comparison DOCS/documentation.html @ 7955:26ddd166422e

updated v4l section

7954:537af7663369

        </UL>
      </LI>
      <LI><A HREF="#tv">2.5 TV input</A>
        <UL>
          <LI><A HREF="#tv_compilation">2.5.1 Compilation</A></LI>
          <LI><A HREF="#tv_examples">2.5.2 Examples</A></LI>
        </UL>
      </LI>
    </UL>
  </LI>
  <LI><A HREF="#usage">3. Usage</A>

<P>This section is about how to enable <B>watching/grabbing from V4L compatible
TV tuner</B>. See the man page for a description of TV options and keyboard
controls.</P>

<P><B>THIS CODE IS CURRENTLY NOT BEING WORKED ON! Do not expect it to work
  without tweaking/experimenting!</B></P>


<H3><A NAME="tv_compilation">2.5.1 Compilation</A></H3>

<OL>
  <LI>First, you have to recompile. <CODE>./configure</CODE> will autodetect
    kernel headers of v4l stuff and the existence of <CODE>/dev/video*</CODE>

    <CODE>./configure</CODE>).</LI>
  <LI>Make sure your tuner works with another TV software in Linux, for example
    xawtv.</LI>
</OL>

<BLOCKQUOTE>
  <B>Hint</B><BR>
  Are the colors messed up? Then your tuner cannot display
  in YV12 colorspace. Try I420 (<CODE>-vc rawi420</CODE>) or YUY2, UYVY, RGB32
  (<CODE>-vo sdl</CODE>) colorspaces.
  You can specify these with the <CODE>outfmt=YV12</CODE> option, see below.
</BLOCKQUOTE>


<H3><A NAME="tv_examples">2.5.2 Examples</A></H3>

<P>Dummy output, to AAlib :)<BR>
  <CODE>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;mplayer -tv on:driver=dummy:width=640:height=480 -vo aa</CODE><BR>
  <BR>
  Input from standard V4L<BR>
  <CODE>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;mplayer -tv on:driver=v4l:width=640:height=480:outfmt=i420 -vc rawi420 -vo xv</CODE><BR></P>

<P><B>Note:</B><BR>
  If you have a TV card with an external audio device and get only a black
  screen, although input works with xawtv or similar, then try to use the
  <CODE>-noaudio</CODE> option. For the example above this would be:<BR> 
  <CODE>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;mplayer -tv on:noaudio:driver=v4l:width=640:height=480:outfmt=i420 -vc rawi420 -vo xv</CODE></P>



<H1><A NAME="usage">3. Usage</A></H1>

7955:26ddd166422e

        </UL>
      </LI>
      <LI><A HREF="#tv">2.5 TV input</A>
        <UL>
          <LI><A HREF="#tv_compilation">2.5.1 Compilation</A></LI>
          <LI><A HREF="#tv_tips">2.5.2 Usage tips</A></LI>
          <LI><A HREF="#tv_examples">2.5.3 Examples</A></LI>
        </UL>
      </LI>
    </UL>
  </LI>
  <LI><A HREF="#usage">3. Usage</A>

<P>This section is about how to enable <B>watching/grabbing from V4L compatible
TV tuner</B>. See the man page for a description of TV options and keyboard
controls.</P>

<H3><A NAME="tv_compilation">2.5.1 Compilation</A></H3>

<OL>
  <LI>First, you have to recompile. <CODE>./configure</CODE> will autodetect
    kernel headers of v4l stuff and the existence of <CODE>/dev/video*</CODE>

    <CODE>./configure</CODE>).</LI>
  <LI>Make sure your tuner works with another TV software in Linux, for example
    xawtv.</LI>
</OL>

<H3><A NAME="tv_tips">2.5.2 Usage tips</A></H3>

The full listing of the options is available on the manual page. Here
are just a few tips:

<UL>

<LI>
Choose some sane image dimensions. The dimensions of the resulting
image should be divisible by 16.
</LI>

<LI>If you capture the video with the vertical resolution higher than
half of the full resolution (i.e. 288 for PAL or 240 for NTSC), make
sure you turned deinterlacing on. Otherwise you'll get a movie which
is distorted during fast-motion scenes and the bitrate controller will
be probably even unable to retain the specified bitrate as the
interlacing artifacts produce high amount of detail and thus consume
lot of bandwidth. You can enable deinterlacing with <CODE>-vop
pp=DEINT_TYPE</CODE>. Usually <CODE>pp=lb</CODE> does a good
job, but it can be matter of personal preference. See other
deinterlacing algorithms in the manual and give it a try.</LI>

<LI>
Crop out the dead space. When you capture the video, the areas at the
edges are usually black or contain some noise. These again consume
lots of unnecessary bandwidth. More precisely it's not the black
areas themselves but the sharp transitions between the black and the
brighter video image which do but that's not important for now. Before
you start capturing, adjust the arguments of the <CODE>crop</CODE>
option so that all the crap at the margins is cropped out. Again,
don't forget to keep the resulting dimensions sane.
</LI>

<LI>
Watch out for CPU load. It shouldn't cross the 90% boundary for most
of the time. If you have a large capture buffer, MEncoder can survive
an overload for few seconds but nothing more. It's better to turn off
the 3D OpenGL screensavers and similar stuff.
</LI>

<LI>
Don't mess with the system clock. MEncoder uses the system clock for
doing A/V sync. If you adjust the system clock (especially backwards
in time), MEncoder gets confused and you will lose frames. This is an
important issue if you are hooked to a network and run some time
synchronization software like NTP. You have to turn NTP off during the
capture process if you want to capture reliably.
</LI>

<LI>
Don't change the <CODE>outfmt</CODE> unless you know what you are
doing or your card/driver really doesn't support the default (YV12
colorspace) . In the older versions of MPlayer/MEncoder it was necessary
to specify the output format. This issue should be fixed in the
current releases and <CODE>outfmt</CODE> isn't required anymore, and
the default suits the most purposes. For example, if you are capturing
into DivX using libavcodec and specify <CODE>outfmt=RGB24</CODE> in
order to increase the quality of the captured images, the captured
image will be actually later converted back into YV12 so the only
thing you achieve is a massive waste of CPU power.
</LI>

<LI>
To specify the I420 colorspace (<CODE>outfmt=i420</CODE>), you have to
add an option <CODE>-vc rawi420</CODE> due to a fourcc conflict with
an Intel Indeo video codec.
</LI>

<LI>
If MEncoder cannot open the audio device, make sure that it is really
available. There can be some trouble with the sound servers like arts
(KDE) or esd (GNOME). If you have a full duplex soundcard (almost any
decent card supports it today), and you are using KDE, try to check
the "full duplex" option in the sound server preference menu.
</LI>

</UL>

<H3><A NAME="tv_examples">2.5.3 Examples</A></H3>

<P>Dummy output, to AAlib :)<BR>
  <CODE>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;mplayer -tv on:driver=dummy:width=640:height=480 -vo aa</CODE><BR>
  <BR>
  Input from standard V4L<BR>
  <CODE>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;mplayer -tv
on:driver=v4l:width=640:height=480 -vo xv</CODE><BR>
  <BR>

  A more sophisticated example. This makes MEncoder capture the full
  PAL image, crop the margins, and deinterlace the picture using
  a linear blend algorithm. Audio is compressed with a constant
  bitrate of 64kbps, using LAME codec. This setup is suitable for
  capturing movies.<BR> <CODE> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;mencoder -tv
  on:driver=v4l:width=768:height=576 \<BR>
  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;-ovc lavc -lavcopts
  vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=900 \<BR> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;-oac
  mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=64 \<BR> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;-vop
  pp=lb,crop=720:540:24:18 -o output.avi </CODE><BR>

  <BR>
  This will additionally rescale the image to 384x288 and compresses
  the video with the bitrate of 350kbps in high quality mode. The
  vqmax option looses the quantizer and allows the video compressor to
  actualy reach so low bitrate even at the expense of the
  quality. This can be used for capturing long TV series, where the
  video quality isn't so important.<BR>
  <CODE>
  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;mencoder -tv on:driver=v4l:width=768:height=576 \<BR>
  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;-ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=350:vhq:vqmax=31:keyint=300 \<BR>
  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;-oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=48 \<BR>
  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;-vop scale=384:288,pp=tn/lb,crop=720:540:24:18 -sws 1 -o output.avi
  </CODE><BR>

  It's also possible to specify smaller image dimensions in the
  <CODE>-tv</CODE> option and omit the software scaling but this
  approach uses the maximum available information and is a little more
  resistant to noise. The bt8x8 chips can do the pixel averaging only
  in the horizontal direction due to a hardware limitation.

</P>



<H1><A NAME="usage">3. Usage</A></H1>