Linux and DV cams?

Christopher Schmidt crschmidt at crschmidt.net
Mon Dec 6 15:51:01 EST 2004


On Mon, Dec 06, 2004 at 03:19:07PM -0500, Paul Lussier wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> Does anyone have any opinions on digital video cameras and use with
> Linux?  Any thoughts on what to get or not to get?  What to stay away
> from and what to look for?  Also, what's the best media to record on
> with these (I assume there are a variety of tape formats, and some that
> record directly to CD or DVD?)

DV cameras typically record to a Digital Tape format - the same kind 
that backups used to use. They can also typically play/record onto 
older, analog 8MM tapes, although you lose the Digital features 
(timestamping) and a little bit of quality.

As for Linux compatibility: I'm pretty sure most of these things just 
work over Firewire on somem standard, but I have no idea how that works 
under Linux. I know that when we were buying one (for Windows use) there 
didn't seem to be any standards conflicts, and every program that does 
video editing could access them.

I think the major concern is going to be finding software to interact 
with them. I've never seen anything under Linux that seems to have even 
a part of the strength that Windows or Mac packages have for doing 
similar things. In fact, I'm not really sure they can do anything more 
than capture, and I've never had the hardware to test how good they are 
at that. I do run a webcam with v4l, but it's just a quickcam, and it 
only gets about 3 fps on full res, so I can't offer much help there.

-- 
Christopher Schmidt
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