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Ask Slashdot: Got the BigPicture?
Here's a followup to an article we did
earlier on
video converencing.
Dave Dash and
another nameless submittor
both wish to know if 3Com's Big Picture
videoconferencing can work under Linux.
If it does work, Dave also wants to know
whether whatever software necessary will also
work with NetMeeting users. Any takers?
... without a fast and reliable network ?
As long as you can't use multicast, it sucks.
Hi all,
I just wanted to remind moderators to be careful which posts they mark down. This message (h232) was marked down to -1, even though it leads to a group which is developing an open-source telephony and videoconferencing protocol implementation. Whoever posted it got the URL wrong on their previous post and didn't explain it much, but at least load the URL before you neg them!
Any other moderators out there want to move this up to a 1?
Actually, it's a deal with 3COM, not Intel, since 3COM makes the camera... ZDTV is giving away 10,000 of 'em. I occasionally see people truckin' stacks of 'em down to our mailroom.
As far as Linux support for the bigpicture cam goes, it's not coming from 3COM, but a few folks have gotten 'em up and running...
H.323 videoconferencing software is a wee bit trickier... check out http://www.openh323.org/
I've just be bought a Sony VAIO laptop for work. It has a ``motion eye'' camera. Does anyone know what kind of camera this is - or have *any* details at all about it? Are there Linux drivers for such a thing?
Rich (http://www.annexia.org/)
Donald Becker has done all the work already for 3coms entire ethernet product line. Supposedly, 3com stated, after reviewing results from a questionaire at one of there conferences, that it would support linux. I personally thing its BS. Just recently there was a huge number of people trying to get the specs for the cable modem VSP and VSP+ from them, they refused. Its all a bunch of BS and it pisses me off. I hope someone from 3com is reading this. I'm sick of companies saying they are going to support something and then they just sit on it. *sigh* ok, i'm better now..
http://www.rocketcharged.com/cu-seeme/cu2.jpg
I found the above screencap, but it just looks like they were capturing their desktop. That's the only videoconferencing software that I could find. I tried it and it worked.
H.323 is not the ISDN standard. I belive the ISDN standard is H.320.
H.323 is meant to work on packet switched networks.
Have none of you used the Multicast Backbone (MBONE?) I've been using it to facilitate cross-platform video teleconferencing here at my work, and it's wonderful, even if the interface is a teeny-weeny bit clunky... everything I multicast gets thrown up on the network, I don't have to bang against a directory server... I just click in sdr and it's all there....
bottom line, for solutions that easily scale, multicast is the ONLY way to go... to hell with any unicast solutions....
http://www.mbone.com/
http://www.ipmulticast.com/
http://www-mice.cs.ucl.ac.uk/multimedia/
I hope this helps....
Cheers, Thom
I've heard of it. I've never used it. I don't have the hardware.
But i've heard of it! The reason for it is that FreeBSD ports collection has a category called "MBONE."
The 3com camera doesn't have NT drivers, moreover Linux drivers. I've been hassling them for NT support, but when I call their support lines the people are SUPER clueless (to be expected.) I asked for a feature request of NT and Linux drivers, but he said he had no way of submitting that.
So. If we want drivers for it, we need a way to send 3com mail or something to let them know that a lot of people want to use this that AREN'T on win95/98.
Suggestions?
http://www.openh323.org/
http://www.h323.org is a repository for the development of free video conference and mirrors the OpenH323 Project.
The introduction is interesting reading, but the site appears to be in development and they are asking for people participate.
If you ever watch ZDTV you'd notice that they have a big deal with Intel to give away a couple tons of the net cams, then have people call in and ask questions on the air and such... it would be great if some of us linux and solaris users could get on there also... and tell Leo and Kate what thier doing wrong (despite all thier cool linux props on the set) I remember seeing the Intel Bigpicture card/capture card as being one of the few supported by Video4Linux... pretty cool also, if anyone can point me to the java version of the Zdtv realplaces chat software, that would be great (I just cant find it)
I've recently gotten a bttv card and have been playing with it on a Windows machine for now to judge whether it'll suit my needs in a "native" environment, before I put it in my Linux box. Anyway, is there any utils, commercial or free, to do minor editing of video files, like concat mpegs into bigger ones, strip off the leading/trailing X number of frames, etc? It doesn't have to be as fancy as Adobe Premiere (but that would be a nice port for Adobe to start with :)).
I have found a handful of older mpeg/avi utils. But so far, they haven't liked the files my card outputs, different codecs and the like.
The BT848 support IS excellent. The card I'm using now is nothing but a bt848, an RCA jack, and a crystal, and was dirt cheap. I got it at a steal because under windows, it was a dog (2fps). Apparently, that was a driver/OS issue.
What do you think this is? A poll? :)
My gf, Carrie, has been using her BigPicture kit with streamer and stamp to do her web cam page. She is running
- 2.2.x kernel
- loads i2c module
- loads bttv modules
She also uses this setup when she boots into win95. Before this she was using the Quickcam approach and picture quality was lower, not to mention it was a resource hog. Using the PCI based video capture board is the best way to do it.Why do I think this is the best one for Linux? Well, I have a WinTV 401 card but I still like the way her web cam looks. You get a really good card and the camera is worth the extra cost.
Another examples of BigPicture with Linux is DocTV in the lab where I work (it runs on Doc's Linux box).
What I would really like to see happen is either QSeeMe being worked on some more. If I could have any application ported to Linux though to use the video4linux support it would be iVisit. I have posted on /. about it before. It just never seems to catch peoples attention for some odd reason. I mean Tim Dorcey even said he would welcome a port to Linux. Search on /. for "iVisit" or go to the support page for iVisit if you are interested. Tim seemed really interested in the project.
"You cannot uncook Mushoo pork once is has been cooked" -- wiseman
"That's a really dumb idea" -David Card
http://fudge.org
http://members.iworld.net/soonjp/vidc onf.html
"You cannot uncook Mushoo pork once is has been cooked" -- wiseman
"That's a really dumb idea" -David Card
http://fudge.org
All of today's news gone?
Wh'appened??
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I have the 3Com/USR BigPicture kit (the Camera + PCI card), and I have it working fine under Linux. I couldn't get it working under the 2.0.x kernel with V4L (Video4Linux) added in manually, but under 2.2.x kernels it has worked like a charm. I just modprobe the standard built-in BTTV module, and it loads it up and works perfectly without any changes necessary or anything; honestly, this has been one of my best hardware experiences under Linux.
I'm not aware of any Netmeeting-compatible tools out there though.
Mine works fine under linux, I even had a web cam
setup for a while. I use the 2.2 kernel with the VfL stuff compiled in. Before 2.2 I was using the
VfL modules stand alone. Both worked incredibly well. The only complaint I have about the cam is that it is very hard (at least with mine) to get a good color picture. If the lights aren't bright in the room, I get people asking me if the cam is black and white. However, I never noticed this type of problem with my old quickcam (may it rest in pieces). I do think this is a fault of the cam and not of the linux support.
I will send in a vmail to zdnet using some linux app to record, that would be neat. I do spend some time on their
"Netcam" forum, and frequently post messages of linux advocacy.
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... and it is called H.323. Check out http://www.openh323.org/.
---
This is a project that I am working on, yes the 3com, as you can read works under Linux ... I have a good old Bt848 TV capture card ... if building the Video4Linux package though - I say beware - if you have a tuner card - be very scared. (grin) Now as for Netmeeting Go to http://www.openh323.org/ There you will find out that Netmeeting and VDOphone use a standard called H323 - which is the good old ISDN videoconferencing standard - for us people who remember ISDN ;-) ... it works with a 28.8 modem - but not great ... Mind you if you want to download the document, you should go to the library and get the ITU standards book because it will cost you money to download it :/
But there is hope -- as for a client it would appear that there is one that is being developed called Voxilla - check it out - I am guessing that they would be more than happy to get ahold of some coders... I think that having a vdo phone would be a wonderful addition to any Linux (granted enough bandwidth).
gPhoto does not yet support video conferencing streams over networks, allthough it has a live
camera plugin. You might want to check out the
project pages at www.gphoto.org
and help write a driver for your 3COM (?) camera.
No, I am sorry to say that Linux STILL does not have any good conferencing applications. And if it did, in order to work with NM, those applications would have to support H.323 which even most windows apps don't. I really wish it were different... Danny.
Real-time Collaboration Consultant
yeah - this was the most useful post of the whole thread...
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
if it's still using the bttv card, any of the
normal capture programs work. i use fxtv or some such program. i don't know about the actual teleconferencing part though, i've never tried it.
I looked for a number of hours yesterday and the only package I could find that had anything was here http://www.pangea.org/~mavilar/qseeme/
I get my camera tonight and will post back my findings.
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
I use it as a web cam. as for video conferencing there is some software out there for linux, but alas, most "popular" windows video conferencing software is crapware and use a bizzare/wierd compression setup. Net video conferencing is still in it's alpha phase and shouldnt be looked at as a serious thing for at least another 3-4 years when the linux groups get together and make a standard that the big companies obviously cant get together..
Other than that the 3com bigpicture makes a killer video capture device.at an affordable price! not like that video capture card project for linux that wants to charge users $500.00 for a crappy card and even crappier drivers.