC10+ is also supported i believe, and there are other cards which are supported by the manufacturers - Someone help me out here.
Uncompressed capture will most likely use at least twice this much space, if your drives can handle that kind of sustained rate.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Personally, from my experience I'd reccomend an ATI All-In-Wonder product (I have an AIW PRo, the Radeon is a dream right now). When I first started using it over a year and a half ago, the drivers were buggy, but now I've found that Gatos has done a great job putting together solid and easy to use tuner support. Check ATI for the link, or The Linux Video Project for the newest drivers. ATI actually points to xfree pages.
-Jason
If I could only live my life with my threshold at 4...
I used to have a FlyVideo2 Bt848 tv card, but its tuner quality was not good. Hard drives spinning would interfere with the signal, for example. I've seen a few other cards with this problem as well, all being low-budget ones. You should probably avoid those.
Software support for this (and any other bt878/bt848 based) card is excellent. I prefer it over the (rather bad) windows software shipped with it. Stuff like auto-tuning, s-band, color/ contrast/brightness control is well supported. Xawtv is a very good program to use as a tv viewer. qtvidcap (video grabber for X), which comes with avifile is nice as well. VCR is a text-console capture program similar to qtvidcap (I wrote it using qtvidcap's capture code). You can find all these programs on freshmeat.
I don't see anything of value here, so I'll add my own .02
I've got the Hauppauge WinTV GO! card. Works based on the BT878 chipset. This card goes for around $50 or so. Mono sound, but you can upgrade to better versions. Or, do what I did and pipe the feed into your Hi-Fi VCR and go from the VCR's audio out to your sound cards line in. Takes care of the sound issues!
The BT878 option is in the kernel tree, albiet quite hidden. You have to enable (IIRC) I7C(?) support, and then it is available under Video4Linux options.
Sorry I can't be more helpful as to what option you have to enable, I'm at my in-laws for the weekend, and have only built one 2.4 series kernel.
If you're going to be doing any video capturing, go for one of the more expensive cards, as the WinTV will only cap at 320x240.
Hope I've given some food for thought. Good luck!