[plug] DV cam, video processing, etc

[Sham Chukoury]

Hey folks. :)

I just wrote up a little HowTo doc about converting MPEG video from a DV
camcorder to OGM (Ogg compressed video, same thing Michael Collard used
for his 'Linux demo type thing'). It's basically a little guide
explaining how to go from MPEG, grabbed from a DV cam (over USB, using
the windows-based ImageMixer), to XviD+OGG encoded OGM video, using
mencoder to filter the data in the process. It's not really in depth
(read: doesn't cover every possible option along the way), but I hope it
shows what can be done using a combination of video and audio processing
tools on linux. :)

More about OGM.. I agree that OGM isn't exactly familiar, but it's the
best solution I found, for compressing audio and video data using only
open source codecs. :P Mplayer handles it, and so does Core Media Player
(yep, yet another windows media player!) - http://corecoded.com/ :)

Soon after I wrote the HowTo, I discovered 'kino'
(http://kino.schirmacher.de/) and was amazed that it was designed
exactly for the purpose of grabbing video from DV cams and has the
functionality needed to edit, apply effects to, and export the video
data! However, it seems to only support capture from Firewire (IEEE1394)
- not USB - while having support for Video4Linux... After a bit of
running around the web and figuring out that the 'iDV' socket on the DV
cam is actually Firewire, I'm currently stuck on figuring out how
exactly to get kino to talk to my DV cam.

What I'm wondering is:
- Anyone know more about the relationship between firewire cards,
so-called video capture cards (with support for firewire/DV) and
Video4Linux (i.e. V4L support for such cards)?
- Anyone know where I can find such hardware around Perth? I'd be
interested in only getting the hardware bits, since I can learn about,
and set up the software myself. Video capture cards bundled with
(windows-based) video editting software seem overpriced.

/me goes to read more about V4L

Cheers.
§:)