The VideoLAN Forums

Hello everyone,
I'm a video reporter and I need to stream live from my DVcamera to a remote server,
I connect the professional Dvcamera through the firewire port called also 1394, in windows there is the option in the Gui under the open video capture devices of using the 1394 port as a video input source, but when I try the same on my mac the only capture option are : Isight, screen, EyeTv.
Is there any way to using the firewire port as a input video/audio capture device? if there is this option under the command line/ shell someone can indicate me the way?

thank you for any help and advices.
Fede

Capturing from firewire devices is currently not supported within the Mac OS X port of VLC media player, because its underlying libraries are not compatible with Mac OS X.

Therefore, you are required to use Linux or Windows to do so. Sorry about that.

And there is any plan to implement this in the future?
thanks anyway

Fede

Out of curosity which libray is being used for 1394 support?

There are plans to support this through QTKit now that VLC doesn't need to care about 10.4 anymore, but for know, it's seems that there is noone in the team with the necessary time to do so.

On other operating systems, we are using libdc1394 btw.

Thanks again Felix,
what is QTKit? some workaround to solve this issue?
If anyone on your team decide to implement this feature, I will be happy to speak about it and considering a little financial help to contribute.

Regards
Fede

QTKit is a Cocoa-based framework provided by Apple to access multimedia devices on Mac and to process their signals. It's based upon QuickTime and already used by VLC to implement the iSight input.

I just noticed yesterday, that libdc1394 is currently announced as being compatible with Mac OS X. If you are interested, I could set up a build for to test whether it really works. You'd have to do that through the command-line though. Additionally, I'm lacking a testing device, so I can't promise if it will work at all.

Would you need any type of testing device in particular, or just any device capable of outputing DV? Would you need it on a temporary or permanent basis? I don't have anything to offer, but maybe someone in the forum might be able to help out?

Hi Felix, what kind of device do you need in order to do testing? I really would like to contribute to solve this issue and also looking to find a partnership to build a customized version from the core of VLC able to do only live streaming from the camera to a dedicated network, If you are interested please could you send me your private email contact in order to speak deeply about it?

Thx
Fede

Regrettably, I personally don't have the time and experience to implement this on the Mac. However, I'll forward this thread to a contract worker developing VLC for 6 years now and ask him to have a look at it.

Felix thanks for drawing my attention to this question.

Could you please contact me on jean-paul.saman _AT_ m2x _DOT_ nl ?

Many thanks,
Jean-Paul Saman

Hi there...
I'm right now confronting this limitation on VLC 1.1.3 for Mac. Has been any progress happening on this matter? Is there a testing version for that library? Thanks a lot for any hints in how to grab a device other that the isight or bringing audio in the isight signal!

I should add that I'm looking for a solution too... it's been over a year since apparently this version has been in tests with the new library. Was there any progress?