John Pettigrew said:
I have just been given a digital video camera by my father (lucky me!) so that we can take videos of our new daughter. This camera is a Canon MV630i, which has an IEEE1394 connection, which allows video to be exported to a PC. However,the supplied software is (of course) Windows only.
I believe that this camera is supported by the IEEE1394 driver under linux, so I'm contemplating buying a PCI card, given they're only £10-20. However, there are a couple of questions I still don't know the answers to.
First, I'm using SuSE 8.2 ATM - is Firewire support enabled in this version, and how complete is it? I'm going to be upgrading to 9.1 when that comes out - I assume that that will improve matters?
Second, are there any apps available for linux to capture the video input from such a camera? The MainConcept site suggests that MainActor5 supports this and ISTR that MainActor 5.2 will be bundled with SUSE 9.1 - is this right? If so, is this likely to solve all my problems (TM)?
I checked here http://www.gphoto.org/proj/libgphoto2/support.php and it looks like gphoto supports your camera. I don't know if that version of gphoto comes on your distribution, but you could probably add it. Whether the kernel has support for the device is another question that you will need to answer. Looks like there is a specific web site devoted to FireWire 800 http://www.linux1394.org/ HTH -- Neil Schneider pacneil_at_linuxgeek_dot_net http://www.paccomp.com Key fingerprint = 67F0 E493 FCC0 0A8C 769B 8209 32D7 1DB1 8460 C47D Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks. --James Baldwin