Using MiniDV camcorder with FC3

[Ed Hill]

On Mon, 2004-12-27 at 05:16 -0600, Gustavo Seabra wrote:
> William Lovaton wrote:
> >El dom, 26-12-2004 a las 15:24 -0600, Gustavo Seabra escribió:
> >>
> >>I have a Panasonic PF-GS9 camcorder that I'd like to use with Linux. It 
> >>has a USB port, that I'm guessing it must be compatible only with USB 
> >>2.0, but I'm not completely sure. I'd appreciate some help with a couple 
> >>of questions i have:


Hi Gustavo,

Your camcorder has an IEEE1394 ("firewire") interface and thats
generally the preferred way to get digital video signals since its
faster (lower latency) than even USB 2.  And IEEE1394 adapters are
*very* cheap these days (<$25 US)!

I recently purchased a digital camcorder (Sony DCR-HC20) and a 2-port
IEEE1394 cardbus adapter (Syba SD-PCB-2F) for my laptop.  I haven't had
a lot of time to play with them but, so far, they both seem to work well
with Fedora Core 3 using the following steps:

As root:
  $  cd /dev/
  $  ./MAKEDEV raw1394
  $  mknod -m 666 /dev/dv1394 c 171 32
  $  chmod 666 raw1394

Then add DAG to your yum repository list:
  $  cat /etc/yum.repos.d/dag.repo
[dag]
name=Dag RPM Repository for Fedora Core
baseurl=http://apt.sw.be/fedora/$releasever/en/$basearch/dag 

Then install kino and associated tools:
  $  yum install kino
  $  yum install dvgrab

Then plug in the card and the cam camcorder, set the camera to the
"play" mode, and load the necessary modules:
  $  modprobe ieee1394
  $  modprobe ohci1394
  $  modprobe raw1394 dv1394

Finally, as a normal user:
  $  dvgrab file001

and you should start getting file transfers from the camcorder.

More info is available at the following places:

  http://kino.schirmacher.de/
  http://www.linux1394.org/
  http://www.syba.com/us/en/product/43/05/04/index.html
  http://www.linux1394.org/hcl.php?class_id=3
  http://www.linux1394.org/hcl.php?class_id=1

and please accept my apologies for any typos in the above directions.
I'm writing from memory so it may not be exactly what I did--though it
is close!

Ed

-- 
Edward H. Hill III, PhD
office:  MIT Dept. of EAPS;  Rm 54-1424;  77 Massachusetts Ave.
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