2.1 Viewer Programs

2.1.1 v4lsview, sdlview, pgxview, ffbview

NAME

v4lsview, sdlview, pgxview, ffbview - Video4Linux-compliant viewers

SYNOPSIS

[v4lsview | sdlview | pgxview | ffbview] [-n norm] [-c chan] [-f freq] [-w width] [-h height] [-W width] [-H height] [-d device] [-G device] [-A] [-v] [-P palette] [-D driver] [-R region]

DESCRIPTION

v4lsview and its family display captured image from Video4Linux device under Solaris.

v4lsview is most generic viewer among these viewers because it can choose displaying driver. But it requires many libraries.

sdlview is specialized to use SDL (bound to SDL driver internally). similarly, pgxview is bound to PGX driver only, ffbview is bound to FFB+ driver only. These viewers has less shared library requirement.

OPTIONS

-n norm

Norm (video signal standard).

norm	description
0	PAL (PAL-B, PAL-D, PAL-G, PAL-H, PAL-I)
1	NTSC
2	SECAM (SECAM L)
3	PAL-NC
4	PAL-M
5	PAL-N
6	NTSC-Japan (not recommended even in Japan)

-c chan

Video channel (not TV station channel). In most cards, range of chan is from 0 to 3. Traditionally, '0' is assigned to TV tuner, '1' to composite video input, '2' to S-Video input respectively.

-f freq

Tuning frequency of TV tuner. freq is integer and must be multiplied by 16. For example, specify 3200 for 200MHz station.

-w width, -h height

Size of capturing image. By default, -w 480 -h 320 is specified.

-W width, -H height

Size of displaying image. By default, same size is specified to -w and -h. Specifying different size from -w and -h is allowed only for 'yuv,32' palette.

-d device

Video capture device. By default, /dev/video0 is assumed.

-G device

Frame buffer device to display.

-A

Initialize system audio (not bt848x's). This enables monitor of audio input, input from line-in, output to line-out.

-v

Produce verbose info.

-P palette

Format of capturing and displaying pixels. This option is valid only for sdl driver. Other viewers silently ignore it.

Possible palettes are listed below:

palette	capturing format	displaying format	note
yuv,32	YUV422	RGB32	SPARC only
yuv,24	YUV422	RGB24
32,32	RGB32	RGB32	SPARC only
24,32	RGB24	RGB32	SPARC only
24,24	RGB24	RGB24
16,16	RGB565	RGB565
15,15	RGB555	RGB555

In SPARC platform, yuv,32 is default and recommended. In x86 platform, 16,16 is recommended.

-D driver

Type of displaying driver. This option is valid only for v4lsview. Other viewers silently ignore (driver is selected automatically).

driver	description
sdl	Generic displaying driver. This is default.
pgx	Faster displaying driver only for PGX32/PGX64 graphics adapter series. These adapters have hardware-acceralated color space conversion function.
ffb	Faster displaying driver only for FFB2+ graphics adapter series. These adapter has hardware-acceralated color space conversion function.
null	Null displaying driver. No visible output.

-R region

Select region. This specifies mapping between frequency allocation and channel number. See tv-station-util. If capture card does not have tuner, this option is meaningless.

KEY OPERATION

c

Launch TV channel selector window. Actually this invokes gtk-v4lctl command.

s

Take snapshot. Saved format is PPM (portable pixmap) and its file name is 'YYYYMMDD_HHMMSSFF.ppm'

Up, PageUp

Increment TV channel number.

Down, PageDown

Decrement TV channel number.

m

Toggle mute state.

p

Toggle pause state.

f

Toggle fullscreen mode.

q, Esc

Quit viewer.

ENVIRONMENT

LC_TV

Determines TV station frequency mapping. See tv-station-util.

LC_TVFREQ_FINE_TUNE

fine adjustment for TV tuning in kHz.

BUGS

• v4lsview requires 24 or more color depth.
• sdl driver confuses if byte order is different between capturing host and displaying host.
• Only one viewer can use pgx/ffb driver for one graphics device.
• pgx/ffb driver won't work in higher resolution mode.
• We don't know which series of FFB2 can be used for ffbview exactly. ffbview's drawing code is derived from Ogle, and Ogle manual say that overlay feature needs FFB2+ (Creator 3D series 3). But, on the other hand, framebuffer FAQ says that FFB2 (as known as Creator 3D series 2) and AFB (as known as Elite 3D) has color space conversion ability. Anyway, ffb driver doesn't run on normal FFB (Creator)

2.1.2 watch_tv

NAME

watch_tv - view video with pre-defined paramters

SYNOPSIS

watch_tv [CHANNEL[-vga] [-qvga]] [v4lsview_OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION

This utility is tiny wrapper script for v4lsview command family.

OPTIONS

CHANNEL

Channel descriptor.

-vga, -qvga

Equivalent to -w640 -h480 and -w320 -h240 respectively.

v4lsview_OPTIONS

See OPTIONS section of v4lsview command. See v4lsview.

CONFIGURATION FILE

Recognizes following keywords: region, viewer, verbose, default.device, default.channel, default.norm, default.width, default.height. They are self-explanatory.

region: jp.cable viewer: pgxview default.device: /dev/video0 default.channel: 0 default.width: 640 default.height: 480 default.norm: 1