Linux Based Media Boxes? 17
Matt Dugan returns an old question to the forefront: "I am building a Linux-based 'media box', which will sit alongside the TV, Stereo, VCR, etc.. My goals are to play DVD's, MP3s/Oggs, CD's, VCD's, and the occasional Divx AVI. Though DVD support isn't perfect, I expect it to be well on it's way by the time I get everything set up and running the way I want, but my problem lies here: I want to be able to do 'real-time' video capture to an IBM Desktar 60GXP 30GB drive via a Pinnacle DC10+ MJPEG PCI card. Has anyone else successfully configured such a beast?"
"Here are the system specs:
- Socket 7 MB with onboard Video/Audio, ATA-66/33 IDE
- AMD K6-III/400MHz processor
- 128MB PC100
- Fujitsu 6.4GB primary HD
- IBM Deskstar 60GXP 30.7GB secondary (in removeable 5.25" caddy)
- Pioneer 10x/40x DVD-ROM
- Generic 24x CD-ROM
- Pinnacle DC10+ Video Capture Card
- RealTek 10/100 NIC
I would prefer to run Vector Linux, for the smaller footprint (gives me more space for Music on my primary HD) but I am open to suggestions. Also, what video cards give the highest quality TV-out under Linux?"
Well gee whillickers! (Score:1)
Also, MPEG-1 and 2 both, well, SUCK, frankly. If you are serious about capturing video and not having it look like shit, then you are almost certainly relegated to capturing uncompressed RGB video, then compressing it with one of the MPEG-4 codecs (with MP3 audio.) Of course, a fast hard drive is necessary in this situation. 7200RPM IDE of recent vintage is a bare minimum. You need sustained writing capability on the order of 14MB/sec or so. IDE/SCSI RAID setups are even better.
Oh, and you better get used to doing little else while you capture video, unless you have a multi-disk SCSI setup with a dedicated capture disk/array. Little random accesses from other activities are the harbinger of a shitload of dropped frames.
Re:Why on system? (Score:2)
Ah... so you think that Sony thinks that the PS2 DVD player is perfectly sufficient? Then why do they have straight DVD players that go for as much as a PS2 - surely they can't be better units, more appropriate for DVD playback, since the PS2 is the be-all end-all?
I was talking about a kind of digital convergence, and you're talking about a different kind. You seem to think that it's not convergent if it's not a single system doing everything digital; not so. When every unit can share data with every other unit digitally, that is digital convergence. It costs a lot more to get a PC that can come close to that - digital sound sent to the stereo, S-Video (not digital, but the best you can expect to get) sent to the display - than it costs to get a DVD player that can do it better. The only possible advantage is being able to play DVDs remotely, and I don't think software decoding is there yet in Linux. Sending mp3 digitally to the stereo is, IMO, a wash anyways - we're talking about sending a noticably lossy audio stream digitally to preserve its pristine quality. Silly.
As for upgradability (i.e., being able to play Ogg and mp3 from the same component) - well, look at what I said. Get a computer to do the task of handling compressed audio, so that you can simply add software to handle new kinds of files. Ditto with having a PC handle video capture and playback, instead of a TiVo.
Digital convergence, as you represent it, isn't any different than stereo convergence - getting a single shelf system to handle tapes, CDs, FM radio. They don't do poorly, and they make it easier for someone who doesn't want to mess with wiring listen to a wide variety of music, but they're not top dogs as far as quality is concerned.
I am interested in a different kind of convergence - convergence of all data to the user. I want to be able to play my CDs on my stereo, I want to be able to listen to my CDs at my computer (on a different floor, in a different part of the house), I want to be able to listen to my CDs at work, and I want to be able to listen to my CDs when I'm commuting - and I don't want to have to carry a CD book around with me. For that matter, without carrying an mp3 player around with me - I want my music to be where I am, using whatever I'm using; my PC, my stereo, my Indy at work, my pen computer. I want to be able to watch movies where ever I happen to be, as well, and for that, I'd like a PC to handle DivX - but just as I want a CD changer (and a turntable) attached to my stereo, I don't want to be restricted to playing movies in DivX (or even DVDs as decoded by a PC). I want to be able to focus on a movie, and get unpixelated video and qualiy surround-sound - or be able to 'catch' the latest Farscape episode on my pen tablet while I'm outside trimming the hedges.
Why on system? (Score:3)
Why do you want this thing to do DVD? Honestly. I'm looking into doing something very similar, and all I can say is components, components, components.
You probably don't want to have a system switch duty between mp3 and video capture, and DVD playback from a PC will be inferior to a DVD component most of the time as well (not to mention vastly inferior sound quality on a system with onboard sound). Don't use the DVD drive, get a DVD player. Consider getting a separate PC to do mp3 playback (maybe a used laptop; low heat, low noise, small footprint, and anything over 150MHz can handle mp3 without a sweat), but don't necessarily restrict yourself to mp3s on a local hard drive - NFS isn't a bottleneck when you're playing mp3s.
NFS probably is a bottleneck on video capture; stick with a local hard drive, or consider cacheing data to local disk and copying it over to a file server at your leisure (I would guess that video playback would not be restrained by NFS).
Do you really want a network cable (or two, if you follow my suggestion) running from your stereo/TV to a hub? Consider wireless. Have you already considered and/or dealt with the amount of noise a PC makes? Take a look at Quiet PC [quietpc.com] to silence your hard drive, power supply, CPU fans, and case fans.
This would result in a setup something like:
- TV
- stereo (preferably surround-sound capable
:)
- VCR
- DVD player
- computer audio player/recorder system (say... P200 laptop with wireless card)
- computer video player/recorder system (basically the system you describe - with silenced or silent moving parts, and a wireless card)
- file server, with lots of reasonably capable storage (SCSI-2 would probably do fine, if we're otherwise talking about a 10-11Mb/s network and no performance-sensitive writing like video feeds)
- wireless access point
Of course, this system involves a lot of components, and the price adds up. But, you can work your way up... a fileserver is an immediate win, wireless is an immediate win, a DVD player is an immediate win, a video player/recorder is an immediate win that improves once you have wireless, an Ogg/mp3 component is an immediate win once you've got wireless (and improves with a file server).In addition, you've got a lot of components that you can upgrade independantly, tune for their own purpose, or sell (if that dot.com you're working for goes under).
Re:Hmmm.. (Score:1)
Re:Hmmm.. (Score:3)
It captures MPEG-1 fine, but anything with a decent resolution/framerate is useless. MPEG-2 requires a Pentium III 500 MINIMUM. (I happen to have a P3/500 - but I woul dlike to be able to do something during capture).
We need either a dedicated DSP for encoding (codec for Mpeg2 and mpeg4 would then be possible) or just an MPEG-2 encoder.
MPEG-4 would be a good choice for such a beast though as the file sizes are quite small and the video quality is quite good for most things.
Also, DVD playback on ATI cards suck. I have a Creative Labs MPEG-2 decoder card and DVD drive, they worked flawlessly on my Pentium 133 a few years ago, and continue to work good on my Pentium III/500.
(ATI recommends DMA to get good enough performance from their card, funny it wasn't necessary on my Pentium 133, even if I was browsing the net, etc.).
Sorry for the rant.
Suggestion (Score:1)
HTH.
Re:Why on system? (Score:2)
Well... Sony's not following your suggestion with the PS2. They put a DVD player in a gaming console.
People want digital convergence (no, not the company, the idea). They don't want to unload a few hundred dollars into mp3 hardware only to spend another few hundred to get the same hardware but only in the ogg flavor. It's easier to update software than hardware.
The point is that there's no reason that a 1.4ghz athlon or 1.7 P4 can't do everything that you want out of it. Especially when the video compression is being offloaded on a specific card. If you're willing to take the time to get the software and configure the box, there's no reason you can come up with a solution that meets all of your requirements, as long as you aren't say ripping two tv channels at once.
So if you have the MJPEG card and the MJPEG drivers, you're ready to rock and roll.
Editing!~ (Score:1)
Media box (Score:4)
I would normally lean towards using half-frame (352x288 PAL) capturing as it consumes less disk space (1-2MB/s) than the 2-5MB/s of 720x576.
My soundcard, however, can't do mmapped recording and is no good for synched audio capturing. This screws me royally till i get round to putting a new soundcard in the machine.
I have had a BT848 TV Tuner card in the same machine, and that worked great for fullscreen TV playback at 800x600, also with low to no CPU usage.
My original foray into this field was with the BT848 in a P-200 box. I used it as a TV, an MP3 jukebox and an internet terminal displaying on my TV.
This was connected to the TV via an external scan converter, and let me watch TV in a window, while i surfed the net/played MP3s etc.
Remote control was taken care of by a home-built IR adapter and LIRC, and later an analog IR 'joypad' which came with the scan converter. and worked as a serial mouse.
Fonts and stuff needed major tweaking, and the general usability of a standard X desktop on a TV is bad.
With regard to the DC10/Buz:
I am not sure whether it is possible to capture MJPEG to a file, and play it back at the same time. Theoretically, since the bytes are on the disk, this should be easy, but you never know.
MJPEG will also consume vast amounts of disk space. realtime transcoding to MPEG or even DivX would be nice - piping the MJPEG through an encoder instead of writing to disk, but the encoders i have used aren't fast enough (though my machine is slowish - a dual P.Pro 200 that lacks MMX), but may be an option with good hardware.
An MJPEG-based PVR would be the best first step to take, but be aware that MJPEG consumes at least twice as much space as MPEG, so budget for big disks. However quality should be really good.
The stability of lavtools (MJPEG capture/playback utils) has been good for me so far, but i haven't used them in a PVR-like capacity - i.e heavy use with a failure in capturing being somewhat unnacceptable.
When i get a new soundcard for my box, i will be looking at doing this again, perhaps what we need is a sourceforge project or similar 'hub' for MJPEG-based PVR projects.
Re:WinTV-HD video/tuner board (Score:1)
Hmmm.. (Score:2)
However, DO NOT PLAN ON DOING ANYTHING ELSE DURING CAPTURE. Nothing. No popping in a CD and firing off even something as simple as workbone. Dropped frames will probably ensue. Shut down the services, including cron.
As for what distro to use, you can strip any of them back to a couple hundred megs with a careful install. Pick whatever you're comfortable with.
Video card, well, I've had a few, and they're all 'acceptable'. Best bet is to slap a decent scanline converter on the native VGA tho.. Crisper, and not as expensive as buying a new video card. (If it's shared memory video on board, even a cheap Rage Pro w/composite out is better.)
Also; The K6-3/400 overclocks well. Might just pop it up by +3 fsb and set the mult for 4.5.. Decrease the chance of fuubs..
Yes I've done it (Score:1)
is the goal of the mjpeg tools project (the follow-on to "lavtools") http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net. The only thing thats missing in the current release is time-shift functionality. The rest (record playback, editting, cropping and scaling and decent speed/quality MPEG encoding is in place.
I have a machine setup pretty much as you describe except it is rather bigger. The spec you describe is pretty low-end to make this stuff work well. MJPEG recording and playback using DC10+/buz etc use very little CPU but the problem is that if you ever want to do time-shifting then you have to be able to do both at once. In practice that means software playback as the hardware can't play and record at the same time. To do this at full quality needs a rather beefier CPU than you've got. I'd say 450Mhz P-III is a realistic minimum. Similarly, if you want to MPEG encoding you really want a faster CPU if you want to compress to SVCD or DVD formats in a sensible amount of time.
Finally, 6G is just plain too small for realistic MJPEG based D-VCR use. I use 30 and its a bit tight when I want to record a movie in DVD quality.
Andrew
Re:Media box (Score:1)
are a part).
This already is a sourceforge project and does indeed act as bug for MJPEG video stuff. Adding properply integrated PVR time-shift is the last major chunk of functionality to be done.
See http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net
TV out (Score:1)
I've have an ancient Trident 9685 PCI card w/ TVout. It works, but it's pretty fuzzy. Your best bet may be the BookPC. The deluxe model comes with TVout. Here's one vendor:
http://www.directron.com/bookpc.html
Media box & video capture (Score:3)
Video for Linux resources [exploits.org]
Video for Linux mailing list - archives [theaimsgroup.com]
Re:Hmmm.. (Score:1)
Oy vey.. (Score:1)
"Press any key to begin."