[AG-TECH] Has Anyone got the WinTV PVR 150 to work with VIC?

Justin Binns binns at mcs.anl.gov
Mon Aug 15 10:23:57 CDT 2005


The big technical hurdle here is that you can't get raw video from the 
PVR cards, only encoded MPEG-2.  In order to use this in VIC, it has to 
be decoded first, so it's not just writing an interface (the ivtv 
drivers don't even expose V4L, as far as I know), it's also writing an 
mpeg2 decoder that works fast enough to feed vic with raw frame data 
(for subsequent re-encoding into H.261) without having lag issues in the 
video that are less than useful (which is something that will be 
difficult, given the minimum GOP issues, but shouldn't be impossible).  
So, all around, not impossible, probably, but not a trivial issue.

Justin Binns

Proshanta Saha wrote:

>Hi Chris,
>
>Yes, I am using multiple WinTV PVR 150 cards in both Windows and Linux
>Environments. I'm going to try to debug the window environment VIC to
>see why VFW does not seem to like the caputer card at all. I would
>certainly like to use it under linux so that I can set the source
>while adding the service. I understand the concerns over IVTV's
>drivers, it still appears to be in a fairly beta release. However, if
>someone can point me to the particular modules using V4L drivers, I
>can try to see if I can convice it to use IVTV instead. Is the
>Berkeley repository for VIC still the defacto place for the CVS
>snapshots?
>
>While I'm debugging this I think I'll go on a hunting mission to find
>if we have some Hauppauge WinTV PCI (model 401) lying around. It
>appears to be missing from the shelves in most stores, probably gonna
>be hard to get through our authorized vendors. The politics of vendor
>list is quite messy, and we're generally restricted to only them. But
>before I do is there a list of cards that VIC supports under linux
>using V4L?
>
>In regards to VLC, you are allowed to use multiple instances and
>multiple streams, I'm trying to tinker with the tool to allow me to
>view multiple streams while its being sent to the destination IP. Nice
>tool, I think the DV and HDV group of the extended video
>producer/consumer service project has some literature, but not enough
>documentation on how to configure multipe streams.
>
>Proshanta
>
>
>
>On 8/15/05, Christoph Willing <willing at itee.uq.edu.au> wrote:
>  
>
>>On 15/08/2005, at 4:32 PM, Proshanta Saha wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>I've literally gone through, what seems like a couple of hundred
>>>threads, to find if someone was successful with using the WinTV PVR
>>>150.
>>>
>>>I have a dual boot machine with both Window XP SP2 and Fedora Core 3.
>>>I've successfully tested and made sure that the cards work perfectly
>>>(audio and video wise). Unfortunately I am not able to get VIC to use
>>>the sources. In Windows XP I get the usual "terminated in an unusual
>>>way" error. In Linux I get waiting for video which seems like an
>>>eternity, and when I click on transmit it explodes. I read the log,
>>>which was quite useful in linux, it appears not to have passed in the
>>>correct parameters to use the card. As it appears to be a V4L widget
>>>there were no ways to get IVTV controls to work. Does VIC care if it's
>>>has a hardware video encoder?
>>>      
>>>
>>Proshanta,
>>
>>The PVR150 can't be recognised by vic at the moment because no one has
>>written the interface module for vic which allows it to use the IVTV
>>driver. Its on our list of things to do because we have some PVR250
>>cards we want to use, but have had no time for it yet.
>>
>>
>>    
>>
>>>I can use extended video producer and vlc, but VLC appears to allow me
>>>to transmit only 1 stream, not the multiple streams I'd like to
>>>transmit.
>>>      
>>>
>>Does that mean you're trying multiple PVR150 cards in the same machine?
>>It means, at least, that you'd need multiple instances of VLC (just as
>>you need multiple instances of vic if you want multiple ordinary video
>>streams). Is that possible? I've never tried it myself.
>>
>>
>>chris
>>
>>
>>Christoph Willing                        Ph: +61 7 3365 8350
>>QPSF Access Grid Manager
>>University of Queensland
>>
>>
>>    
>>
>
>  
>




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