linux1394-user

sony and pci and pcmcia 1394 cards?

[Pete T. <pe...@to...>]

i'm thinking of getting a sony dcr-trv20.  i'd like to use it with my
linux pc and my linux laptop.  i've heard that sometimes sony plays
dirty with standards and i'm concerned about being able to use it with
linux.  anybody have any experiences with this?

i see from the list and other docs that there is some support for pci
ieee 1394 cards, but i'm looking for a list of "known good" cards.
listing the working chipsets is nice, but afaik, vendors don't usually
list what chips they use.  is there any known list like this?

finally, from the list of "known good" pcmcia cards, i get the feeling
that there are no 1394 cards for x86 laptops.  is this true?  if not,
what do you suggest?

support for the laptop would be good, but isn't really necessary (or
practical probably).  support for my pc would be a show stopper.

thanks,
pete

Re: sony and pci and pcmcia 1394 cards?

[Andreas M. <and...@iv...>]

On Wed, Dec 27, 2000 at 01:18:48PM -0500, Pete Toscano wrote:
> i'm thinking of getting a sony dcr-trv20.  i'd like to use it with my
> linux pc and my linux laptop.  i've heard that sometimes sony plays
> dirty with standards and i'm concerned about being able to use it with
> linux.  anybody have any experiences with this?

I have tried Sony camcorders and a Sony DV recorder and they obviously
implement all relevant standards correctly. Same is true for the Panasonic
devices I have tried so far. The situation seems to be far better than with
other so called standards. This is what I like most about 1394. The
specifications leave very little room for different interpretations and the
vendors really implement them correctly.

One problem you will encounter is, that there are not much useful applications
for using a DV camcorder with Linux yet. So you should check if these
applications suit your needs before buying a camcorder. Preferably you could
contribute code. :-)

> i see from the list and other docs that there is some support for pci
> ieee 1394 cards, but i'm looking for a list of "known good" cards.
> listing the working chipsets is nice, but afaik, vendors don't usually
> list what chips they use.  is there any known list like this?

Somebody is working on that IMHO. What card do you intend to buy? Most cards
are OHCI compliant these days and should generally work anyway.

> finally, from the list of "known good" pcmcia cards, i get the feeling
> that there are no 1394 cards for x86 laptops.  is this true?  if not,
> what do you suggest?

Someone else should comment on this one. There is support for PCMCI in the
drivers so someone should be able to list a working configuration.

-- 
Andreas Micklei
IVISTAR Kommunikationssysteme AG
Ehrenbergstr. 19 / 10245 Berlin
http://www.ivistar.de

Re: sony and pci and pcmcia 1394 cards?

[Pete T. <pe...@to...>]

Moin Andreas!

Andreas Micklei schrieb am Donnerstag, den 28. Dezember 2000:

> On Wed, Dec 27, 2000 at 01:18:48PM -0500, Pete Toscano wrote:
[snip]
> One problem you will encounter is, that there are not much useful applica=
tions
> for using a DV camcorder with Linux yet. So you should check if these
> applications suit your needs before buying a camcorder. Preferably you co=
uld
> contribute code. :-)

i've heard of broadcast 2000.  how's this?  worse comes to worse, we'll
do what we need on my wife's windows box, but i'd really rather do it
with linux (or one of the bsds, actually).

> > i see from the list and other docs that there is some support for pci
> > ieee 1394 cards, but i'm looking for a list of "known good" cards.
> > listing the working chipsets is nice, but afaik, vendors don't usually
> > list what chips they use.  is there any known list like this?
>=20
> Somebody is working on that IMHO. What card do you intend to buy? Most ca=
rds
> are OHCI compliant these days and should generally work anyway.

excellent.  i didn't have any specific one in mind yet.  the most
important aspect is "plays well with linux" so i was hoping to find one
or a few highly recommended ones and then i'd chose from there.

since you say most are ohci compliant, is there maybe a black list of
cards that i should avoid?  or do most of the ohci compliant cards
usually say on the box?

thanks,
pete

Re: sony and pci and pcmcia 1394 cards?

[Andreas M. <and...@iv...>]

On Thu, Dec 28, 2000 at 09:35:57AM -0500, Pete Toscano wrote:
> i've heard of broadcast 2000.  how's this?  worse comes to worse, we'll

I have not really used this yet. But seems to somehow do the job.

There is also a propreritary product called MainActor which should
support 1394 soon (or does it already? The website is somehow unclear).
The demo version I tried a year ago looked very promising (and of course
the Amiga version is a classic. ;-)))

And there is more to come. Have you tried Arne Schirmacher's link page?
http://www.schirmacher.de/cgi-bin/dclinks.cgi?action=view_category&category=Linux+Software

> do what we need on my wife's windows box, but i'd really rather do it
> with linux (or one of the bsds, actually).

You could also use Linux for grabbing DV streams from your camcorder and
use windows for doing the editing.

Btw.: You can't use Linux for putting your video back on DV tape via
1394 yet. So far you can only use it for the import of video data. But
this should also change really soon now.

> excellent.  i didn't have any specific one in mind yet.  the most
> important aspect is "plays well with linux" so i was hoping to find one
> or a few highly recommended ones and then i'd chose from there.

You should find some positives in the mailing list archives. I use a
Unibrain card, but that is probably not what you want because it is
expensive, and as said before any other OHCI card should also do the
job.

> since you say most are ohci compliant, is there maybe a black list of
> cards that i should avoid?  or do most of the ohci compliant cards
> usually say on the box?

I don't know what most boxes look like. The easiest thing for you would
be to look at thoses boxes and than ask on this list if anybody is using
one of these cards. However if a box states OHCI, the chances are quite
good that the card works. The only OHCI controllers that I am aware of
that make trouble are the ones that are built into certains MACs and
into certain Sony VAIO notebooks.

The safest thing would probably be a card which uses the Texas
Instruments OHCI chipset. If they print this on the box you can probably
buy it.

   bye...
         Andreas Micklei

-- 
Andreas Micklei
IVISTAR Kommunikationssysteme AG
Ehrenbergstr. 19 / 10245 Berlin
http://www.ivistar.de

Re: sony and pci and pcmcia 1394 cards?

[Nabil S. <ns...@sa...>]

Andreas Micklei wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Dec 28, 2000 at 09:35:57AM -0500, Pete Toscano wrote:
> > i've heard of broadcast 2000.  how's this?  worse comes to worse, we'll
> 
> I have not really used this yet. But seems to somehow do the job.

I tried it and it suxx. It crashes constantly and the GUI is unsuitable.
I hate proprietary software, but at the moment there doesnt seem to be
an
alternative to MainActor. Nevertheless dvgrab is doing a good job for
the
capturing part (I love the feature to capture each scene separately).

-- 
 Nabil Sayegh
 GPG-Key available at http://www.sayegh.de 
 (see http://www.gnupg.org for details)

Re: sony and pci and pcmcia 1394 cards?

[Mark <to...@de...>]

I have tried both Mainactor and Broadcast 2000.  Broadcast 2000 will let you 
download video from a firewire card, but does not seem to let me import DV 
avi's.

Mainactor, the program i use, is amazing.  It has every feature i need.  
There is one problem, and that is with bugs.  There is also a version for 
windows, which doesnt have bugs.  I think a new release of mainactor will be 
out soon for linux, the new windows version is out.

I have not yet been able to use dvgrab with my card.  There are no errors, 
but both mainactor and broadcast refuse to recognize or load the file 
properly, so im stuck downloading dv in windows, then rebooting. 

just some info-


mark
to...@de...

Re: sony and pci and pcmcia 1394 cards?

[Pete T. <pe...@to...>]

Moin Andreas!

Andreas Micklei schrieb am Donnerstag, den 28. Dezember 2000:

> And there is more to come. Have you tried Arne Schirmacher's link page?
> http://www.schirmacher.de/cgi-bin/dclinks.cgi?action=3Dview_category&cate=
gory=3DLinux+Software

no, i hadn't yet.  thanks.  it looks interesting.

> > excellent.  i didn't have any specific one in mind yet.  the most
> > important aspect is "plays well with linux" so i was hoping to find one
> > or a few highly recommended ones and then i'd chose from there.
>=20
> You should find some positives in the mailing list archives. I use a
> Unibrain card, but that is probably not what you want because it is
> expensive, and as said before any other OHCI card should also do the
> job.

hmmm, what about the ads pyro basicdv card?  i read in the archives
somewhere that the ads pryro cards
(http://www.adstech.com/products/pyro_basicdv_more.html) are ohci
complient.  anyone play with these puppies yet?

they also have a cardbus version
(http://www.adstech.com/products/pyrocardbus_more.html).  anyone play
with these?

sorry to be such a pest, but i've been bitten with linux hardware
incompatibilities before.

thanks,
pete

Re: sony and pci and pcmcia 1394 cards?

[Miha S. <mih...@so...>]

I'm on the same page in life (buying a good 1394 card ;-))
We could compare notes.
I've found cheap cards (WesternDigital has one with NEC chipset) that are 1394A
compliant, but lack power to the 1394 bus. (For camcorder only its not realy needed,
but Orange Micro 1394 camera needs power.) Computers on their own do not have a way
to supply adequate power to the bus (40V 1.5A), but you can get 12V 1.5A if the card
has additional power supply connector. Otherwise the card gets the power from PCI
bus and this does not power the bus.

One thing is true. Most cards are OHCI compliant, but do check before you buy.

 For the video editing software I can get back to you with some links, but if you
search 1394 on WWW.SOURCEFORGE.NET you will get a lot of interesting links.

Pete Toscano wrote:

> Moin Andreas!
>
> Andreas Micklei schrieb am Donnerstag, den 28. Dezember 2000:
>
> > On Wed, Dec 27, 2000 at 01:18:48PM -0500, Pete Toscano wrote:
> [snip]
> > One problem you will encounter is, that there are not much useful applications
> > for using a DV camcorder with Linux yet. So you should check if these
> > applications suit your needs before buying a camcorder. Preferably you could
> > contribute code. :-)
>
> i've heard of broadcast 2000.  how's this?  worse comes to worse, we'll
> do what we need on my wife's windows box, but i'd really rather do it
> with linux (or one of the bsds, actually).
>
> > > i see from the list and other docs that there is some support for pci
> > > ieee 1394 cards, but i'm looking for a list of "known good" cards.
> > > listing the working chipsets is nice, but afaik, vendors don't usually
> > > list what chips they use.  is there any known list like this?
> >
> > Somebody is working on that IMHO. What card do you intend to buy? Most cards
> > are OHCI compliant these days and should generally work anyway.
>
> excellent.  i didn't have any specific one in mind yet.  the most
> important aspect is "plays well with linux" so i was hoping to find one
> or a few highly recommended ones and then i'd chose from there.
>
> since you say most are ohci compliant, is there maybe a black list of
> cards that i should avoid?  or do most of the ohci compliant cards
> usually say on the box?
>
> thanks,
> pete
>
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