need direction to use simple pencam for video : solved

[crusti]

Hi there thanks for reading my post.
I'm in need of some direction on what my camera is supposed to be capable of and how to use it to record a video. I've been looking at lots of web pages and posts, and yet I'm still not sure how this technology works.

Background:
My brother-in-law runs XP and used a simple pen-cam to record short videos.
He gave the camera to me, and now I'm trying to record video in linux.
I'm also hoping to get to do video-conferencing, but that's probably more complicated.

The camera:
It has no official brand name, but gphoto2 --auto-detect sees an Argus DC-1510
I use gphoto2 to download still images from the camera.
The computer recognizes it as vend/prod 2770/9120.

I do not have a tv card.

I've heard references like:
If your device is a video4linux device, then you can use blah blah to blah blah.
I have no idea if my device is a video4linux device.
How can I find out?


Initially I got excited when I read this post:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=146385&highlight=record+movie
which advises:
effectv -vloopback /dev/video1
xawtv -c /dev/video2
as a means of recording video.

I installed vloopback-0.91 prior to running any of that,
and installed the vloopback module into the running kernel.

# lsmod
vloopback 10624 0
ibmcam 51712 0
usbvideo 25112 0 [ibmcam]

When I try to run:
effectv -vloopback /dev/video1
I get the following error:
> video_init: This devide seems not to support video capturing.
> Video initialization failed.

I tried CamStream, but I get a segfault error:
> QPainter::begin: Cannot paint null map
> QPainter::setPen: Will be reset by begin()
a few more similar QPainter messages
> Segmentation fault

I tried xawtv:
xawtv -noxv
and tried to use the grab image feature but got the error:
> grabbing: not supported [try -noxv switch?]

I tried mplayer:
mplayer tv:// :driver=v4l:width=80:height=60 -vo mpegpes
and this records a green screen of nothing from a non-existent tv card

Here's the relevant portion of my kernel-configuration:
Block devices --->
s * Loopback device support
Multimedia devices --->
s * Video For Linux
Video For Linux --->
s * V4L information in proc filesystem
s M Quickcam BW Video For Linux
s M Quickcam Color Video For Linux
Frame-buffer support --->
= Support for frame buffer devices
Sound --->
= Sound card support
s * OSS sound modules
s * Verbose initialization
s * 100% Sound Blaster compatibles
USB support --->
= * Support for USB
s * USB verbose debug messages
s * Preliminary USB device filesystem
= * UHCI Alternate Driver (JE) support
= * USB Mass Storage support
s * USB Mass Storage verbose debug
s M USB IBM (Xirlink) C-it Camera support (ibmcam.o)

Any information you may have would be greatly appreciated, thanks again for reading the post, I know there are not enough hours in the day.

cheers!
Happy Canada Deh!
crusti
_________________
Gentoo 2004.1 with vanilla sources
Kernel 2.4.26
PentiumII 333 MHz MMX (i686)
192Mb RAM
384 Mb swap
ASUS P2L97 Rev 2.05
ATI 3D Rage Pro AGP 2x 4096Kb
Kingston KNE100TX Fast Ethernet
Creative Tech 94 sound card

[lbrtuk]

You have to figure out whether you want to record videos onto the camera (ie- carry it round like a camcorder) or use it like a webcam (connected to your computer). The two are very different when it comes to drivers.

[crusti]

I'd mostly like to do two things:

First, I want to make a short video while sitting in front of my computer, with the camera plugged into the computer. Portability isn't of interest at this point. I'll tackle audio as a separate problem.

Second, I want to be able to use it for videoconferencing from my computer, if that's possible (probably not possible on a P333...).

Those are my present ambitions...

cheers!
crusti
_________________
Gentoo 2004.1 with vanilla sources
Kernel 2.4.26
PentiumII 333 MHz MMX (i686)
192Mb RAM
384 Mb swap
ASUS P2L97 Rev 2.05
ATI 3D Rage Pro AGP 2x 4096Kb
Kingston KNE100TX Fast Ethernet
Creative Tech 94 sound card

[crusti]

Well, I've made some progress in my understanding of all this.

I've recently learned that there is a difference between the sq905 support of gphoto2 and the sq905cam project at sourceforge.net. They are totally different things.

The sq905 support in gphoto2 is meant for diddling with pictures on the camera, specifically, downloading still images. There are a few other items that are supported, but they don't work on my camera. (It's recognized as an Argus DC-1510, but it's definitely not that camera). The sq905cam project at sourceforge.net is for using the sq905 camera as a webcam.

Here's the success that I've had:

Downloaded sq905cam.tar.gz from:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=92691
$ cd /directory/where/sq905cam.tar.gz/is/located
$ tar -xzvf sq905cam.tar.gz
$ cd sq905cam
$ rm sq905.o (*** SEE BELOW FOR A NOTE ABOUT THIS)
$ make
...doodeedoodeedoo...
Checked to see that the ibmcam module and usbvideo modules were loaded. The README file indicated that ibmcam support had to be present as a module, and that this would utomagically deal with the usbvideo stuff.
# lsmod
> ibmcam 51712 0
> usbvideo 25112 0 [ibmcam]
Ok, we're good to go.
# insmod sq905.o

I fired up effectv and voila! There I was!

*** When I attempted this process the first time, I did not delete the sq905.o binary prior to executing the make command. When I ran make, it said that sq905.o was up to date. Then upon running insmod, it would tell me that sq905.o was compiled for a 2.4.22 while I was using 2.4.26, and that would be the end of it. No go. Grr.

You might be amused to know that the above process was first done on my Mandrake 9.1 machine, and of course I got the same kernel version error, since I was using a mandrake kernel, 2.4.XX-mdk. This failure was the reason I decided to try Gentoo! In my newbi-ness, I thought that the problem lay in the modifications that Mandrake had made to the kernel, and further I thought that I'd have to switch to a distribution that allowed me to use the standard kernel. If you were not amused by that, sorry.

Anyway, back to the real story.
Then I decided to reboot, just to get everything nice and tidy...

Here's the failure that I've had:

Upon rebooting, I have no /dev/video0

Can anyone make a suggestion as to where my /dev/video0 went?
I checked under the keyboard and everywhere...

So, here I am, having had a glimps of success.
That's the sort of thing that'll keep me up until 3am.

cheers,
crusti
_________________
Gentoo 2004.1 with vanilla sources
Kernel 2.4.26
PentiumII 333 MHz MMX (i686)
192Mb RAM
384 Mb swap
ASUS P2L97 Rev 2.05
ATI 3D Rage Pro AGP 2x 4096Kb
Kingston KNE100TX Fast Ethernet
Creative Tech 94 sound card

[Sastraxi]

You'd probably want to insmod that again... perhaps make install if it has such a thing so you can simply modprobe it in the future. You could then add it to /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.4
_________________
Platypus.

[crusti]

Ok, more progress!

I realized that I hadn't loaded the vloopback module.
FYI, it's available as vloopback-<version>.tar.gz at http://motion.sourceforge.net/vloopback/
Anyway, I had already gone through that a few days ago, so the module was ready to load.

# insmod vloopback.o

That made my /dev/video0 appear, which is a symlink to /dev/v4l/video0.
Loading the vloopback module gave me
/dev/video0 --> /dev/v4l/video0
/dev/video1 --> /dev/v4l/video1
/dev/video2 --> /dev/v4l/video2

I changed the owner to be root (of the device, not the symlink), (the group was already of group 'video', and my userid was already a member of group 'video').

I put sq905.o into /lib/modules/2.4.26/kernel/drivers/media/video/
I edited /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.4 to autoload vloopback and sq905.

Reboot.

Now I run effectv and it works! Yeehaw!

To be continued...

crusti
_________________
Gentoo 2004.1 with vanilla sources
Kernel 2.4.26
PentiumII 333 MHz MMX (i686)
192Mb RAM
384 Mb swap
ASUS P2L97 Rev 2.05
ATI 3D Rage Pro AGP 2x 4096Kb
Kingston KNE100TX Fast Ethernet
Creative Tech 94 sound card

[crusti]

Thanks folks for your input

I'll call this thread done, problem solved, since I can now see video with the camera.
I made sure it worked by using streamer to make a quick video.
The color is all wrong, the picture is choppy, and the audio doesn't match the video, but hey, it's working to the extent that this topic is concerned.

Anything else I have to add, I'll put it in the tips section for others to read.

Thanks again
crusti
_________________
Gentoo 2004.1 with vanilla sources
Kernel 2.4.26
PentiumII 333 MHz MMX (i686)
192Mb RAM
384 Mb swap
ASUS P2L97 Rev 2.05
ATI 3D Rage Pro AGP 2x 4096Kb
Kingston KNE100TX Fast Ethernet
Creative Tech 94 sound card