4ch EasyCap Somagic; how to capture stable video?

[SteveDee]

I've just got one of these devices from Amazon at the bargain price of £7.38.

I downloaded your source files and replaced: somagic-extract-firmware.c, somagic-init.c, somagic-capture.c with the newer versions that deal with the SmiUsbGrabber3F.sys driver.

Running somagic-init seems to work, as lsusb shows correct ID ic88:003f

Also, running; sudo somagic-capture --test-only returns 0

The problem I have is trying to capture video.

1) video suffers from a random horizontal sync problem, where horizontal blocks of the image may appear in the wrong part of the image. What do you call this, and is there a solution?
2) my camera is colour, but my image is monochrome
3) how do you specify the channel number in the command. For example, it does not like this:-
sudo somagic-capture -c 1 | mplayer -vf yadif,screenshot -demuxer rawvideo -rawvideo "pal:format=uyvy:fps=25" -aspect 4:3 -

...or this...

sudo somagic-capture -c=1 | mplayer -vf yadif,screenshot -demuxer rawvideo -rawvideo "pal:format=uyvy:fps=25" -aspect 4:3 -

[SteveDee]

I've tested this on a second computer, and get the same problem.

I tested the device on a Win7 machine and its works fine.

Details of my installation process and a picture showing the problem is here: http://captainbodgit.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-not-so-easycap-for-linux.html#more

Any help would be appreciated.

[Jon Arne Jørgensen]

Hi there,

As I'm mostly involved in the kernel driver development (which is at a stand still atm.), I'm not all that familiar with the user-space tools.
If I remember correctly there are two different algorithms for capturing video with the somagic-capture tool. You can select them with a command-line option.

You can see if that will help in getting a stable sync.

Also, I don't think we have discovered how to select video-input on the device with four CVBS inputs. (If that is what you mean by channel number).

As all the core developers only have access to the device with one CVBS and one S-Video input, we don't know how to controll the four input device.

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[tosiara]

Not sure, but looks like I have same issue. Please see this corresponding screenshot: http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/4125/73339514.26/0_7ff9f_4825020f_orig
Is it the same as you have?

I have started separate thread, because I also found some errors logged

On Monday, January 21, 2013 11:44:27 PM UTC+2, SteveDee wrote:

I've just got one of these devices from Amazon at the bargain price of £7.38.

[SteveDee]

Yes, it looks like the same problem. I have not investigated further due to other priorities. But my short-term aim was to get it working and test reliability on Linux.

Long term was to get it running on Raspberry Pi with Motion, so will monitor your new thread with interest.