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Fedora Core 3 and FireWire (DV) video camera

Introduction
Preparation
The generic drivers
Start the capture
Making Movies
History
Copyright and License
Disclaimer

Introduction

One day I had to save some video recorded with a digital video camera. I only had the video camera, a FireWire cable and my notebook. I was a little bit confused, because I have never done it in Linux. After that I had written this short document.

Preparation

Check to see if you have the following nodes: /dev/raw1394 and /dev/video1394.

If not, let's create them by issuing the following commands:

# mknod -m660 /dev/raw1394 c 171 0
# mknod -m660 /dev/video1394 c 172 0

then change the group this nodes belongs to:

# chown root:<dvusers> /dev/raw1394
# chown root:<dvusers> /dev/video1394

where <dvusers> is a group of your choice.

If you want everyone to have access to these nodes, the chown commands is not necesary but you have to change -m660 with -m666 in the mknod commands.

The nodes created this way will "survive" only until the next restart. To make the nodes permanent, in a simple way, you can add those lines to the end of the /etc/rc.d/rc.local file.

The generic drivers

Check to see if both raw1394 and dv1394 are loaded:

# lsmod | grep 1394

If not, load them:

# /sbin/modprobe raw1394
# /sbin/modprobe dv1394

Start the capture

Connect your digital videocamera using the FireWire connexion.

Turn it on.

If you call dmesg you should see something like this:

ieee1394: raw1394: /dev/raw1394 device initialized
ieee1394: Node added: ID:BUS[0-00:1023] GUID[<someGuidHere>]
ieee1394: Node changed: 0-00:1023 -> 0-01:1023

Fire up dvgrab. Here are some examples:

# dvgrab --noavc foo- starts the capture of video data from default source disabling the use of AV/C VTR control (noavc) and store it to files foo-001.avi, foo-002.avi, and so on.
# dvgrab --noavc --autoplit foo- like previous, but cuts the data into chunks when a new recording starts.
# dvgrab --noavc --frames 25 foo- like the first example, but records only 25 frames (1 second for PAL video source).

See man dvgrab for more options.

Besides dvgrab, here are links to some usefull tools related to the capture and the final result:

Kino - " Kino is a non-linear DV editor for GNU/Linux. It features excellent integration with IEEE-1394 for capture, VTR control, and recording back to the camera. Kino supports a number of formats: Raw DV, DV AVI, still frames, WAV, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, MPEG, DivX. "
dvdauthor - "A simple set of tools to help you author a DVD."
K3b - "K3b is a CD and DVD burning application for Linux systems optimized for KDE"

Making Movies

There is a lot more to tell about making movies. I am recommending you to search the Net. One worthy "read stop" is Olexiy Tykhomyrov's article from Linux Journal, called Making Movies with Kino.

History

21 June 2005, First version.

Copyright and License

Disclaimer

No liability for the contents of this document can be accepted. Use the concepts, examples and information at your own risk. There may be errors and inaccuracies that could be damaging to your system. Proceed with caution, the author do not take any responsibility.

All copyrights are held by their respective owners, unless specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark. Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements.

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Last page modification is 21 June 2005