Roger said: > > (i've sent a copy of this to gerd already) > > ok. i've been doing video capture with xawtv for the past week. > I'm still getting 'choppy/jerky' recording! yuk! > My system specs: > Mandrake 8.1 > 2x750 P3 > 256MB > Nvidia 32MB Geforce DDR w/ nvidia's drivers > PCTV > xawtv-*3.64-1mdk > kernel-smp-2.4.13-4mdk (cooker kernel of 2.4.13smp - rebuilt on > this i686 arch for speed) maybe xawtv isn't so hot at video capture. i personally use the qt-based capture program from avifile(http://avifile.sourceforge.net) and encode my videoto DiVx 4.0. im most intersted in maximal disk savings. i encode at 320x240 with 8bit mono sound 11khz, average about 90kB/second for the stream(sound+video). or ~300-350MB per hour of video. running: AMD Athlon 1300mhz debian 3.0(woody) 768MB pc 133 nvidia geforce2 MX 64MB w/nvidia's drivers xfree86 4.1.0 hauppauge wintv PCI linux 2.2.19 with the ide patch as you can imagine, a 90kB/s stream of video is nothing for the disk so the light is almost never on .. quality is quite good. it can be a pain to try to sync the audio/video on playback(divx players have this option or at least they should). but for me its a small price to pay to cut the video down to that size. avifile supports a bunch of other encoding formats not just divx 4, so if you try it you could try various formats. cpu hovers 15-30% oh i also capture in 24fps, rarely drops a frame but i have to be very careful with the system, i shut down as much stuff as i can to reduce cpu usage(and cpu spikes), i don't move the mouse cursor while recording, and it drops maybe 10 frames per 30minutes of video(~43,200 frames ?) i also disable opengl while recording it seems to help keep framerates up. running afterstep. i would imagine gnome or kde if your using those has tons of little things going that could cause a cpu to spike for a millisecond causing a dropped frame. i even shut off my wharf which has stuff like clock, cpu/memory meters etc. because i can't touch my system during encoding(i keep the mouse cursor over the "stop" button to stop recording so i can just click instead of move it) i keep my laptop next to my system so i can use it to do normal things. nate
