Sony DCR-TRV285E PAL - poor capture/playback under Linux

[glen.richards]

Hi,

I'm having trouble getting my Sony DCR-TRV285E PAL working under Linux.

I can connect to the camera fine (via FireWire port). I can capture video to file (have been using dvgrab/kino). But the problem is to do with quality. The audio can be slow and/or out-of-sync (depending on Linuc distro) with the video & the video refresh is poor in that you can see "interleaving" when the camera is moved. The same symptoms occur when the video is played directly from the Camera tape (via FireWire), or from a captured file, or even when using the camera "real time" (again via FireWire).

The problems don't occur under Windows XP. A video file captured under windows also has the same playback issues when played under Linux.

I've tried many different flavours of Linux - with no luck.

As far as I can tell the issue is with:
* My PC hardware
* The camera or video format produced by the camera (perhaps this model is not supported under Linux?)
* Software (codecs?)

As far as hardware is concerend, I was wondering if it was related to the fact that I wasn't using 3d accelerated drivers for my Nvida video card (model of card escapes me at the moment, I can post if needed)... but I did try the nvidia proprietry drivers at one point with no luck.

As far as camea/video formats are concerend, I was able to get the following info from a avi file captured under windows:

Windows Media Player (9 I think) told me the Codec was "DV Video Decoder".
An "avi info" program (Can't remeber the name of it) provided me with this info:
AVI: 7.60 GiB, 37mn 40s
1 video stream, 1 audio stream: Sony DV
video stream: 29Mbps, 720x576 (4/3) at 25 frames per second, Sony DV (PAL)

I've tried looking for settings to change on the camera - no luck.

Any help would be very much appreciated. I'm a bit of a newbie regarding video editing (have been slowly learning stuff trying to solve this problem) & have a medium amount of experience with Linux (certainly no guru!)

Thanks,


Glen Richards
New Zealand

[glen.richards]

ok, looks like I'm on my own! For anyone who is having the same problems & stumbles upon this post, here are some more details...

Update: I upgraded my current distro (debian sarge) to the testing release (etch). This gives me Kino 0.9.2 & the libaries under Kino are no doubt upgraded as well. The video driver is now nv instead of vesa, which is also an improvement.

Video quality is much improved (but still not perfect)! Sound seems perfect & is now in-sync with the video. Kino is giving me this info about my avi:
DV Timecode: 00:43:23:19
File Format: AVI, Type 1, OpenDML
Audio: 12 bit, 32 KHz, 1280 samples
Video: 720 x 576, PAL, 4:3, 25.00 fps

When there is enough movement, I still see "interlacing", but it is much improved. Are there setting I can tweak to make it perfect?

Cheers,


Glen

[ffdt]

Thank you Glen for your hints

I'm in the same troubles with kino 0.9.1 and my GS230 panasonic camcorder and I fear it's not an hardware problem ... I'll upgrade my kino version to see if I'll have some differences

Thank you again

Franco