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Bluecherry Releases GPL'd MPEG-4 Driver
azop writes "Today Bluecherry released a GPL'd driver for its multiple-input MPEG-4 hardware compression cards. The driver supports audio and video capture from 4-, 8-, and 16-channel single-card encoders using the Video4Linux and ALSA APIs. More information about the driver and its features can be found on Bluecherry's development blog and on Ben Collins' personal blog. Bluecherry is the first Linux software company to release a complete driver based on Linux kernel APIs (Video4Linux and ALSA) for multiple-input hardware-compressed MPEG-4 capture cards under the GPL. The cards are designed for security applications (digital video recording), but other applications could potentially make use of the compressed streams and Video4Linux API integration. An H.264 version is 'in the works.'"
Next up, a headline on MPEG-LA decrying this as an ignominious infringement on scads of their intellectual property. Hopefully projects like this stand a reasonable change at exposing the ludicrousness of the software patent system.
These guys are evil!
MPEG is owned by a bunch of fascists who charge money for their patents! This should be a WebM driver!
To everyone who knows about software patents, they are already exposed as ludicrous. To everybody else, they wouldn't learn anything from a small company being sued. Few people learned anything about patents from Microsoft vs. TomTom, and those are companies that most people have heard of.
It wasn't a "multiple input" device, but many years ago Plextor released a GPL driver for their go7007 based video capture devices, which captured directly to MPEG-4. Unfortunately few people bought them, so Plextor stopped working on the driver and it has since disappeared from the kernel, even though it was in the staging branch for a while.
The go7007 driver is still in staging in the v4l-dvb tree. It still needs quite a bit of work to get out of staging however.
Anybody know how this differs from the Hauppage USB<->mpeg4 encoder's driver?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I actually have one of their cards and I must say it works quite well. For full D1(720x480) you only get 7.5 frames/sec from 16 cameras, but for security that is plenty. I think the 4 port cards may be able to do 30 fps per camera. Version 1 of their software is a bit kludgy. It works, but needs help. Version 2, supposed to be a complete rewrite, is due out next month. If you are interested in good quality security hardware take a look at their stuff. bluecherrydvr.com I don't work for them, just am a happy customer.
Cheers,
the_crowbar
Have you read the Moderator Guidelines
The Hauppauge 1212 is a similar sort of device. It had a community built driver pretty much when the device was released. It was quickly supported by MythTV.
The only thing missing is a firmware update utility. Dealing with this device in Windows (for firmware) gives me a great appreciation for the Linux driver.
The community is quite up to the task if they are given the opportunity.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Are these some sort of stable APIs, or are they the driver APIs that are randomly changed every few kernel versions to break binary compatibility?
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
That's a funny coincidence. Bluecherry is the same people I bought my home surveillance equipment from. They actually have a neat little linux LiveCD that you can get for testing your hardware once you receive it. They also indicate which of their hardware is compatible with ZoneMinder, a open source linux app I use for surveillance. I really was happy with the service. I know this probably sounds like an advert, but if I have good experience I want others to know about it.
I don't think the Hauppauge 1212 (the HD-PVR) is a comparable product. The 1212 takes in a single analog video up to component 1080i and produces a x264 stream from it. This card has multiple inputs (4,8, or 16) that are D1 (720x480) max. Utilizing 16 inputs it does not support 30 frames/sec that NTSC video uses (7.5 fps max @ 16 inputs). This is aimed at the digital security market. The 1212 is aimed at the HTPC market.
Cheers,
the_crowbar
Have you read the Moderator Guidelines
> I don't think the Hauppauge 1212 (the HD-PVR) is a comparable product.
Neither is the ConvertX that I was actually commenting about.
Linux device drivers don't have to be vendor supplied and an "interesting" product won't necessarily fade away for lack of interest.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I am all for open source but isn't an open source mpeg4 codec kind of an oxymoron? I hate to be redundant but my purpose is in getting people to maybe look beyond MPEG4.
an "interesting" product won't necessarily fade away for lack of interest
That's not necessarily true, unfortunately. While I was 100% happy with my Plextor m402u (which used the go7007 driver) on an older kernel, I eventually had to upgrade my mythtv backend and the newer "staging" kernel driver is a P.O.S. So now I have switched to the Hauppauge HDPVR in order to get back to having actively maintained well written drivers. In other words, even though the driver exists and my hardware still works perfectly, the lack of maintenance on the driver means the device itself has become useless under Linux.
I posted this as a troll. You dumbfucks actually modded it up as insightful.
Seriously, you goddamn morons - get your heads out of your asses. WebM isn't actually the savior of patent free open source video - it's just as encumbered as any number of other formats. Youtube ain't gonna go all WebM, and it's not going to become a widely adopted standard. Google probably open sourced it as a way of trying to shift the MPEG-LA's attitude towards licensing.
Any info on whether this will finally allow Dazzle DVC170 cards to play nice with Linux?
even the multi thousand dollar Security recorders look like horribly junk compared to zonealarm.
I was fixing a Axis system for a customer and he asked what I use... I told him zonealarm and logged into the interface for him to see. the fact that you can look at a graph of the day and see threshold levels instead of wading through useless video made him freak out.
Zonealarm kicks the utter crap out of ANY security DVR made. If used with real hardware. Most people try to use the crappy BTTV based cards. Those simply suck horribly in every single way.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.