[GLLUG] Digital Video Cameras & Linux

[Clay Dowling]

I'm running the latest stable Ubuntu on this machine.  All the required
libraries are loaded, and I have modraw1394 loaded.  The special file has
the correct permissions, because that was absolutely the first thing that
I suspected.  There's a utility called librawtest that performs a similar
function to gscanbus, and that's the one that tells me that the card is
working fine, but there's no nodes attached.  I also have the ohci module
loaded, and I've verified that my camera (Panasonic GS80) is ohci
compliant.

The cable that I'm using is the one that came with the camera.  It may not
be the best quality so I'm going to track down a second cable tonight to
see if that makes a difference.

I bought this thing from Amazon, and the very first review says that he's
using this camera with Linux and Kino.  So it isn't a fundamental
incompatibility, there's something wrong in my setup.

Clay

Marr wrote:
> On Thursday 17 January 2008 10:37pm, Clay Dowling wrote:
>> So I tried to hook my new video camera up to my computer tonight.  The
>> computer can see the firewire card just fine.  Unfortunately it can't
>> see the attached camera.  Does anybody have pointers here?
>>
>> Are there special firewire cables for cameras, or are they pretty much
>> all the same?
>
> Fortunately, there's nothing special about the FireWire cables for
> camcorders.
> I use generic ones (4-pin at the camcorder end and 6 pin at the PC end) on
> mine (a Sony DCR-TRV38) all the time.
>
> What camera model do you have? Sometimes you have to go into the menu
> system
> and enable a setting for certain operations on the FireWire port. I cannot
> recall at the moment if this applies only when using the FireWire port as
> a
> video pass-through or if it applies at other times. I just leave that menu
> setting (called "A/V->DV" on my camcorder) enabled all the time.
>
>> I loaded the raw1394 module, which is recommended, but it
>> didn't change what I can see.
>
> You've left out a lot of details. What Linux distribution and kernel are
> you
> running? What version of 'dvgrab'?
>
> The FireWire stack has changed recently in some Linux distributions. I'm
> still
> running the old IEEE-1394 stack (Slackware 11.0 and 12.0) but there's this
> new "Juju" FireWire stack (in Fedora, IIRC, and maybe some other
> distributions) that has problems for some FireWire users and some
> camcorders.
>
>> The camera was verified to be on.
>
> In what mode? 'VCR'? 'Camera'? Some camcorders like mine also have a
> 'MEMORY'
> mode.
>
> Just to be certain, what are you trying to do? Transfer video that was
> recorded onto the camcorder's mini-DV tape onto your PC? Record "live"
> video
> directly to PC? Capture video from an NTSC device on the PC? None of the
> above?
>
>> dvgrab returns "No camera found"
>>
>> So anybody on the list use a digital video camera with Linux?
>
> You should consider grabbing and compiling 'gscanbus':
>
>    http://gscanbus.berlios.de
>
> It's really old (hasn't been updated since 2001), but it can help to
> graphically see if the FireWire bus is identifying your camcorder (and
> your
> IEEE-1394 host adapter). The last time I used it (Apr 2006), I had to
> tweak a
> couple of long string definition lines in the source to avoid a problem on
> the newer GCC compiler. If you try 'gscanbus' and can't get it to compile,
> let me know and I'll give you my detailed notes.
>
> In fact, quite a while ago I wrote a little Gtk-based app to perform
> camcorder
> control, but I don't think it will be any more useful for your debugging
> than 'gscanbus', assuming you can get that working.
>
> There may be something newer and/or better out there for FireWire bus
> sniffing
> and debugging, though.
>
> By the way, the output of 'lsmod' would be useful too.
>
> Did your distribution create the '/dev/raw1394' device (probably right
> after
> you loaded the 'raw1394' module)? If so, does it have appropriate
> permissions?
>
> Are the 'ohci1394' and 'ieee1394' modules loaded? If not, you should
> probably
> load them too.
>
> Do you have 'libavc1394' installed? You'll need that eventually for
> camcorder
> control, but I don't think your 'dvgrab' error is suggesting a lack of
> that
> at this point.
>
> If you haven't already done so, I'd suggest you get the Kino video editor
> application compiled and working:
>
>    http://www.kinodv.org
>
> It can also be useful to debug camcorder problems. Things like AV/C (the
> standard used to control the camcorder modes with a PC, over FireWire) can
> be
> tested with Kino (and 'gscanbus').
>
> I suspect that you've got a device and/or permission problem or that
> you're
> missing an IEEE-1394 module or two, but it's hard to tell without more
> information.
>
> It shouldn't be too hard to get this working. Let us know more and I'm
> sure we
> can figure this out.
>
> HTH....
>
> Bill Marr
>


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