Video 4 Linux

[MadDog]

Hi There,

Thanks for all the help in the forum. I successfully compiled and installed the latest drivers on Mandrake 9.0 and got twinview up and running first time.

could anyone please give me some insight in how I can use v4l (Video For Linux) to display live input from my card's video input.

I have a LeadTek A250 UTD+ (Geforce4 Ti4600) This card is the MyVivo edition which has video in and out capabilities. The TV encoder I think is a Phillips, and according to the MOTV MINI HOWTO's the Phillips encoder is supported indirectly.

The problem I have is that Mandrake did not create a /dev/video0 for my card, as it probably did not detect the capture device. I have tried to follow the instructions in the MOTV howto, but I am missing some libraries.

Has anyone managed to use an NVIDIA card as a capture device under Linux, and if so how ??

Kind Regards

MadDog
:confused:

[dgently]

The standard video4linux kernel drivers don't work with nvidia cards.
You need a special driver from http://rivatv.sourceforge.net/

(rivatv is a v4l driver like bttv which supports riva, tnt and geforce based cards)

just download http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/rivatv/rivatv-0.8.1.tar.gz?download
and see the readme for instructions to build.

if you dont have the /dev/video0 device you can create it with the MAKEDEV script from your distro or by hand with:
mknod /dev/video0 c 81 0


good luck :)

[MadDog]

Hi,

Thanks for the help, I have installed RivaTV successfully, and got it working. I just have one small problem left. I use the SVideo Input on my card, not the composite input, so I am only getting a B&W Picture. This could also be TV Standard, as I have no idea how to set the input standard between PAL & NTSC.

Any help here would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

MadDog

[dgently]

so you have connected your card via an svideo cable with your vcr/tv ?

just try selecting composite as the source (although you are using svideo)

i might be wrong (feel free to correct me) but i think, that svideo also has wires for composite signals, and the bw picture means that your source (the tv/vcr) doesn't ouput the svideo signals but only composite..

and the distinction of svideo/composite in the driver/app does not switch between the port the cable is connected to but for the wires used:
svideo: svideo from svideo port,
composite: composite from composite port or svideo port.
...hope that makes some sense :)

at least that worked for me :)
(i also use an svideo cable in composite mode)

[MadDog]

Thanks again

Where do I specify the source, I assume it goes somewhere in the XF86Config-4 file.

Please could you provide me with a sample snippet ?

Thanks in advance

Regards

MadDog

[dgently]

no the source is selected in the application you use, eg. xawtv, ffmpeg, nvrec...
see the man/docs for your capture programm

(and the tv norm - pal/ntsc is also selected in the application)

[MadDog]

Thanks for all the help,

I will try tonight.

Regards

MadDog