Archived:Main Page-V4L

Welcome to the video4linux wiki (For DVB wiki, click here)

This wiki is designed to serve as a community focus and the resource of reference for users and developers of the Video4Linux framework. In the short term, the task is to document the operation and quirks of hardware supported by v4l applications, to complement and offload the v4l mailing list -- cf. searchable archives. We are also encouraging developers to turn this site into a repository of knowledge about v4l, helping to ensure that expertise acquired through much hard labor and long dedication won't get lost, but can be passed on to new developers and keep free software thriving. If you are a user looking for help, please try searching the mailing list archives first, before asking a question on the v4l mailing list. Don't leave your question on the wiki -- ask on the mailing list! For immediate help, log on to the #v4l irc channel on irc.freenode.net a try (see the log) -- hopefully someone there will be able to help you! The wiki will only be as useful as we make it. Every user of video4linux has something to contribute, and we encourage you to begin right away. Whatever you can contribute will be warmly appreciated, whether it is a set of instructions for how to get a certain card working, a report on the audio and video quality of a working card, suggestions for how to extend an existing driver or write a new one, or an explanation of the internal logic of v4l itself. To keep these instructions free, all contributions to this wiki are automatically licensed under the GNU General Public License GPL. If you wish, you may specify in each case that your contribution is dual-licensed under the MIT License. Please help us keep spam away by signing in before you post. Enjoy! People behind V4L To make a contribution, please begin by familiarizing yourself with the layout of the site, so that your contribution will end up in the right location. As the site grows, it takes increasing discipline to keep it from turning into a tangle. We want to aggregate information about available hardware, v4l experiences, HOWTOs, and technical information about the workings of v4l devices work, and it's up to each of us to do this in a way that makes the information easy to access -- a useful and well-organized resource for everyone interested in video4linux.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Hi everyone, the merger of the V4L and DVB wikis is now underway! Articles within this wiki will progressively be transferred into the LinuxTV wiki. Please see here for the important details.

User Section How to build drivers from Mercurial How to write a good problem report Test Suite Software Applications: TV Viewing TV Recording Streaming Text capture (Teletext/Closed Captioning) Radio Listening v4l Links Technical Background Systems: Analog TV Digital TV Radio Data System (RDS) Hardware Related: Anatomy of a v4l device PCI interface chipsets used for v4l cards GPIO pins i2c Protocol Hardware vs software encoders Audio Decoders Developer Section Kernel Development: Anatomy of a v4l driver How to add support for a device USB based video drivers Rules for submitting patches How to submit patches Rules for submitting drivers Coding Style Documentation index TODO - main tasks Userspace Development: V4L2 Userspace library

Supported Hardware Graphics cards with TV Tuner and/or Capture facilities: ATI/AMD based combo cards NVIDIA based combo cards TV cards and drivers: v4l card vendors List survey of cards in use now Supported Tuners Video via PCI: bttv devices (bt848, bt878) bttv kernel options documentation btaudio (bt878) snd-bt87x (alsa bt878 driver) cx88 devices (cx2388x) ivtv devices (cx23415, cx23416) cx18 devices (cx23418) Matrox Meteor II cards (not working) saa713x devices saa7134-alsa saa7146 devices zoran devices (zr36057, zr36067) zoran devices (zr36120, zr36125) Video via PCI Express: nGene devices (not supported) saa7162 devices (will be supported) Video via USB: Hauppauge PVRUSB2 (not to be confused with the wintv-usb2) DiBcom USB devices Em2820 Em28xx devices OmniVision USB devices (OV511, etc) TM6000 based devices USBVision devices Other devices: Firewire Loopback Radio Remote controllers Scanners Webcams

Category:LinuxTV