Couple weeks ago I have found a new very exiting MPEG4 part 10 (H264) chip. It seems to be the actual holy grail Linux Media Labs was looking for a while - full rate D1, full duplex (playback and capture at the same time), bitrate of 1.5 Mbit/sec, proper support for interlaced video signal. We're working now on an agreement with the chip manufacturer that shall allow us to provide the driver for this chip based Linux boards to be released under GNU GPL.

I'm working on IME6500 driver now. Darn thing does not want to do DMA transfers. Documentation must be incorrect or incomplete, or I'm missing something. I do have a working Windows XP driver for this card. I will be investigating the data transfers to the PCI BAR area using SoftICE debugger. Did not use it for a while... we'll see how it works out next week.

I wish there was one soul in the world with IME6500 linux programming experience. Well... writing this up I remembered that the chip manufacturer had given me a linux driver code for the chip. I don't like the way it's coded, i.e. in an ad hoc way, not using some common driver development infrasturcure, but I still can look how they setup DMA there.

To be continued....