[Mjpeg-users] report on Athlon/Via/Buz

[Jens J. <jen...@ta...>]

Ok, so after building the ALSA drivers version 0.9.0beta10 I can now
capture video and sound from my Buz on my Athlon/Via/Buz system (zoran
driver 0.8). Actually the sounds part really seems to work just fine. I
am writing to an ext3 filesystem (I'll reformat to ext2 now that I know
ext3 is slower) and see pretty much the same problems others see.
Whenever buffers get flushed to disk I get inserted frames. If I set
file-flush to zero and capture a small enough time period of video I get
no inserted frames at all. I tried a whole range of N for file-flush and
always lose more or less frames. The drive seems pretty speedy:

hda: 117231408 sectors (60022 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=7297/255/63,
UDMA(100)

Here's my /proc/pci output for the curious:

PCI devices found:
  Bus  0, device   0, function  0:
    Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8363/8365 [KT133/KM133] (rev
3).
      Master Capable.  Latency=8.
      Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xd0000000 [0xd3ffffff].
  Bus  0, device   1, function  0:
    PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8363/8365 [KT133/KM133 AGP]
(rev 0).
      Master Capable.  No bursts.  Min Gnt=12.
  Bus  0, device   7, function  0:
    ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super South]
(rev 64).
  Bus  0, device   7, function  1:
    IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. Bus Master IDE (rev 6).
      Master Capable.  Latency=32.
      I/O at 0xc800 [0xc80f].
  Bus  0, device   7, function  2:
    USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. UHCI USB (rev 26).
      IRQ 5.
      Master Capable.  Latency=32.
      I/O at 0xa000 [0xa01f].
  Bus  0, device   7, function  3:
    USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. UHCI USB (#2) (rev 26).
      IRQ 5.
      Master Capable.  Latency=32.
      I/O at 0xa400 [0xa41f].
  Bus  0, device   7, function  4:
    Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI]
(rev 64).
      IRQ 11.
  Bus  0, device   7, function  5:
    Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. AC97 Audio
Controller (rev 80).
      IRQ 9.
      I/O at 0xa800 [0xa8ff].
      I/O at 0xac00 [0xac03].
      I/O at 0xb000 [0xb003].
  Bus  0, device   8, function  0:
    Ethernet controller: Lite-On Communications Inc LNE100TX (rev 33).
      IRQ 11.
      Master Capable.  Latency=32.
      I/O at 0xb800 [0xb8ff].
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xdb004000 [0xdb0040ff].
  Bus  0, device   9, function  0:
    FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB12LV23 OHCI Compliant
IEEE-1394 Controller (rev 0).
      IRQ 10.
      Master Capable.  Latency=32.  Min Gnt=3.Max Lat=4.
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xdb009000 [0xdb0097ff].
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xdb000000 [0xdb003fff].
  Bus  0, device  10, function  0:
    Multimedia audio controller: PCI device 15e2:0500 (Quicknet
Technologies Inc) (rev 0).
      I/O at 0xbc00 [0xbc1f].
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xdb005000 [0xdb005fff].
      I/O at 0xc000 [0xc01f].
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xdb006000 [0xdb006fff].
  Bus  0, device  12, function  0:
    SCSI storage controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic (formerly NCR)
53c875 (rev 4).
      IRQ 11.
      Master Capable.  Latency=72.  Min Gnt=17.Max Lat=64.
      I/O at 0xc400 [0xc4ff].
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xdb007000 [0xdb0070ff].
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xdb008000 [0xdb008fff].
  Bus  0, device  13, function  0:
    PCI bridge: PCI device 1066:0004 (PicoPower Technology) (rev 1).
      Master Capable.  Latency=32.  Min Gnt=6.
  Bus  1, device   0, function  0:
    VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Riva TnT2 Ultra [NV5]
(rev 17).
      IRQ 5.
      Master Capable.  Latency=32.  Min Gnt=5.Max Lat=1.
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xd6000000 [0xd6ffffff].
      Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xd4000000 [0xd5ffffff].
  Bus  2, device   8, function  0:
    SCSI storage controller: Advanced System Products, Inc ABP940-U /
ABP960-U (rev 3).
      IRQ 10.
      Master Capable.  Latency=32.  Min Gnt=4.Max Lat=4.
      I/O at 0x9000 [0x90ff].
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xda000000 [0xda0000ff].
  Bus  2, device   9, function  0:
    Multimedia video controller: Zoran Corporation ZR36057PQC Video
cutting chipset (rev 1).
      IRQ 9.
      Master Capable.  Latency=48.  Min Gnt=2.Max Lat=16.
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xda001000 [0xda001fff].

So, I guess mine is a success story. I'm still curious about why the IDE
driver is preventing the Buz drivers from getting their data. I'll try
it over NFS in the future.

One other weird thing. When I've captured with the Buz over s-video from
a DVD player I get beautiful frames while when I capture using the
regular composite input from my VCR I get an image but the left side of
it kind of waves around and it isn't very stable at all. I tried using a
shorter cable and that seemed to remedy it a bit. Anything else I could
try to improve things?

--
Jens B. Jorgensen
jen...@ta...