Alpha release of capture application for Linux

[JamesF]

I finally got this far

A binary (32-bit and 64-bit x86 only) alpha release of my capture application for Linux is now available from http://www.fidell.co.uk/oacapture/oacapture-0.0.1alpha1.tar.bz2

I really do mean alpha.  It may eat all your data and throw it away.  The weather has been so poor of late that I've not even had a chance to test it properly in "real world" use myself.  Much of it isn't even implemented yet.  But if you want to give it a try and give me some feedback please do.  I'm half-expecting that it will fall flat on its face before it even gets installed.

In theory cameras supported by V4L2 should work.  In practice V4L2 support for some cameras is ropey.  v3.5 kernels and later seem to support the SPC900 ok, but earlier v3 kernels look dodgy and that camera probably won't work right now.  The ASI cameras should work and I've tested the 120MC and 120MM.

I've run the application successfully on Mint 15, Mint 14, Ubuntu 12.04 and Fedora 19.  Beyond that you're in pretty much unexplored territory.

Though it may have to link against some closed-source libraries, this is and will remain an open source system.  For the moment, if you'd like a copy of the source just let me know.  However it is all hideously cobbled together and there's no build system as such, and it will all change rapidly as I undo many of the bodges, laziness and inadequately thought-through bits so unless you're pant-wettingly desperate to see the source I'd appreciate having a bit more time to deal with that, at which point it will just become another part of the release.

Oh, you'll need a username and password for the above URL, too.  They are "alpha" and "centauri" respectively.

James

[cgarry]

Hi James,

Some early issues trying this with Mint 15:

 $ ./install.shmkdir: cannot create directory ‘/usr/local/openastro’: Permission deniedmkdir: cannot create directory ‘/usr/local/openastro’: Permission deniedrsync: mkdir "/usr/local/openastro/lib" failed: No such file or directory (2)rsync error: error in file IO (code 11) at main.c(605) [Receiver=3.0.9]rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (9 bytes received so far) [sender]rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(605) [sender=3.0.9]cp: cannot create regular file ‘/usr/local/openastro/bin’: No such file or directoryln: failed to create symbolic link ‘/usr/local/bin/oacapture’: Permission deniedcp: cannot create regular file ‘/etc/udev/rules.d/70-asi-cameras.rules’: Permission deniedinstall complete

Cheers,

Chris

[JamesF]

Are you running the script as you, or as root?

James

[cgarry]

That was running the script as myself.

Chris

[JamesF]

Ah.  It needs to be run as root.  I should perhaps have pointed that out in the instructions, or made the install script drop out with a message if it wasn't run as root.

James

[StuW]

Working well with my laptop built in camera (scb-1100n) on Mint 15.

[cgarry]

Okay, it installs fine as root.

With my 120MM I see FPS (max) = 100, and FPS (actual) = 49 which is a bit slower than I would expect but that could be down to the old laptop I am using.  How do I actually record an AVI file?  The triangle button does nothing for me...

[edit]

Okay I can record in SER format, but AVI does not work.

[/edit]

Cheers,

Chris

[JamesF]

Okay, it installs fine as root.

With my 120MM I see FPS (max) = 100, and FPS (actual) = 49 which is a bit slower than I would expect but that could be down to the old laptop I am using.  How do I actually record an AVI file?  The triangle button does nothing for me...

[edit]

Okay I can record in SER format, but AVI does not work.

[/edit]

Cheers,

Chris

That's odd  Is it recording an AVI file when you have it set to SER format?

The theoretical maximum FPS is determined purely by the exposure time setting.  Eg. a 10ms exposure time will give you 100fps.  It's entirely possible that the USB subsystem can't deliver that, but without a huge amount more grubbing around it would be hard to work out a better estimate.  On my i5 desktop with the smallest frame size on the 120MM I've managed to get it up to about 215fps, but that's going to present quite a challenge to the disk subsystem.  I'd probably look at recording to a ramdisk if I wanted to have half a chance of achieving that.

James

[cgarry]

Actually, that leads to another question.  Where do I find the captured file?  There does not seem to be any way to set the capture folder that works.

Cheers,

Chris

[JamesF]

For the moment you should be able to use a full (or relative) pathname in the filename box.  Without a directory name they'll get written to the current directory.

James

[cgarry]

Putting the full path in the filename box has done the trick and I can create AVI files.

I noticed that the limit function is not working yet after a huge AVI file was created!

The other thing I noticed was the FPS value in the created file is the maximum FPS value, not the actual FPS value.

Obviously these are very early days but it is looking good so far.

Cheers,

Chris

[JamesF]

Working well with my laptop built in camera (scb-1100n) on Mint 15.

Missed this earlier.  Thanks for that, Stu.  It's nice to know that it works with cameras I'd not even tried.  Reassuring that I am probably on the right track in that case

James

[JamesF]

The other thing I noticed was the FPS value in the created file is the maximum FPS value, not the actual FPS value.

I'll look into what's feasible to do there.  I was aware there was an issue, but I'd been sort of ignoring it

James