Hi,

Can anyone recommend a laptop with a video in port with linux support
? I want to display a PAL video signal in a window in X. If the video
signal can be recorded to the harddrive as an MPEG data stream in real
time, it would be a bonus.
Also what software would people recommend for this ?

Regards
Anton Erasmus

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004, Anton Erasmus wrote:

> Can anyone recommend a laptop with a video in port with linux support
> ? I want to display a PAL video signal in a window in X. If the video
> signal can be recorded to the harddrive as an MPEG data stream in real
> time, it would be a bonus.

I have a DELL Latitude D800. I installed RedHat 9.0 on it from the CDes. I
installed all packages, on just about 5 GB. Everything went smoothly and
my Laptop's Firewire port has been detected and configured automatically.
I haven't tried it yet with a camcorder, but it's driver is uploaded at
every boot. I also think that the wireless card has not been configured,
and my particular model seems to be difficult to configure at this point
in time. But I don't really need it, so I don't really care.

The laptop comes with a 15,4" screen, with 1280x1024, 1680x1050 or
1920x1200 resolution. I have the second one. With some reading on the net
I easily configured the X driver to run in the screen's natural
resolution, even though I am not very versed at fixing Linux. This screen
is an experience in itself. Very nice!

> Also what software would people recommend for this ?

Try a search on Google for "video editing Linux". There are some
applications which have received good criticism. I haven't tried any
of them.

I wonder though if it wouldn't be best for you to get a box like "Pinnacle
MovieBox DV". It has lots of digital and analog inputs, and is connected
to the PC through Firewire. It will encode any of the input video signals
it supports to MPEG1, MPEG2 or a couple of other formats.

Does anyone know for sure if this box works with Linux?

Regards
Catalin


--

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<< We are what we repeatedly do. >>
<< Excellence, therefore, is not an act >>
<< but a habit. >>
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On Sun, 1 Feb 2004 11:47:45 +0100, Doru-Catalin Togea
<doru-cat@ifi.uio.no> wrote:

>On Thu, 22 Jan 2004, Anton Erasmus wrote:
>
>> Can anyone recommend a laptop with a video in port with linux support
>> ? I want to display a PAL video signal in a window in X. If the video
>> signal can be recorded to the harddrive as an MPEG data stream in real
>> time, it would be a bonus.
[Laptop Specs Snipped]
>
>> Also what software would people recommend for this ?
>
>Try a search on Google for "video editing Linux". There are some
>applications which have received good criticism. I haven't tried any
>of them.
>
>I wonder though if it wouldn't be best for you to get a box like "Pinnacle
>MovieBox DV". It has lots of digital and analog inputs, and is connected
>to the PC through Firewire. It will encode any of the input video signals
>it supports to MPEG1, MPEG2 or a couple of other formats.

I have come to the same conclusion. I have found a link to a
professional quality PAL/NTSC to IEEE1394 converter at US$750.
It also looks as if all the Linux apps that can accept a video input
stream can get the data via the IEEE1394 port. There are also quite a
number of industrial cameras available with IEEE1394 output. The
biggest problem is the max 5m cable length.

>Does anyone know for sure if this box works with Linux?
>

Regards
Anton Erasmus