Hi,

I'm really wondering how to see & capture analogic video sources !
Therefore I've been searching some bbs with some success, most usefull infos right here in linuxquestion/hardware (I'll quote some of those posts below this message)

I currently run Mandrake Linux 10.1 (Kernel 2.6.8.1-10mdk) on a an Athlon XP1800+ with 256 DDR266 and a Nvidia tnt2 32Mo (yeah that one from 1999 , so to say i do not play Games like Wolfenstein/Doom3, but actually do code for web and encode videos. I'll soon upgrade to a A64 - Nforce3 based board.
Of course I'd like to have a nice capture card with hardware encoder for better quality, but i wonder wether a card with MPEG2 hardware encoder* will be interesting, since I put every videos into MPEG4/XviD/Matroska ??

As far as I may know, i found there's 3 ways to see & capture analogic video sources :

1) Dedicated video capture card (with or without hardware encoding) + standard GPU
One such as Hauppage WinTV-PVR-250 or Leadtek WinFast DV2000**

2) Nvidia VIVO GPU (Video-In Video-Out)
Like a GF4 Ti 4600 128Mo DDR VIVO with Conexant CX25871 video encoder (but it seems to lack Linux compatibility)?

3) PCI - 1394 (FireWire) adapter + standard GPU
Such as SiG "1394 DV-Cam Kit-V or "1394 Home DV Kit". But I'm still not sure wether or not this PCI-1394 really allow one to get video from analogic sources ?


Basically, I need one of those solution mostly for anologic Video-in, since i have an ADSL+TV Internet provider with many TV channels directly out of the modem. I'd like to encode some nice videos directly from that source. Occasionnaly i'm willing to give VHS a try.
The modem+TV comes with peritel but I've got a RCA adaptator, but no TV to catch the channels...

* Whatever card I'd take, it'll have to be **__Linux compatible__

Notes :
New TV cards seem not to work well on Linux boxes. Here are some older models i know are fully working :
- Hauppauge TV Tuner
- PCTV Rave
- WinTV PVR-250 and PVR-350 TV
- Iomega Buz, Pinnacle/Miro DC10+ and the Linux Media Labs LML33
- chipset Booktree Bt848/Bt848a/Bt849/Bt878/Bt879 based cards (such as Maxi TV Video PCI 2, Hauppauge Win/TV PCI, Mìro/Pinnacle PCTV (Pro or not), ...)
Much more materials are available on Video4linux if wanted.
I also put together every info I can find on this page (Look for "Cartes TV" in the menu up to the left. In French).


Related usefull posts I've found so far :
- Installing UHF/Analogue TV Cards
- MythTV ....Capture card problems on FC3
- Winfast 2000 pro xp tvcard running on the 2.4.28 kernel
- video capture from VHS to ATI TV Wonder / mdk 10.1 : How to convert analog in to a vcd in 9 easy steps
- DISCUSSION: Converting video to VCD, SVCD, or DVD
- Getting TV Tuner Compro Video Mate to work using slackware 10 with kernel 2.4.26 then 2.6.10

HAUPPAUGE PVT 250. It can be the regular or MCE version.

MPEG-1/MPEG-2 encoder cards are great to make a TiVo like box or transfer over the network using Video Lan Client but not very good if you are going to put in to MPEG-4 or re-encode using other video codecs. MPEG is a lossy compression which means useless or repetive junk is taken out.

I suggest a video capture card based on Philips 9-bit or 10-bit video capture chip. It gives out very good picture quality and sound quality. Use S-Video because it is better than composite (RCA). Then use a lossless video codec like huffyuv for video capturing. If you want good sound capturing, the Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1 has very, very low distortion recordings up to 96 Khz at 24-bit resolution in stereo.

In Windows VIVO cards will be great but in Linux forget it. The support is not there yet because companies that provide VIVO video cards do not like giving the documentation away to open source communities.

For the highest video and sound quality, firewire or IEEE-1394 is the best. You have to buy either a DV camcorder with analog to digital pass-thru or a firewire video capture box.

Thank for helping me Electro

I got what you say about MPEG-1/2 compression cards beeing not so interesting for an utilisation such as mine.

I'll look for which video capture cards are based on Philips 9-bit or 10-bit video capture chip. I just searched & found that TV-Tuner Aver TV Studio 305 with Philips 9bit, has stereo + Mpeg1/2/4, and will have to look further on that direction.

Well, can you pliz say a bit more on this point
I've got no clues about firewire or IEEE-1394, and I'm looking for bare VHS / VCD quality (DVD quality is not an issue).

The best is pcHDTV and they have linux ONLY drivers!
www.pchdtv.com

Looks terrible --and have a look at some mentions of "Windows XPT being not supported"

But still, beside strong Support et valuable Spirit, what does pcHDTV 3000 brings for $180, that Leadtek WinFast TV 2000 or cheap Bt878/SAA7134 chipset give us for down to < $40 ??

Let's says one has to replace its ooold GPU, would it be possible to get a Linux-compatible GPU+Video-In video card ?
Here's what pcHDTV FAQ says about slow CPUs (that's under 2.4GHz !) :
"With slower cpus we recommend video cards that support hardware accelerated mpeg decoding and the XvMC interface. Currently [b]nVidia supports this in some of their video cards such as the MX series and FX4200 cards[b]. Better deinterlacing can also be done on higher performance machines."

The pcHDTV is the worst. because it uses Conexant's CX23883. The Conexant CX23883 chip gives out poor sound quality and it is marginally better than the BT8xx chips. The Philips SAA71xx chips gives very good sound and video quality. Also the pcHDTV only recieves digital channels and it is worthless if you are in a area that transmits PAL. Deinterlace can be done on a computer as slow as 233 MHz if using framebuffer and MMX instructions.

kozaki, you still do not understand. You have to be careful what video capture card you buy, so this means video cards with a built-in video capture will not work. Of course you can buy ATI cards and try your hardest to get video capture to work, but it may be limited. The Hauppauge PVR-250/350 is the best MPEG-1/MPEG-2 encoder card on the market. The Hauppauge PVR-250/350 cards have an Philips SAA7115 video capture chip and a Conexant MPEG-1/MPEG-2 encoder which is the best combination you can get for the money. Other cards that have an encoder uses NEC MPEG-1/MPEG-2 encoder and a Philips chip. The card with NEC encoder is not best and probably not supported in Linux. The disadvantage of buying a video capture card with a Philips video capture chip is it comes with a low sensitivity TV tuner. I suggest just using either the composite (RCA) or S-Video for capturing video from television channels. Use a VCR or cable box to tune the channel.

The AverMedia TV Studio 305 does not do MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 because there is no encoder chip. If you use AverMedia TV Studio 305 in Windows it will be doing it by software or by your CPU. Linux will be the same way. It is better to just make a RAW capture and use either MPEG-1, MPEG-2, or MPEG-4 in two pass mode to crunch the file size for the final output.

Firewire or the tech term IEEE-1394 is the best way to do video capturing. The reason for this is no distortion comming from the computer power supply during video capture. Some DV camcorders have an analog (composite or S-Video) to digital (IEEE-1394) pass-thru. What this means you can use your DV camcorder to capture video with out having problems like video/sound distortion, sync, and many others. The one problem you may have is being limited by a few programs that can access firewire capture devices like DV camcorders. Kino is good program that can access firewire devices. Kino is like virtualdub, but it has more eye candy.

The best video and audio codecs are lossless when running short on storage space if you are going to have a final video that will be either Divx, Xvid, MPEG-1, and MPEG-2. The Divx, Xvid, MPEG-1, and MPEG-2 video codecs are lossy compression that are in are part of the MPEG group, so to make the file size small the recordings have to be clear from distortion artifacts. The more distortion artifacts there are the harder for you to squeeze the video down with out reducing video quality.

Thanks electro

Well what I understood so far is :
- chipset is the 1st issue, both for Linux compatibility and quality issues,
- Hardware compression is the best for people planning to burn DVD players compatibles CD or DVDs,
- DV camcorder with analog-to-digital (composite or S-Video -> IEEE-1394) pass-thru give the best audio+video quality

Now what i do not need in the short/medium term is :
- TV tuner (allready have an ADSL-with-TV provider that should fulfill my spartiat needs)
- MPEG-2 files (have no TV + no DVD-burner)
- DV input, (no cam + >200 euros)
- DVD-like video quality (I never encode MPEG-4 videos at >900KB/sec, size is more an issue)
In fact I :
As you pointed it out, VIVO GPUs are an strong issue on Linux. So that makes 2 solutions left for my need / budget :
1) Leadtek WinFast TV 2000 or a possibly cheap Bt878/SAA71xx chipset --> starting at 40-50 euros
2) Hauppauge TV-PVR-150/250/350 with Philips SAA7115 video capture chip + Conexant MPEG-1/MPEG-2 encoder--> starting at 100/120/145 euros. Still have to figure out what practical difference between the 3 cards (even after reading Hauppauge's description )

I do understand the technical superiority of the 2nd solution. What is way less clear is how will it give a better answer to my need, compared with the 1st ?
- Whenever I still miss some point, and Hauppauge is gonna give me better experience for what I need --> I'll find the money to have one.
- If a Leadtek TV2000 or Bt878/SAA71xx chipset do make me abble to see/record some external Video sources, then I'll go for it as for a 1st try. Later, when I'll change my 1999 Nvidia GPU, or when I'll buy a DVD burner, will I look for a MPEG-2/MPEG-4 capture card.
Seems a bit conservative but so can I save money 4now and get a bigger AMD A64 (a CPU that can do simultaneous MPEG-4 software encoding/decoding without any problems, see that guy he does it with a Barton XP2500+).

Electro - what do you recommend in light of the imminent broadcast flag regulations? Linux Journal recommended the pchdtv card in an issue from late 2004 (sorry, don't recall offhand), particularly because of this flag. What are your views? -- J.W.

The pcHDTV developers should have added a DSP, PAL (Programable Array Logic), or GAL (Gate Array Logic) to help in aid of decoding HDTV channels instead letting a processor do all the work. It will make it easier to use other programs to use it for video capture instead being limited by MythTV and Xine. I should be happy that its the only HDTV card that works in Linux and it is compatible for my area. Though only a few channels broadcast HDTV and certain episodes are encoded in HDTV in my area, so the pcHDTV HD-3000 is worthless for me. I will check into HDTV in 2010.

ozaki, there are no MPEG-4 encoder cards. Divx, Xvid and many others that you think are MPEG-4. They are not. They are run off of MPEG-4 or the codec developer's own taste of what MPEG-4 should do. The real MPEG-4 is an object based codec that you can ask the player to select an object from the frame. Then you can do anything with that object. To my guess, MPEG-4 will be better to make DVD menus instead of hacking the MPEG-2 stream to get menu information. I used a 700 MHz AMD Athlon with 512 MB SDRAM and it can record in Divx with out any frame drops. Also the audio codec is MP3 at 128 Kbit rate. While it is recording, I can play the recording or do other stuff. I use mencoder for the video capture. The material that I'm recording is just television shows. If I'm recording something that I want to keep, I will use huffyuv for the video codec and PCM for the audio codec. I have not setup it to handle huffyuv because I will have to setup RAID 0. For now I am using one hard drive for television recording.

I have Hauppauge PVR-250 (model 980) and LifeView Flyvideo 3000FM (SAA7133) in my 2GHz computer. In my 700 MHz system I have the Hauppauge WinTV Go (model 190). I'm kinda spoiled with my LifeView Flyvideo 3000FM because of the SAA7133 chip. It gives very high quality video and sound is CD quality for both the tuner and video inputs (composite and S-Video). I have not tested it with gnome meeting because I have not yet install it. The only problem that I have with the LifeView Flyvideo 3000FM is that I need to upgrade the kernel to 2.6.x as you can see in my distribution list. Programs like mplayer, tvtime, and xawtv can access it with out any problems. However the VBI (closed-captions) is not yet supported for the Philips chips in Linux if you depend on it.

Electro > your post is truly worth it

Yes pcHDTV 3000 is out of the question (also they opened the first HDTV transmittor on top of Eiffel Tower, Paris last week).

I'm aware there's not yet any kind of "MPEG-4" encoder cards. Therfore my choice for a cheap S-video / composite card for now.
The fact that you were able to encode with DivX/mp3 with your 700 MHz AMD Athlon and the Hauppauge WinTV Go (model 190) make me confident that any card with the right chipset will make it possible for me to watch & record analogic video in with my actual config.

So the question is : which card (chipset) should I buy ?

- bttv gallery shows WinTV Go with Modell 603 only ; does that mean they have tested that one only or that it's the one that work on a Linux box ? Anyway, it might be difficult to find a TV Go (not TV Go2) nowadays

- Pinnacle Systems PCTV Rave/Pro seem inacurate for recording.
- Do Pinnacle PCTV Stereo (Bt878) or Pinnacle PCTV Stereo XE (saa7134hl) could do it beside LVBI (closed-captions) is not yet supported with a View Flyvideo 3000FM (SAA7133) ?

- Leadtek WinFast TV2000 XP (conexant Bt878) is a cheap card (<40€) with some good reviews and is Linux compatible, but it is Mono Audio --> does that makes 100% impossible to record stereo, or could one make it through its Audio card and software config ?
- What do you think about the WinFast TV 2000 XP Expert Edition (<60€) (CX2388X) that has every connector I need , or Leadtek WinFast PVR2000 (100€) with cx23882-19 / cx23416-12 chips and is said to support DVD Video Mpeg 1 Mpeg 2 Mpeg 4 VCD Windows Media Codecs ? Both cards are for sale on linuxbutikken.no

Plz any idea about which capture card to buy ?

MPEG-1/MPEG-2 encoder video capture cards can only be used with programs that can decode MPEG-1/MPEG-2. This is because only MPEG-1/MPEG-2 information gets pushed to /dev/video0...254. mplayer and many others that do not have PVR support will see /dev/video0...254 as an endless MPEG-1/MPEG-2 file even though its a block node device. These types of cards are great if you are trying to convert S-VHS or VHS tapes into DVD. To do this type "cat /dev/video0 > /mnt/media/video.mpg". You should see the file keeps getting bigger as time progresses and to stop it hit CTL+C. It uses very little CPU resources and you can place it on a DVD disc for DVD players to play it.

I did not say my LifeView FlyVideo 3000FM can not do closed-captions. I'm not going to install Windows just to fully test out this video capture card. I just said that closed-caption support for philips video capture chips is not supported yet for Linux. If you check the latest stable kernel change log, its listed as VBI not supported for SAA7130/SAA7134. With video capture cards that comes with SAA7130/SAA7134, you do not need a sound card. You can use the dsp output for recording, but you have to check your dmesg logs to find out where the audio device is for the SAA7130/SAA7134. Its better to use a soundcard if you think your soundcard has good recordings although some recordings maybe out of sync. A word of caution. When using MP3, do not use VBR (variable bit rate) because you will have audio and video sync problems. Use CBR (constant bit rate) for MP3.

The Conexant MPEG-1/MPEG-2 encoder chip supports VCD (MPEG-1), SVCD (MPEG-1), and DVD (MPEG-2). It does not support MPEG-4 and WMV files. Like I said earlier, programs like mplayer have to first decode MPEG-1/MPEG-2 information before doing anything like encoding into another codec like Divx, Xvid, WMV, etc. This is not smart if you want good video and sound quality because MPEG is a lossy codec. I suggest PVR be used to transfer its information over a network, recordings and watched at a later time, and be used to pipe it to an DVD-R/DVD+R drive.

I got the LifeView FlyVideo 3000FM because I want better video quality and a stereo tuner. I did not expect that it gave me great stereo audio. I did not get it because it has a radio and a remote. Though I wished that NTSC capture cards uses a relay (gold contacts) instead of an analog SPST (single-pole, single-throw) switch chip, because over time the switch chip decreases its quality.

Which video capture card to get is up to you. The CX2388x chips has as much support as the Philips chip at this point. You may need to download kernel version 2.6.10 and compile it. The ivtv site has support for CX23415/CX23416 but read the wiki site for an updated driver version. Though the Leadtek PVR cards may not work in Linux. Check the file CARDLIST in the kernel documentation to make sure the video capture that you want is listed. That is what I did before getting LifeView FlyVideo 3000FM.

BTW, all video capture cards uses the same hardware except the chips, so you will not notice a difference between two manfactures that uses the BT878 chip.

Thanks you so much for answering detailed explanations Electro

New stuff is my brother I'll see next week in Lyon : he also wants a cheap (!) solution to *watch* ADSL-provided TV, and he's got a Duron 800MHz on Windows98 (his choice). That make 2 cards to buy.

Plzz pardon me to come back here still asking for a bit more advice (Hopefully you'll see that my questions are getting less vague, thank Electro for that)

So what i need is watching a bit + encoding to Mpeg-4 final files with stereo audio (with an emphasys on size rather than compatibility or high quality).
There's basically not too much choice when one runs a Linux box and have <100€ to spend on the video capture card :
+ Brooktree BT878 chipset based cards such as Pinnacle PCTV Pro (<60€) or Winfast TV2000XP Deluxe (<50€) (~ non-Deluxe is mono Audio)
- Hauppage WinTV Go 2 (CX88 chipset) seems unsupported, as well as Leadtek Winfast TV2000 XP Expert (CX8800 chipset)
- Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250/350 are unfortunately too expensive
But I wonder wether ancient WinTV PVR (bt878 + kfir, unsupported) and WinTV PVR-150 have the same issues on Linux. I couldn't find any working user config with the PVR-150 on amny web sites such as PVR Hardware Database, which is a pitty. Some information i found is ivtv/docs/i2c_pvr150 , unfortunatly unclear to me 8-/

As for viewing / recording, I'll try mythTV of course. And there's many more, like mplayer (here explained @ anandtech)

You can look into LifeView FlyTV Platinum. It supports all broadcast areas. I think it uses a digital tuner, so the cost will be lower. Sometimes digital tuners are a little slower at changing channels, but I only read this on ATI All-In-Wonder cards. The LifeView FlyTV Platinum may be faster at tuning channels than the ATI All-In-Wonder cards. It should work in Windows 98 but many manufactures tests their drivers for Windows 98 Second Edition. If you are using the latest kernel version 2.6.x, you should not have any problems watching TV and recording. If the LifeView FlyTV Platinum does not work so well in Windows 98 and it works well in Linux, you can try to convert the Windows 98 system into Linux. A lot of people became too accustome to Windows so they will be stubborn switching to another OS even if the OS like Linux will work better for what they are doing. In my area, the LifeView FlyTV Platinum costs $38 (US dollars) at newegg.com.

You may have problems capturing like dropping frames with MythTV because it may preview the video during capturing.

Recording a 320x240 video at a bitrate of 900 kilobits/sec using Xvid is ok quality to output to a TV, but I suggest using mp3 for the audio to increase the video quality. The highest audio bitrate to record from television is about 128 kilobits in stereo using MP3 audio codec. You can go higher, but you just waste space.