Hi! I've been trying to answer the same question myself. This is what I have determined so far, in terms of the options available and their various pros/cons. I need the framegrabbing gear for robotics and computer vision applications: 1) For ATI based cards there was (is?) a project called gatos. While it seemed to me that it was possible to make this run with a number of older ATI cards, support for newer cards wasn't there, and the project's focus seemed more on watching TV than video capture. I also think they went their own way rather than using v4l. In the end it did not seem an attractive option for me. 2) There's 'QuickCams'. The Philipps VESTA series, the Creative Webcam II and recently also the Logitech QuickCam Express and Web are more or less well supported. There's v4l drivers, and the cameras are very cheap ($40 or so for a Logitech QuickCam). USB is a convenient interface (plug n play, hot swapable, and no nasty power bricks for the cam). However, the image quality of these cams is proportional to their price, ie very low. Still, for many applications this might be the way to go, I feel, and for the price it can't hurt to try. 3) There's IEEE1394, or FireWire. There's a large number of supported host adapters, some sell for less than $200. If you have an OHCI conformant host adapter, chances are it will work pretty well. See http://linux1394.sourceforge.net/ for more info. There's a large number of cameras you could use, from MiniDV handycams to security type cameras. Prices can range from a couple of hundred to several thousand. At the moment, the low level 1394 support seems to be well in place, but the video drivers are more 'raw'. In particular I don't think there's v4l support yet, although there are early programs for grabbing DV. This seems like a good option to me if you're writing your own code and are prepared to be a bit of a pioneer. There's no doubtin my mind that there's future in this, and drivers will become a well supported part of the kernel. 4) There's the bt848 based stuff. This seems like a cheap option that is likely to work well, if you get the right hardware. For my purposes it seemed a bit TV oriented, and none of the supported cards really were frame grabbers in their first role. 5) As far as I was able to ascertain the only framegrabber card in active production with support under linux is the Matrox Meteor II. The Matrox framegrabbers have a reputation for quality, but the price is not low: I recon $600 or so for a plain Meteor II, and that's without a camera. The Meteor II Multichannel is sadly not let supported under linux. A german company maintains v4l2 drivers for the Meteor II. That's my 2c, but I'd sure like to hear other people's opinions/finds. Does anyone have a recommendation for framegrabbing under linux, using current kernels and currently available hardware? Thanks, Richie On Mon, 2001-11-05 at 09:25, Ross Dmochowski wrote: > Hi- > anyone have a suggestion for 'best' all-around Video capture card? > My only requirements- > a) good vl1 (and hopefully vl2) driver support > b) relatively inexpensive > > There is a project I'm scoping to capture video from vhs and possibly > video-camera (firewire). > Any help would be appreciated, as I am new to using video-capture > devices under linux. > Thanks. > > Ross S. Dmochowski > Programmer/Analyst III > UC Berkeley Department of Mechanical Engineering > 2113 Etcheverry Hall > Berkeley, CA 94720-0001 > Phone (510) 643-0873 > Fax (510) 643-3076 > _________________________________________________________________ > PGP Fingerprint: 8FF0A0165DC08F73EC7CB75761EF4F23D7C207FA > http://pgpkeys.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xD7C207FA > _________________________________________________________________ > > > > _______________________________________________ > Video4linux-list mailing list > Video4linux-list@xxxxxxxxxx > https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/video4linux-list
