Monthly Archives: July 2002 - Page 2

video capture: the quest for quality

Posted by on 24Jul02 7 comments

background

I’ve been messing around with digital video since my first video camera (JVC GR-DVJ70), and have played with capture on BeOS, Windows 98, Windows 2000 and MacOS X. If I knew at the start what I know now, I’d have saved up the extra for a unit with Firewire output… As it it, the camera is a fully digital MiniDV unit, but it only has analogue ouputs, and no video inputs (external Mic is provided, but no headphone out).

stuff i’ve used

It varies a lot: operating systems, capture cards, capture software, processing methods, editing software, viewing options. Have a look at the list of subpages as I’ve tried to keep each part as a nice small segment, each with its own set of experiences and links. There might end up being a large summary of handy sites at the end, but it makes more sense at the point to simply link off when it suits the narrative.

timescale

The problem with a lot of my experiences are probably down to simply wanting to do too much with the systems of the time. All of this started back in early 1999 (Feb/Mar) and things have moved on apace since then. I also have refused to spend my way out of the situation, which may have cost me a bit in terms of now unused hardware, but overall it possibly cheaper than having bought expensive items which are now junk :)

The latter portions (MacOS X stuff) are from May 2002 onwards, and are really, really amazing compared the the tools available 3 years ago. I hope that the knowledge I’ve gained the hard way wasn’t wasted, and so just for anyone else who’s thinking of playing with home movies since they bought a PC with a USB webcam/TV card, I’ve tried to explain why I was forced to take another step, when all I wanted to do was get my home movies on the TV…

parts

Due to the size of the posting, I’ve split up the body into three main portions: Part 1 deals with my first steps and the stuff that didn’t work. Part 2 is where I actually manage to get to a point where I’ve produced a full wedding video. Part 3 is how to do it properly (!) and what to actually do with the files once they’ve been captured and edited.

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Not many changes recently

Posted by on 15Jul02 Comments Off

I knew I wasn’t a blogger at heart ! There’ve been too many things to do recently, and so talking to myself has been pushed down the list somewhat. I do have some new piccies from California in the gallery, though.

Nicci is pregnant again, and has been suffering from the same extreme morning sickness (Hyperemesis [sp?]) as with Emma. This has left little time for things like getting b2 sorted, and since GM has no archives on my system it didn’t seem worth adding anything. The newcomer is called Pootle (for now), and does have a few pages already.

The NetBSD has been put on a back-burner too, and things like the recent exploits have kept me busy patching the current (rather creaky) setup even more. I had hoped to be able to catch up with a raft of trival stuff whilst I am out in California as the hotel (The Cypress – De Anza, Cupertino) boasted a T1 with a data port in every room. Hah. No T1 access (no link on the RJ45 connector). The staff kept trying to get me to use my modem, and failed to understand the problem. Emailing the hotel from work has produced zero response. They now have a printed notice that the T1 is unavailable, and there is no estimated repair date. The staff took 30 minutes this morning to deliver three breakfasts to our table, none of which required cooking. The only parking is valet, and the food is amazingly over-priced, although the idea of $20 per shot of Glenlivet just makes me crack up.

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javastation

Posted by on 01Jul02 Comments Off

What’s a JavaStation ?

The best starting point is the Linux on JavaStation HOWTO, which very clearly covers all of the machine variants with nice explanations of the hardware and firmware differences of each device. It also explains that the machines were design to do, should that be of interest.

For the record, the system I’m using is a MrCoffee (“Brick”) JavaStation-1 device with 64MB of RAM.

Why bother ?

It’s got the fastest SPARC CPU of any of my Sun gear, so I fancied trying to use it as a VNC client to do some remote working. The appeal was to have a *nix system that was fast to start up, didn’t use much power when not required (I turn it off – pretty cheap to run then :) , and preferably didn’t have to mess with the X-Window system.

Ok, so my G4 Mac is a Unix system without X, but I had the machine lying around, and it’s also possible that I might use it for a streaming MP3 playback machine if I can quieten down the fan a little bit.

The main reason ? I wanted to.

What I did to get it hosted on a Qube 2

  1. download a boot image (boot.img) and NFS root tarball (root.tar.gz)[1]
  2. mkdir /home/tftpboot
  3. ln -s /home/tftpboot /tftpboot
  4. chmod 777 /home/tftpboot
  5. move the boot image into /tftpboot
  6. choose an IP address for the JavaStation, and then create symlinks in tftpboot accordingly (an IP of 192.168.1.7 was used in this example)
    1. ln -s /tftpboot/boot.img /tftpboot/C0A80107
    2. ln -s tftpboot/C0A80107 /tftpboot/C0A80107.SUN4M
  7. Unpack the NFS root image, and set things up accordingly:
    1. mkdir /home/javastation
    2. cd /home/javastation
    3. chmod 777 /home/javastation
    4. tar -zpxf root.tar.gz
    5. ln -s /home/javastation /tftpboot/<javastation name>/javastation
    6. edit /etc/exports so that it contains: 
      /home/javastation  192.168.1.0/24(rw,no_root_squash)
/tftpboot          192.168.1.0/24(rw,no_root_squash)
  8. (paraphrased from the Sun Cobalt Knowledge Base):
    1. /etc/rc.d/init.d/portmap.init start
    2. /etc/rc.d/init.d/nfs start
  9. If you want to keep these services running over a reboot, then you will also need to do:
    1. ln -s /etc/rc.d/init.d/portmap.init /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S40portmap
    2. ln -s /etc/rc.d/init.d/nfs /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S41nfs
    3. ln -s /etc/rc.d/init.d/nfs /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/K20nfs
  10. create a working rarpd by doing:
    1. download and unpack rarpd-1.2.tar.gz
    2. download and unpack libpcap-current.tar.gz
    3. download and unpack libnet.tar.gz
    4. compile and install libpcap
    5. compile and install libnet
    6. compile and install rarpd
  11. add the name and IP of the JavaStation to yout /etc/hosts file
  12. edit /etc/ethers to contain the MAC<>name mapping for your system (the MAC address is shown in the banner when the JavaStation starts up)
  13. /usr/sbin/rarpd -a
  14. create a working tftp daemon by:
    1. download and unpack utftpd-0.2.4.tar.gz
    2. compile and install utftpd
    3. edit /etc/inetd.conf so that the tftp boot line looks like this:
      4. tftp    dgram   udp     wait    root    /usr/sbin/tcpd  /usr/local/sbin/utftpd -v /tftpboot
  15. connect the power, video, keyboard, mouse and network cables to your JavaStation
  16. turn on your JavaStation
  17. sit back and watch Linux boot up
  18. join with me in wondering why the NFS root partition fails to mount :(

Resources

The following links may be helpful, but please be aware that I’m unlikely to keep them up-to-date as once the system works for my uses (ssh, DirectVNC, mpg123) then it’ll not need to change. I will also have chosen mirrors of sites that are closest to my location, and for large files that are abundantly available it would be nicer to find a closer server.

If all else fails, my favourite trick is to take the filename and throw it at Google in order to find a site that hosts the file.

[1] I’m currently (july02) trying out a Slackware tarball that was linked to from the uk.comp.sys.sun Usenet group – I might change this in the future to some other setup, maybe Debian, and if things go well with either network swap or a MIPS/SPARC cross-compiler I could even end up with my own setup. I would suggest that looking at the HOWTO is the best starting point, as that refers to more than one build.

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