Gaming Need some linux help w/ Capture card.

[ShaDeFinale]

I have a capture card I'm trying to get to work into linux. I'm using ubuntu, and I want to be able to record games using a composite cable splitter to split the video between the television and the capture card, probably through VLC.

I'm not exactly sure what kind of capture card it is. On one of the chips on it before I put it in my computer, it said DC10 Plus.

When I use lspci -v in order to figure out what kind of card it was, it gave this out.

05:04.0 Multimedia video controller: Zoran Corporation ZR36057PQC Video cutting chipset (rev 02)
Subsystem: Miro Computer Products AG Device 7efe
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 32, IRQ 18
Memory at 73011000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
Kernel modules: zr36067

I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to do to even get VLC to try to record it. When I use "Open Capture Device", it has options such as Video 4 Linux/ Video 4 Linux 2, and they both ask for device names which I have no idea how to find or which ones to put in.

I obtained the "Unified Zoran Drivers" from this site : http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net/driver-zoran/cards.php

I read what the faq says, and under "How do I get this damn thing to work" it says to load zoran.o

How do I do that? I'm also stuck on that.

If this would be easier to set up in windows, please tell me as I can try to do that as well. I heard from somewhere that the card I have only would work on windows with pinnacle studios, and if that is the case I'll try to see if I can borrow it from my friend to install and use, he probably has it on him.

Help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Am0s]

I know of a few people have major issues with capture cards, you might be better off asking on the forums of your distro, if no-one can solve it here

 

[Scorpei]

Been ages since I tried anything in linux with regards to video capturing hardware. In windows you could try to use dscaler assuming it has support for your card which I doubt....

A few links that might help:
http://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/mir...-8-t352477.html
http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?=&p=100816

Though the last one is about a DC30

 

[FAST6191]

First I sense that is not that we have a failure to search but the wrong terms and mindset- capturing video is a key component of things like mythTV https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV and linuxTV http://www.linuxtv.org/ although here you will be using standard frame capture methods rather than the digital video way that things are heading towards in the TV world. I am somewhat out of practice here (channel usenet has rendered most capture needs from media boxes I build obsolete). Similarly I am not able to comment on the "only would work on windows with pinnacle studios" issue due to lack of data- chipset is only half the battle but if it is that one then it should be OK.
If you are using the latest ubuntu it should be based on the 2.6.? kernel and thus not need those drivers you linked (the drivers are part of the newer kernels rather than extras)- indeed even if you wanted to you will probably not be able to get them to load in a terribly useful way.

Video 4 Linux/ Video 4 Linux 2 represent two different capture methods (much like you can have gnome or KDE or something else or in multimedia world ALSA and OSS for sound). Generally you want to use Video 4 Linux 2 as the former is a legacy thing (which should still be supported in some form by Video 4 Linux 2 type things).

"device names" are like everything else in linux- represented by a file. I am not so familiar with ubuntu (more accurately if it changes/provides/prefers shortcuts) but chances are it is something like "/dev/video0" is what you want.

After this you can use VLC but for matters of games I would not suggest it as there are more suitable applications (ones that do not have all the in this case needless* extras)- there are a couple of demo applications/proof of concept applications if I recall correct that could do here (especially in the gstreamer suite/derived tools).

*I know I just espoused mythTV which is even more overkill.

Do note the games have been troubled several capture devices in the past with minor lag, not a problem for regular video (you probably already run at a few hundred milliseconds lag and all you have to do is adjust the audio) but it is a dealbreaker for games (those few hundred milliseconds are everything for many games). This gets even worse if you are trying to capture it and the CPU is lagging.