Re: 1394 IIDC Camera

On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 8:04 PM, Esben Stien <[email protected]> wrote:
> "Dan Dennedy" <[email protected]> writes:
>
>> If you can find some card that has reliable V4L2+ALSA support, you
>> are in pretty good shape.
>
> You mean there are no HD SDI cards with free drivers?. A quick search
> on google shows lots of unanswered questions about these cards.
>
>> However, what if you are told it is, and it is not? Do you plan to
>> demand a refund, or will you play along with a series of updates
>> offered to you, a low priority customer, just to drag you along?
>
> You mean, if I'm told by a company?. I will not use proprietary
> software, so not before I'm sure and see the code will I buy such a
> card;).

Not that I know of. I don't have a lot of need for SDI personally and
lack the funds as well. The cards I have were provided as part of
contract services around MLT development. BlueFish444 provides a
"shared source" driver and SDK that also contains a binary firmware
blob with it. However, the SDK requires NDA, therefore I can not make
the MLT module open source. I typically only provide it as part of
some development contract but have also offered it (no takers yet)
with a license fee. I am trying to bud a little business around it so
I can spend more time on MLT (which is Free Software BTW).

>> I have an BlueFish444 HD Fury and an SD card. I have SD in and out
>> working and HD out working, but I lack equipment to test HD input.
>> Maybe we can work together on something - such as if you buy me a
>> HDMI->SDI converter, I would provide the MLT module free of cost and
>> help you get the whole capture system working.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean. Are you developing a free driver for the
> BlueFish cards?.

Not a driver, but a MLT plugin. MLT is a media authoring and
processing framework: http://www.mltframework.org/
It is the engine of kdenlive, which I am helping via MLT as a
successor project to Kino.

> I'm totally new to HD SDI and I thought I would be getting 1394
> IIDC.

If you can find a suitable camera, more power to you! You should
really ask on the libdc1394 mailing list.

> This card seems to offer way more than I need, though. I still

There is a great variety of cards, some that can offer little more
than "what you need." Maybe you wrote that in reference to the
DeckLink card, and then I can understand your comment.

At the minimum, you would get an SDI HD input-only card. If you get
one without AES/EBU audio support, then it typically still supports
audio that is "embedded" in the SDI stream. However, I recommend you
get one that also does output so you can properly monitor the full
resolution without having to resort to some fullscreen X playback,
which usually does not provide guaranteed VBI synchronization
resulting in screen tearing. Not to mention if you need to output the
video to something other than monitor or file, you may likely run into
SDI again. It really depends upon your needs.

> haven't even found a suitable SDI camera. The Iconix camera is very
> cool, but I need to study it some more, cause I'm a little skeptical
> about some things, like that control box.

Well, I don't know the details of that camera. Like Brian said, there
are other, more featureful professional broadcast camera that support
SDI. You might run across a HDMI input card, but the only one I am
aware of is from BlackMagic Design, and I am fairly certain they do
not have Linux drivers. SDI is the most common interface for
uncompressed digital I/O. It is THE standard in broadcast and
post-production. HDMI is coming on, but SDI still has more color depth
and all connectors are locking to prevent accidents.

-- 
+-DRD-+

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