xawtv

About xawtv

Gerd Knorr <kraxel@goldbach.in-berlin.de>

xawtv started as TV application for the bttv driver [ http://www.thp.uni-koeln.de/~rjkm/linux/bttv.html ], because the Motif-based "xtvscreen" was the only TV application at this time.

Alot has changed since. The bttv driver switched over to the new video4linux [ http://roadrunner.swansea.uk.linux.org/v4l.shtml ] interface. xawtv isn't a single application any more, it is a small suite of video4linux related software.

It often happens that you don't get it right the first time. This is true for video4linux too. Bill Dirks works on the second version [ http://millennium.diads.com/bdirks/v4l2.htm ] of the video4linux interface.

Download

Available here:

• the source code [ http://www.in-berlin.de/User/kraxel/v4l/xawtv-2.35.tar.gz ] and a RPM spec file.
• a patch [ http://www.in-berlin.de/User/kraxel/v4l/xawtv-2.35.tar.gz ] against the previous version.
• The content of the download directory [ http://www.in-berlin.de/User/kraxel/v4l/ ]. Check it out for older versions and patches.
• Changelog [ http://www.in-berlin.de/User/kraxel/xawtv-changelog.html ]

What exactly is in the package...

For TV/video

• xawtv of cource, it is still the main application. A nice X11 application for watching TV.
• fbtv is a TV application for the linux console, it uses the new 2.1.x framebuffer devices.
• set-tv, a command line tool to set video4linux parameters (tune in some channel, set TV norm, ...).
• streamer, a command line tool for capturing still images and avi-videos (with sound).
• webcam, captures images and uploads them with FTP to a Web-Server in a endless loop.

xawtv, fbtv and set-tv share the same config file.

For listening radio, there is kradio. It is a KDE [ http://www.kde.org/ ] application for listening radio. There is a console application too, called simply radio. It can read (but not write) kradio's config file.

Tools for videotext available too. A simple vtx-to-ascii/html converter (build the quick&dirty way using the videoteXt sources) and a wrapper cgi script for it. Not tested very well.

The video4linux driver for vic [ http://www-nrg.ee.lbl.gov/vic/ ] is no longer included in the xawtv tar file.
The binary (glibc, RedHat) [ http://www.in-berlin.de/User/kraxel/v4l/vic-i486-linux-bttv-0.5.14-rh51.gz ] and a patch (with grabber-video4linux.cc included [ http://www.in-berlin.de/User/kraxel/v4l/vic-2.8.diff.gz ]) are available for download.

Known-to-work Hardware

old video4linux interface:

• bttv [ http://www.thp.uni-koeln.de/~rjkm/linux/bttv.html ] supports bt848 and bt878 based boards like the Hauppauge WinTV. Probably the most popular grabber boards these days. Works on i486 and alpha.
• The zoran driver [ http://www.polyware.nl/~middelin/En/hobbies.html ] works too.
• planb [ http://www.cpu.lu/~mlan/planb.html ] supports the video input of the PowerMac 7x00/8x00 series.
• mxb [ http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/~mhunold/mxb/ ] is a driver for the Siemens Multimedia eXtension Board [ http://www.siemens.de/pc/consumer/zubeho_d.htm ]

video4linux two interface:

• Bill's software-only test-driver (16bpp, still trouble with 24bpp).
• The winnov videum [ http://millennium.diads.com/bdirks/winnov.htm ] driver should work too (not tested yet).

List incomplete? Drop me a note [ kraxel@goldbach.in-berlin.de ].

i2c

There is a nice i2c package [ http://www.tk.uni-linz.ac.at/~simon/private/i2c/v4l/ ], written by Simon Vogl.

I've ported to bttv driver to the new i2c layer. You can download it here [ http://www.in-berlin.de/User/kraxel/v4l/bttv-i2c.tar.gz ].

Old stuff

Some time ago I started a tcl/tk-based application for video capture/playback. I stopped maintaining it. Here you find the latest snapshot [ http://www.in-berlin.de/User/kraxel/v4l/grab-980420.tar.gz ] (20 Apr 1998). Probably does'nt work out-of-the-box with current bttv versions, therefore it is only useful for hackers...

last update: Tue, 19 Jan 1999 20:07:33 GMT

Copyright 1999