[lug] Video and Linux

[Michael J. Hammel]

Thus spoke Steve Sullivan
> I'm a C++/Java developer using Linux and want to get some
> video cameras (analog and digital) talking to Linux.
> 
> What hardware do I need?

FireWire support doesn't appear to be widely included in kernel 2.4 based
distributions.  You can add it manually.  See http://www.linux1394.org/
It may already be in your distribution - hard to say who is and who isn't
including it these days.

USB support is very stable and in most distributions.  

You can also playback your video into a TV card and capture from that.  Look
at XawTV for how to get started in that arena.

> What camcorders would you recommend?

No idea.  I have a low end camera but don't use it for image capture yet.

> What is the best (open source) software for acquisition, display, editing?

I'm not sure since I don't do this yet, but having kept an eye on such things
for some time I have a few comments:

1. Acquisition - unknown, as I just haven't reviewed that much to this point.
	Try looking at the Iomega Buz or maybe the device list on the FireWire for
	Linux page (http://www.linux1394.org/cgi-bin/hcl.cgi).  There are a few
	harware encoders too (MPEG mostly).
2. Display:  XawTV and the bttv drivers (over Video4Linux or Video4Linux2).
3. Editing:  Only one program does video editing in any reasonable fashion
	under Linux so far:  Cinelerra.  There are a few others but none seem to be
	all that good yet (then again, I haven't really looked at them in a while).

You can find links to most of this (if not all of it) in my Tools Catalog:
http://www.graphics-muse.com/catalog.html

Hope that helps a little.
-- 
Michael J. Hammel           |
The Graphics Muse           |  "I am " is reportedly the shortest sentence in 
mjhammel at graphics-muse.org  |  the English language. Could it be that "I do " 
http://www.graphics-muse.com   is the longest sentence?