[SOLVED] Unable to capure more than one image in Dapper 6.06

[Mark Barton]

Mark Barton wrote:
> I have been using a CLI program call videodog 
> (http://paginas.terra.com.br/informatica/gleicon/video4linux/videodog.html) 
> to capture single frames from a Avermedia Eyes Pro card (Bt878 based) 
> with Suse 10 (2.6.13 kernel). This worked great fine until I  recently 
> switched to Ubuntu Dapper 6.06. (2.6.15 kernel). I can capture a good 
> frame if my computer is first powered on, however all subsequent 
> captures only show a white image with absolutely no detail at all. Now 
> if I run Tvtime or Xawtv I can get a continuous image stream, but if I 
> then attempt a capture using the videodog program, I will get one good 
> image and then nothing but white images after that. I also tried a 
> program called streamer that was in the Ubuntu repositories and it gave 
> the same results. I did try v4lctl and fiddling with some of the 
> control, but that didn't work either.
>
> I feel that this is a setting or perhaps something was added to the 
> driver that is not initialized correctly in the older CLI programs 
> although I did look at the boot log messages and both SUSE and Ubuntu 
> are using the same bttv driver version.
>
>  From dmesg...
> [17179605.800000] bttv0: Bt878 (rev 17) at 0000:00:14.0, irq: 10, 
> latency: 32, mmio: 0xde003000
> [17179605.800000] bttv0: using:  *** UNKNOWN/GENERIC ***  
> [card=0,autodetected]
> [17179605.800000] bttv0: gpio: en=00000000, out=00000000 in=008ff002 [init]
> [17179605.896000] bttv0: using tuner=-1
> [17179605.896000] bttv0: i2c: checking for MSP34xx @ 0x80... not found
> [17179605.900000] bttv0: i2c: checking for TDA9875 @ 0xb0... not found
> [17179605.900000] bttv0: i2c: checking for TDA7432 @ 0x8a... not found
> [17179605.904000] bttv0: i2c: checking for TDA9887 @ 0x86... not found
> [17179605.904000] bttv0: registered device video0
> [17179605.904000] bttv0: registered device vbi0
>
> . I would appreciate it if someone  and can point in the right direction 
> for troubleshooting the problem. I certainly don't might digging down 
> into application or driver code if necessary
>
> Motherboard - VIA ME6000, 600 MHZ, 1GB memory
>
> Thanks
> Mark
>
>
>
>   
After doing some testing, I found the real issue is with the input mux 
on the BT878 card. This card has only a single device with four inputs 
and apparently there is a settling time issue when switching inputs. The 
weird part and one of the reason I thought it might a settings issue was 
the way the captures where being trashed. For example, Capture from 
input 0 good, capture for input 1 good, capture from input 0 bad, 
capture from input 2 good,  Had I suspected an input issue, I would have 
hit upon it pretty quickly in Google as it has been discussed many times 
in the past. As a workaround, I added a v4lctl to select the input for 
the next capture to my scripts and now all is well.

Thanks
Mark