FireWire to Kino/dvgrab from Canon ZR70MC ??

[jdetwile]

This works in Windows (see below), but I'm obviously missing something when I try in in Linux world.

I have a Canon ZR70MC camcorder, with FireWire output, and want to edit a movie in Linux (FWIW: my FireWire interface is a Belkin 3-port, which is working just fine with a Maxtor drive - it p-n-p's nicely - and my OS is Fedora fc8.)

But Kino won't capture; it says "WARNING: raw1394 kernel module not loaded or failure to read/write /dev/raw/1394!"
And dvgrab (command line) responds with 'Error: no camera exists'

The camera is attached to my FireWire port, it's turned on, etc.

Now, in Windows, I had to install Canon's 'WIA' driver (specific to the ZR70MC) before "p-n-p" would work. I have no equivalent piece of code for Linux.

So, my workaround at this point is as follows:
1. Take my footage on the ZR70MC, then plug the camcorder into FireWire interface
2. Boot up Windows-XP and upload from the camcorder to "Windows Movie Maker" and save as an avi (to my FireWire attached Maxtor drive)
3. Bring Windows down and fc8 up
4. ffmpeg the avi file to mpg (each file is 13Gb per hour at ntsc stds)
5. edit (with Cinelerra)

This works just fine! But, I'd really like to eliminate some of those steps.

Suggestions? What am I missing?
Thanks!

[disturbed1]

Looks like you don't have permission to read/write to the device.

Try running kino as root to see if it fixes the problem. If this does, check your groups list, and permissions to the device.

ls -l /dev/raw1394
Will tell you the owner and group of the device.

[jdetwile]

Well, now, that's progress!

ls /dev/raw1394

... reveals that there is no such device.

Any suggestions on how to create/install it?

Thanks much!

[jdetwile]

Oh. I should have said....

(Running kernel 2.6.25.14-69.fc8, and using Red Hat' s Package Manager)

I did a search in Package Manager for '1394'.

The installed packages are:
libdv - 1.0.0-3.fc8.i386
liblec61883 - 1.1.0-1.fc7.i386
libraw1394 - 1.3.0-7.fc8.i386
libavc1394 - 0.5.3-1.fc6.i386
dvgrab - 3.1.3.fc8.i386
(Note that Package Manager has not complained about incompatibilities with 'fc6' and 'fc7' in this list.)

The available/not-installed packages are:
libraw1394-devel - 1.3.0-7.fc8.i386
libdc1394 - 2.0.2-1-fc8.i386
libdc1394-devel - 2.0.2-1-fc8.i386
libdc1394-tools - 2.0.2-1.fc8.i386
libavc1394-devel - 0.5.3-1.fc6.i386
libdc1394-docs - 2.0.2-1.fc8.i386
libraw1394-devel - 1.3.0-3.fc8.i386
libdv-tools -1.0.0-3.fc8.i386
corlander - 2.0.0-0.6.rc6.fc8.i386
ucview - 0.20.1-1.fc8.i386

So, I would have said that 'raw1394' is installed?

Thanks again!

[GMaq]

Hi,

I had the same issue (In Debian and Ubuntu though) I made sure my 1394 controller showed up in the "Hardware Manager" and added my self as a user to the "disk" group, For some reason most Linux distros still see firewire as a HDD controlling device.

So open a terminal and either sudo or as root, If you don't use sudo then don't type sudo at the beginning of the line, USERNAME is your user name:

sudo adduser USERNAME disk

Reboot the machine and try Kino again

[jdetwile]

Thanks, but I don't think that's going to help much.

1. I don't see anything with the name 'Hardware Manager' in Fedora (running Gnome 2.20.3 user interface). Maybe it's specific to Ubuntu or Debian?

2. It turns out that there are lengthy discussions in the Fedora forums about problems with 'the IEEE1394 stack' in various Fedora distributions, from fc6 through fc9.

So, unless you've solved this problem in Fedora, I'm going to take it as 'closed' for this community and begin working it on the Fedora forums.

I think the conclusion here - not withstanding that my Maxtor drive works p-n-p through the same hardware - is that Fedora has system-level 'issues' with IEEE1394 support. And, if I can solve those, then my camcorder ought to be expected to 'just work' with Kino.

Thanks all for your contributions!

[jdetwile]

SOLVED:

1. FireWire in Fedora does indeed appear to be gnarly -- see the fedora forums. I did find an 'ATrmps' repo hack that works.

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=192069

2. What I didn't realize, however (and you might not, either, which is why I'm telling you this), is that /dev/raw1394 is not loaded until the camcorder is connected to the FireWire interface and is turned on. So, while I kept checking for the existence of /dev/raw1394 to indicate that I was making progress, the stack was just sitting there waiting for me to take the next step.

Thanks for the help!