Graphic Cards w/ Video Input and OpenGL Support

Marco Bertini asks: "I'd like to know which graphics card with video input (S-Video or coaxial) are supported by Linux, and if there's any library to handle video input. My problem is to acquire two video inputs from cameras at the same time. At present I'm doing it on SGI O2, using the Digital Media libraries for video input, and OpenGL extensions for edge detection using it's h/w boost. Is it possible to switch to Linux to do it ? It seems that for example ELSA GLoria Synergy offers OpenGL h/w accelaration supported by Microlink Extreme 3D, but I'd like to hear about live experiences, and other options. "

well I dont know

[johnjones]

well I centainly cant name a cad that will do OpenGL and video in that is surported under XFree86

am I wrong I heard that people where getting close to a workable solution with the Matrox stuff (marvel product line)

but video in has always been a seperate card

what should you look for in a card ?

1> surport in XFree86 !
(if it has this then pass to No. 2)

2> DRI Acc drawing such as the voodoo 3000
(this will change as more people get involved and codebase grows ATI even say they are going to help 'what was that about cold hell alan ?;)

3>DMI basicaly the digital conector that is going on all 810e MoBo's and all LCD monitor manufacters have pledged to support
(their is hope because there is so few of them it is harder for them to disagree)

my thoughts

personally I am buying a SGI LCD soon even though its not the best. No.9 have said they will make sure linux is supported and well you can stick it on a hinge so it dosent have to take up desk space and can just float and it looks cool and and .. I want one its not rational I know !

TNT have been looking good helped by yep SGI so linux surport WILL be there

regards

john



a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)

Your requirements? (Any telepaths reading this?)

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, Slashdot is much like other discussion forums in that the vast majority of the other participants are unable to read your mind.

Please tell us what your requirements are. It's nice and all to hear about your current solution, but what you described says absolutely nothing about what you need.

Does your application require fullscreen 30-fps video, periodic stillframes, or something in between?

What kind of processing do you need to do? Does it need to be realtime? Could it be done in software on a fast CPU (like an Athlon)? By edge detections are you talking about simple convolutions with a Sobel filter or something much more involved?

What are you trying to use OpenGL to draw? Are you just using it to do 2D edge detection, or are you rendering a 3D scene? How is it related to the video inputs? Are the video cameras digitizing control points, to manipulate a model in realtime? Are they digitizing textures, to map on various surfaces in realtime? Or is it something completely different?

Anyway, the Video4Linux web page [linux.org] has information on available video input solutions, such as BTTV, and Linux3d.org [linux3d.org] has links to most of the major OpenGL-related projects.

Graphics cards with video input

[Anonymous Coward]

The easiest way I've seen to get video into Linux is the BT848 based PCI video cards, since you can support multple cards in one computer, and the api is simple. (Haughpage WinTV, STB PCI Video Capture, and various generic PCI video captures are based on the BT848. The only really card specific parts are the tuners which not all cards have. (Intel Smart Video Recorder III are also fine, but I believe Intel quit making them).

Not as much as years ago

[heroine]

Well what you're in the market for was called a "capture card" and designed specifically to record video, and not usually designed to drive your X server. You should spend no more than $80 on a capture board. In 2002 all American broadcasters are required to broadcast in HDTV and in 2006 all American broadcasters are required to offer only HDTV. Unfortunately no capture boards support HDTV today and probably never will. No capture boards are fully supported in Linux but you can get close. The Hauppage WinTV was about as well supported as you could get. The problem with what you're doing is that less and less people are doing it so your options are decreasing. SGI is an e-commerce company not a multimedia company anymore. IOmega and a lot of companies stopped making capture boards years ago. Even Avid is moving away from video and into e-commerce. So don't get too attached to it.

If OpenGL is important to you, get Solaris

[Thunderbear]

Solaris is available for the x86 platform,
and have as far as I know good OpenGL support for a limited range of hardware.

You might find it very different to Linux, though.

A personal edition of Solaris is available for a very low price directly from Sun.

--

nVidia and Matrox

[Technomancer]

well, there is reasonable opengl support with XFree86 and GLX module (glx.on.openprojects.net) for matrox g200/g400 and riva tnt/tnt2.
quake2 gives me some 27fps (timerefresh) on my freebsd box (with linux emulation) on my riva tnt.

i think there are some projects to support matrox frame grabber hardware (raibowrunner/marvel ?) so maybe support for matrox is better.

my riva tnt (asus v3400tv) has phillips saa7111 chip on i2c bus.
v3800tv (tnt2) has phillips saa7112 (little better one)

i dont know if there is any support for i2c bus under linux. if so nvidia framebuffer driver should give access to this i2c bus. and then i dont know about saa7111 driver.

it seems there will be more cards with opengl acceleration when Xfree86 4.0 with DRI will be out.

Re:nVidia and Matrox

[Technomancer]

Well DDC and 7111 use the same i2c bus. So if DDC works 7111 should work too (actually windows driver said: "you cant capture video with your monitor", and i had to remove jumper on card to disable DDC). 7111 docs should be available from Philips. I dont think nVidia wont give any information. They support Linux. I didnt know digitized data is transferred on separate bus, honey :)