dvgrab and dv players

dvgrab and dv players

Guides

Making movies with Linux
http://www.videredesign.com/support_linux_kernel.htm
How to make divx movies in Linux, by Andreas Berntsen
DV to Divx by SM Harrison
kino manual

Software

dvgrab's home page
Capture (uses dvgrab -- may not have kino's sound problems!)
xdvplay -- a precursor of kino
MPlayer -- get the CVS version (see installation history)
RPMs for video
Video for Linux
IEEE 1394 for Linux -- lots of links and important updates.
Digital Video over IP

Command summary

use dvcont to control the camera: play, stop, rewind, record pause, pause, status
use grab to create avi files (can be done remotely and delayed)
use playdv --no-mmap /dev/ieee1394/dv/host0/NTSC/in to preview
use playdv filename.dv to play raw dv files
use kino * to read in all files in a directory for editing
at one point you had Dan Maas' dv1394io (no more):

dv1394in filename.dv to create raw dv files of any size
dv1394out /dev/ieee1394/dv/host0/NTSC/out to transfer raw dv to tape

cat /dev/video0 >dev_video0.mpg (untested, said to work)

Instructions

Controlling the camcorder

To capture footage from a digital camcoder, hook it up with a firewire cable and make sure you have control of the unit:

dvcont play, ff, stop, rewind, record, pause, status, timecode

Preview (this works fine)

playdv --no-mmap /dev/ieee1394/dv/host0/NTSC/in

Piped output (drop the -i when using the latest dvgrab?)

dvgrab -i | xine -D stdin://#demux:rawdv

Input from dvgrab can be piped to xine in this way; it didn't work well for me.

Capturing

To initiate the capture, press the play button and immediately issue

grab

This is a script at /usr/local/bin/grab. Alternatively, issue the whole string manually:

dvgrab --autosplit --format raw --frames 7500 --timestamp --dv1394 /dev/ieee1394/dv/host0/NTSC/in Tape01-

This line is correct for dvgrab 1.2.1, which appeared in February 2003.

Leave the machine alone while it's grabbing -- if it skips frames it will
abort in the middle.

Output format

--format dv1 | dv2 | raw | test | qt | jpeg

Using raw files means that you can't play the uncompressed files in Windows without converting them first. It's better to stick with the raw files for simplicity and for exporting back to the camcorder, and transcode handles
them.

While dvgrab can generate jpeg files on the fly, it's usually better to do this in kino, where you can chose a precise sequence to convert to stills.

To convert raw files to avi, use either kino (which will export to Windows-compatible AVI type 2 files), or the dv2dv command-line utility.
I'm not quite up-to-date on that one and have never tested it, but this is the way to go for bulk conversions.

Automatic file-name creation using timestamps

The --timestamp flag puts the date and time of the recording in the title. Make sure you don't use this flag if the tape lacks a timecode (verify by pressing the Data code button inside the flip-out screen while the tap is playing).

For Hi8 tapes

dvgrab --autosplit --frames 7500 --format raw --dv1394
/dev/ieee1394/dv/host0/NTSC/in 2002-01-

These don't have timecodes, so the files are just numbered sequentially.

File size

You could do without the frames limitation of 7500, but there's no real benefit from working with such large files when you otherwise have a functional autosplit that splits the footage into scenes.

It's important to use exactly the same dvgrab line, so that if you capture, transcode, delete the originals, and then want to get the originals back from the tape, you will do so.

Of course in the case of Hi8 tapes, where there is no automatic scene detection, this rule doesn't hold, so in some cases you might want to write dv files in kino that are larger than 7500 frames.

In the previous 1.1 release, dvgrab --format raw didn't autosplit or timecode, so you had to use dv2, which creates avi files.

Capture jobs can be started remotely and delayed.

Remote capture

If the machine is busy compressing and you have more tapes to capture, leave the camcorder hooked up with the tape inside it and start the capturing remotely once the compression is completed. This works on miniDV and Digital8 camcorders.

dvcont rewind
dvcont status
dvcont play

To start the capturing, issue screen to start a virtual terminal. To see a list of screen key bindings, press

Ctrl-a ?

Here are some examples:

detach ^c d
start screen ^c c
select ^c ' Prompt for a window name or number to switch to

Then copy and paste the following one line at a time into one command:

dvgrab --autosplit --format raw --frames 7500 --timestamp --dv1394 /dev/ieee1394/dv/host0/NTSC/in T-

Alternatively, just use the script /usr/local/bin/grab, which contains the same line. Then detach the screen, either by a key shortcut or by going into a second terminal and issuing

screen -list

and then detaching using something like this:

screen -d 17989.tty1.spello

You can now log out cleanly. Later, you can monitor progress by

watching the files created
by issuing "dvcont timecode"
or you can reattach the screen:

screen -r 17989.tty1.spello

After reattaching, complete the job by pressing Ctrl-C (SIGINT) to close the last file.

If you don't reattach, you can instead send a SIGINT to the process pid to complete the last file:

kill -2 <pid dvgrab>

This cleanly closes the last file and exit dvgrab, as can be verified in the log file.

Rewind the tape when you're done -- you can even eject it if you have a local person who can swap it out:

dvcont rewind
dvcont eject

In earlier versions of dvgrab, it used to be possible to pipe the output to a logfile, as follows:

dvgrab --autosplit --format raw --frames 7500 --timestamp --dv1394 /dev/ieee1394/dv/host0/NTSC/in T- >& logfile &

This method no longer works as described, though there may be a variant that will still work -- see the dvgrab man page. In the meantime, use screen, which in any case is more elegant.

Delayed execution

To instruct a capture job to start a few hours from now, you probably need to put the dvgrab string into a shell script, let's call it grab.sh, and then issue this command:

at <tt:mm> -f /usr/local/bin/dvgrab.sh

where <tt:mm> is the hour and minute to begin the job. Note that you have to give the full path of the file to be run.

In this way, you can start the job after you leave work, or after a compression job has completed. Just leave the tape to be captured in the camcorder.

Delayed remote capture is still untested. A side benefit is a grab script -- this is now standardized and a script would make it easier for others to use.

Update 1 January 2003

Arthur Peters has written some very useful dv utilities, available as dv-utils 0.2.1-1 from the main debian distribution and as dv_utils-0.2.1.tar.gz from http://www.singingwizard.org/programming.php.

They include several small programs for moving between dv, avi, and mov (Arthur works on libquicktime), and a few others:

dv1394connect.cc
dv2avi.cc
dv2mov.cc
dvavi2dv.cc
dvavi2mov.cc
dvmov.cc
dvmov2avi.cc
dvmov2dv.cc

" The main tool is dv2dv. It is a file converter that converts from between AVI, quicktime and raw DV without decoding."

Status prior to the debian installation fall 2002

Both gubbio and cyberspace handle dvgrab and kino. Only gubbio has playdv and dv1394in and out; they rely on the new dv1394 driver, which is in the 2.4.19 kernel.

There are several players to handle these different formats. Kino plays well on cyberspace but not on gubbio. Quicktime will play raw dv, but currently lacks the right codec. I could also install xdvplay, based on the libdv codec. Aviplay handles uncompressed avifiles fine, but it rarely compiles and I don't have a working copy on gubbio. Mplayer does great on divx and may handle dv on cyberspace. It's too slow on gubbio.

If you leave dvgrab running, you can close the last file cleanly with kill -2 <pid> -- see commands for details.