cannot capture video with my WinTV USB2

Asked by Hector Hugo Aviles

Hello,

I used to capture video using Ubuntu Edgy and a WintV USB2 framegrabber attached to a Canon VCC5 camera.
However, I upgraded two days ago to Feisty and now I only see static.

Running xawtv I see the following output:
xawtv -nodga
This is xawtv-3.95.dfsg.1, running on Linux/i686 (2.6.20-16-386)
X Error of failed request: XF86DGANoDirectVideoMode
  Major opcode of failed request: 136 (XFree86-DGA)
  Minor opcode of failed request: 1 (XF86DGAGetVideoLL)
  Serial number of failed request: 13
  Current serial number in output stream: 13
v4l-conf had some trouble, trying to continue anyway
Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-ledfixed-medium-r-*--39-*-*-*-c-*-*-*" to type FontStruct

with v4l-info I get the following:

hector@peoplebot-laptop:~$ v4l-info

### v4l2 device info [/dev/video0] ###
general info
    VIDIOC_QUERYCAP
        driver : "em28xx"
        card : "Hauppauge WinTV USB 2"
        bus_info : "5-5"
        version : 0.0.1
        capabilities : 0x5030041 [VIDEO_CAPTURE,?,TUNER,AUDIO,READWRITE,STREAMING]

standards
    VIDIOC_ENUMSTD(0)
        index : 0
        id : 0xff [PAL_B,PAL_B1,PAL_G,PAL_H,PAL_I,PAL_D,PAL_D1,PAL_K]
        name : "PAL"
        frameperiod.numerator : 1
        frameperiod.denominator : 25
        framelines : 625
    VIDIOC_ENUMSTD(1)
        index : 1
        id : 0xb000 [NTSC_M,NTSC_M_JP,?]
        name : "NTSC"
        frameperiod.numerator : 1001
        frameperiod.denominator : 30000
        framelines : 525
    VIDIOC_ENUMSTD(2)
        index : 2
        id : 0xff0000 [SECAM_B,SECAM_D,SECAM_G,SECAM_H,SECAM_K,SECAM_K1,SECAM_L,?ATSC_8_VSB]
        name : "SECAM"
        frameperiod.numerator : 1
        frameperiod.denominator : 25
        framelines : 625
    VIDIOC_ENUMSTD(3)
        index : 3
        id : 0x100 [PAL_M]
        name : "PAL-M"
        frameperiod.numerator : 1001
        frameperiod.denominator : 30000
        framelines : 525

inputs
    VIDIOC_ENUMINPUT(0)
        index : 0
        name : "Television"
        type : TUNER
        audioset : 0
        tuner : 0
        std : 0xffb1ff [PAL_B,PAL_B1,PAL_G,PAL_H,PAL_I,PAL_D,PAL_D1,PAL_K,PAL_M,NTSC_M,NTSC_M_JP,?,SECAM_B,SECAM_D,SECAM_G,SECAM_H,SECAM_K,SECAM_K1,SECAM_L,?ATSC_8_VSB]
        status : 0x0 []
    VIDIOC_ENUMINPUT(1)
        index : 1
        name : "S-Video"
        type : CAMERA
        audioset : 0
        tuner : 0
        std : 0xffb1ff [PAL_B,PAL_B1,PAL_G,PAL_H,PAL_I,PAL_D,PAL_D1,PAL_K,PAL_M,NTSC_M,NTSC_M_JP,?,SECAM_B,SECAM_D,SECAM_G,SECAM_H,SECAM_K,SECAM_K1,SECAM_L,?ATSC_8_VSB]
        status : 0x0 []

tuners
    VIDIOC_G_TUNER(0)
        index : 0
        name : "Tuner"
        type : ANALOG_TV
        capability : 0x72 [NORM,STEREO,LANG2,LANG1]
        rangelow : 704
        rangehigh : 15328
        rxsubchans : 0x1 [MONO]
        audmode : STEREO
        signal : 0
        afc : 0

video capture
    VIDIOC_ENUM_FMT(0,VIDEO_CAPTURE)
        index : 0
        type : VIDEO_CAPTURE
        flags : 0
        description : "Packed YUY2"
        pixelformat : 0x56595559 [YUYV]
    VIDIOC_G_FMT(VIDEO_CAPTURE)
        type : VIDEO_CAPTURE
        fmt.pix.width : 720
        fmt.pix.height : 480
        fmt.pix.pixelformat : 0x56595559 [YUYV]
        fmt.pix.field : INTERLACED
        fmt.pix.bytesperline : 1440
        fmt.pix.sizeimage : 691200
        fmt.pix.colorspace : SMPTE170M
        fmt.pix.priv : 0

controls
    VIDIOC_QUERYCTRL(BASE+0)
        id : 9963776
        type : INTEGER
        name : "Brightness"
        minimum : 0
        maximum : 255
        step : 1
        default_value : 128
        flags : 0
    VIDIOC_QUERYCTRL(BASE+1)
        id : 9963777
        type : INTEGER
        name : "Contrast"
        minimum : 0
        maximum : 255
        step : 1
        default_value : 128
        flags : 0
    VIDIOC_QUERYCTRL(BASE+2)
        id : 9963778
        type : INTEGER
        name : "Saturation"
        minimum : 0
        maximum : 255
        step : 1
        default_value : 128
        flags : 0
    VIDIOC_QUERYCTRL(BASE+3)
        id : 9963779
        type : INTEGER
        name : "Hue"
        minimum : -128
        maximum : 127
        step : 1
        default_value : 0
        flags : 0

### video4linux device info [/dev/video0] ###
general info
    VIDIOCGCAP
        name : "Hauppauge WinTV USB 2"
        type : 0x3 [CAPTURE,TUNER]
        channels : 2
        audios : 0
        maxwidth : 720
        maxheight : 480
        minwidth : 48
        minheight : 32

channels
    VIDIOCGCHAN(0)
        channel : 0
        name : "Television"
        tuners : 1
        flags : 0x1 [TUNER]
        type : TV
        norm : 1
    VIDIOCGCHAN(1)
        channel : 1
        name : "S-Video"
        tuners : 0
        flags : 0x0 []
        type : CAMERA
        norm : 1

tuner
    VIDIOCGTUNER
        tuner : 0
        name : "Tuner"
        rangelow : 704
        rangehigh : 15328
        flags : 0x7 [PAL,NTSC,SECAM]
        mode : NTSC
        signal : 0

audio
    VIDIOCGAUDIO
        audio : 0
        volume : 30036
        bass : 32768
        treble : 32768

picture
    VIDIOCGPICT
        brightness : 32896
        hue : 32896
        colour : 32896
        contrast : 32896
        whiteness : 0
        depth : 16
        palette : YUYV

buffer
ioctl VIDIOCGFBUF: Invalid argument

window
    VIDIOCGWIN
        x : 0
        y : 0
        width : 720
        height : 480
        chromakey : 0
        flags : 0

Would you help me with this?

Regards and thanks in advance,
Héctor.

Question information

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Hector Hugo Aviles
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Revision history for this message
Andrea Corbellini (andrea.corbellini) said :
#1

I think you have a bad configuration. Did you change some configs on Edgy?

Revision history for this message
Hector Hugo Aviles (haviles) said :
#2

Hi Andrea,

I really don't know if I change the configuration. This is my third update since I installed Ubuntu for the first time.

Would you tell me where to look?

Best regards,
Héctor.

Revision history for this message
Andrea Corbellini (andrea.corbellini) said :
#3

I think I know the solution: try running « xawtv -nodga -device /dev/video0 » in a terminal.

Revision history for this message
Hector Hugo Aviles (haviles) said :
#4

Hi Andrea,

after a while, I discovered there were two different problems with my computer. The original one,
the video capture problem was solved by installing the em28xx driver for my frame grabber following
the instructions described here:

http://www.2nrds.com/digital-tv-in-linux-with-em28xx-devices

It seems that the pre-installed module em288xx does not work with the kernel version 2.6.20-16-386
(as it is said by dmesg). Now I can capture video with xawtv -nodga.

The other problem was my nvidia card. When testing for different solutions I realize that
I had no driver installed for this card. However, when I tried to install it, there was some kind of version mismatch between the
nvidia kernel module (version 1.0-9755) and the X module (V. 1.0-9631) , as it is said by the emergency screen of the X system... :S
 I don't know exactly what does it mean, but the solution that I applied was to download this driver:

ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-9755/

and install it, then everything worked fine.

Thank you very much for your help.
Regards,
Héctor.