Announcing Kino 0.42 for GNU/Linux IEEE 1394 and libdv

[Dan D. <dde...@co...>]

V. 0.42
Improved DV export for NTSC users. Thanks to Yamazaki Makoto for pointing
out an error in the 50/60 flag in the 1394 isochronous CIP headers.

V. 0.41
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IMPORTANT: 
From this version on, libavc1394 and librom1394 are required.
You can get them from http://sourceforge.net/projects/libavc1394/.
Also, this version requires an updated video1394 driver that is supplied
with this distribution. You must replace the existing driver in your
Linux kernel sources, recompile the modules, and reload the video1394
module.
****************************************************************************

Dan Dennedy has contributed this version as Arne is quite busy lately.
This version's goals include componentization, user interface improvements,
and most importantly empowering users to tune DV export. Hopefully, we will
hear more success stories about DV export for NTSC users.

I, Dan Dennedy, am working on a number of components for linux1394.
The first of these is libavc1394 and librom1394. These
replace some code that was in Kino because the code was originally borrowed
from gscanbus. Also, the dvcont utility borrowed the AV/C and raw1394util
code from gscanbus. Therefore, it makes sense to turn these functions into
a shared object library. This version of Kino uses these components.

Kino 0.41 includes several user interface improvements. Most noticeable, 
audio playback is implemented now but only through OSS. It can be disabled 
in the display options tab of the preferences dialog. Please do not ask
for other audio playback methods (e.g., esd, ALSA) unless you want to
contribute them. We are looking at porting to the gstreamer framework,
which is very capable of accomodating many needs including different
audio playback methods. Next, key repeat is disabled to prevent the 
event queue from filling up on slow machines thereby forcing you to wait
for each frame update to occur. Only certain keyboard navigation commands
repeat until the key is released: next and previous frame, next and
previous
second. Along with that feature, the Stop button in the main window toolbar
now works. Any keystroke also stops playback. You may find that if Kino 
crashes, key repeat is disable for the entire desktop until X is restarted.
Also, the current directory is remembered between file dialogs--no need to
keep changing to your project directory. Finally, preferences are saved to
~/.gnome/kino so you do not need to set them evey time you start Kino!

DV export continues to be a sore spot for NTSC users. Some PAL users have
experienced issues as well that were easy to cleanup once they were told
what changes to try in the source code. Well, this version makes some
minor improvements to the DV export algorithms at all levels including
the video1394 kernel driver. Furthermore, this version of Kino makes these
timing values that need to be adjusted available to the end user through
the preferences dialog. This helps greatly so you do not have to recompile
code, reload a driver module, and launch Kino with a video clip just to
test a tweak one of these values. Now, you can simply adjust and try the
export again!

My NTSC camera (Panasonic PV-DV910) works great with a fairly broad
range of values. Therefore, I estimate that these values, editable in
the IEEE 1394 Options tab of the preferences dialog represent the
limits that most any device could support:

Timing (NTSC users only): 1000-3300, the default is 2436.
SYT Offset (NTSC and PAL): 10000-23000, the default is 11000.

Yours in Freedom,
+-DRD-+