DV Camcorder, firewire & live streaming

[tintinn]

Hello,

Can anyone who has experimented on live a/v streaming using live source from a dv camcorder connected to pc via firewire input, running vlc/directshow share their experience (setup, performance, quality etc) ?

I have all the others except a dv camcorder, i would like to buy one which is usable with vlc. I intend to use it to show live surgery in the hospital that I'm working in.

Thank in advance for any reply.

Regards,
Badrul

[jenul]

Hi!

I'm new to this, but as far as I know it is not possible to stream DV (uncompressed 30Mbps) with VideoLan (vlc). You probably need to do transcoding in order to get it running. There are some additional issues with the sound also, I think it was addressed in another topic.
However, try DVTS ( http://www.sfc.wide.ad.jp/DVTS/ ). But remember, DTVS (Windows version) dosen't work with a PAL camcorder...

[Frater Kork]

Hi Guys!

I just tested an old Canon MV3i DV camcorder over Firewire into vlc 0.7.1 DirectShow and it worked pretty fine, great programming Guys!

Two problems manifested themselves though, both may need programming to solve - dunno. One easy and one tough:

Easy: Audio on most DV cams can be either 16 bit or 12 bit per sample, vlc seems to pick 16 as default even when the DV signal is 12. This leads to weak Right channel and horrible noises in the Left channel.
Quick solve is to set it to mono and turn up the volume...

Tough: Sending the DV stream direct to the screen works fine in raw but it eats something like 80% CPU on my 2Ghz P4 with 512Ram.
Running in fullscreen or adding a deinterlace filter hangs vlc in seconds.
Dont know what is causing this. Bad driver optimization?
Doing transcode and stream kills it as well, even when not copying to local screen.

I tried copying the video to disk and open the resulting AVI file in VLC, this gave exactly the same results - so I guess its not in the DirectShow implementation...

Running the same AVI file in BSPlayer worked fine.

Otherwise its a great app

Cheers!

[kirkpatrick]

I have tried Canon’s ZR-70 DV and Sony’s HVR-Z1U, HDV without success. My local play screen is a video with the top of the frame down 1/3 of the screen. Digital noise large blocky patches flash every few seconds. The sound doesn't seem to be using the right rate or codec or ?

I've used several PC's and camcorders. They all run various editing systems and capture apps fine. One's XP and the other is Win2000.

I've seen examples of the JVC HDV working....

Anyone know what other settings may work?

Thanks,
John

[Feivel]

So, is it not possible at all to transcode the digital signal from a comcorder? What if the signal is transcoded by hardware(osprey etc.) before?

[GeBu]

Yes, I have the same problem on my cameras. It the same in the new version 0.8.4. Do you know if developers think to solve it?
Do you know commandline parameter to play video in mono mode? I would like to create simple script for users to play LAN stream with.

Easy: Audio on most DV cams can be either 16 bit or 12 bit per sample, vlc seems to pick 16 as default even when the DV signal is 12. This leads to weak Right channel and horrible noises in the Left channel.
Quick solve is to set it to mono and turn up the volume...

[GeBu]

It should be new option (idea of my friend): --12bitaudio and --16bitaudio

[GeBu]

The ticket will created: https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/458

[xtophe]

Gibalou who coded the DV demuxer says that it should detect and convert 12 to 16 bits automatically.

Could you upload a sample to ftp://streams.videolan.org/incoming so he can have a look

[GeBu]

It is problem of live streaming. I do not use VLC for store data from DV camera. I will try to prepare it for you.
I´m not alone who has this problem.

Gibalou who coded the DV demuxer says that it should detect and convert 12 to 16 bits automatically.

Could you upload a sample to ftp://streams.videolan.org/incoming so he can have a look

[GeBu]

My friend find very easy solution for streaming - switch sound to mono is not useful for streaming, because I must explain it to evere listener.

The solution is: switch DV camera to 16 bit in camera menu . It works.

[GeBu]

I would like to upload file in DV 2 format, but I do not know how to read it from camera by VideoLAN. Can you help me?