"Your professors are wrong. Every question is a stupid question." -- gcc version 2.95.2
Most of the problems you'll encounter are due to operating system
limitations. Since Linux was designed for embedded systems, your
ability to scale to video applications is limited but there are ways
around the compacted nature of the operating system.
Reason 2: Your hard drive is too slow. Lower the framerate or
use a smaller format.
Reason 3: Your hard drive is benchmarked fast enough but is
still responding too slowly. Use the following script to flush the
operating system's cache every second, ensuring more consistant hard
drive performance.
Reason 2: You power cycled your camcorder with the firewire
modules loaded and the operating system failed to redetect the device.
You need to cancel the recording and reload the firewire modules.
Reason 3: You plugged in your camcorder after the firewire
modules loaded and the device was never detected. You need to cancel
the recording and reload the firewire modules.
Reason 4: You're not playing any video on the camcorder. You
need either live video or playback for the firewire system to work.
Once you start playing video, you'll automatically get a picture.
Reason 5: Maybe you don't really like short haired blonds.
RECORDING
PROBLEM: THE RECORDING LOCKS UP AT RANDOM
Use the patched version of bttv.c at http://heroinewarrior.com/bcast2000.html
to defeat most of the bttv lockups. Overwrite the copy of bttv.c in
/usr/src/linux/drivers/char and recompile the kernel. This driver is
omitted from the shipped kernel for various academic reasons.
TRYING TO RECORD FROM AN UNCOMPRESSED SOURCE CRASHES IT
In Settings->preferences->video decrease the number of frames to
write to disk to less than 15 and try again. Linux cannot allocate
more than 32MB of contiguous shared memory. This limits the frame
buffer to 15 uncompressed frames.
RECORDING SPITS OUT FRAMES AND THEN PAUSES AND THEN SPITS OUT FRAMES
Reason 1: Your using software compression, attempting a higher
framerate and more compression than your computer is capable of. Lower
the frame rate or compression quality or use a less demanding codec.
RECORDING 29.97fps DROPS FRAMES IN LINUX BUT WORKS FINE IN WIN95
#!/bin/sh
while : ; do
sync
sleep 1
done
The recording engine uses the Video4Linux 1 driver, which only allows 2
frames of buffering. Video4Linux 2 supported unlimited buffering on
paper, but Video4Linux 2 only supported a tiny number of cards and
seems to have been discontinued.
THE LML33 DRIVER PRODUCES GARBAGE ON THE LEFT SIDE OF THE FRAME OR
DOESN'T FILL THE ENTIRE FRAME
The LML33 supports only 720x480 or 384x240 resolution which you set
when you install the kernel module. Be sure to set the frame
size accordingly in File->new before you start to record.
RECORDING FROM MY FIREWIRE CAMCORDER DOESN'T WORK!
Reason 1: The operating system failed to detect the device when
you loaded the firewire modules. You need to cancel recording and
reload the modules until it works.
EDITING
PARTS OF THE AUDIO TRACKS ARE APPEARING EMPTY EVEN THOUGH THE TRACK WAS
SELECTED DRAWABLE
The Number of index files to keep setting is too low. When you
closed another Broadcast 2000 session it deleted index files which your
current session needs to draw the waveform.
NOTHING I RENDER ENCODES ON REALPRODUCER
Render as RGB video and 16 bit audio to encode on that piece of
crap.
AUDIO
WHY DON'T YOU SUPPORT MULTIPLE SOUNDCARDS?
Because there's no way to synchronize them. An offset of as little as
1/40000 seconds causes something called phase cancellation. 4
channel soundcards are already becoming ubiquitous anyway.
THE FRAMES LOOK COMPRESSED VERTICALLY OR HORIZONTALLY
Set the aspect ratio in video->resize to what the movie should be viewed in.
YOUR FSCKING SYNTHESIZER PLUGIN DOESN'T WORK!
Deselect "Disable tracks when no edits" in preferences->playback and
select a region on the timeline to play back.
PLAYBACK JUST FREEZES UP AND DOESN'T STOP
You've got a plugin attached and configured to run impossibly slow.
You should save the project, ctrl-C it on the command line, and
reconfigure the plugin.
REVERSING VIDEO OR PLAYING VIDEO BACKWARDS PRODUCES GARBAGE
Some file formats like MPEG require temporal information to render
frames, which isn't available when the file is read backward. Render
the movie forward as Quicktime before reversing it.
STUPID QUESTIONS
WILL THERE BE A BROADCAST 2001?
It's codenamed CINElerra in fact. Named after the fairy tale
daughter who wanted to be an engineer but was forced to become a
housewife while her less attractive sister was encouraged to be
independant. That is, until she got hold of a glass slipper.