Pinnacle Studio 700

An analogue PCI capture card from Pinnacle.

It is currently not supported under Linux.

Overview/Features

This device is more commonly known as the Studio MovieBoard Plus. In addition, there is also the Studio MovieBox Plus version. The difference is that the 'Board is a PCI card with breakout box while the 'Box is an external USB device, otherwise, they are identical in functionality.

While this article focuses on the Studio Plus 700 PCI (p/n BIGBEN-51014278-1.0), because that's what this author owns, most information should also apply to the other devices in the family (Studio 500.)

The included BlueBox breakout box connects to the PCI card with a proprietary 26-pin D-sub connector and it contains two sets of the following connectors, one each for input and output: S-video (4-pin mini-DIN), composite video (RCA), Left audio (RCA), Right audio (RCA).

The PCI card itself features the following ports: 26-pin Breakout Box port, 1/8" (2.5mm) stereo Audio Out phone plug, and two 6-pin IEEE-1394 ("Firewire") ports.

• 

  Blue breakout box

• 

  Ports on the PCI card

Components Used

It contains the following IC chips:

• Pinnacle 51011810 / MB87J3560 .... the Main video processor (reported to be a Conexant chip by Pinnacle tech support, but they did not know which one exactly)
• NXP/Phillips SAA7113H ... 9-bit video decoder. The SAA7113H itself is supported by the saa7115.ko Linux driver
• Analog Devices ADV7179 ... NTSC/PAL Video Encoder
• IDT/SigmaTel STAC9750T ... 2-channel AC'97 audio CODEC

Identification

The lspci -vvnnn output is:

       61:04.0 Multimedia controller [0480]: Pinnacle Systems Inc. AV/DV Studio Capture Card [11bd:bede]
               Subsystem: Pinnacle Systems Inc. Unknown device [11bd:0023]
               Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B-
               Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort+ <MAbort+ >SERR- <PERR-
               Latency: 66 (2000ns min, 4000ns max), Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
               Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 5
               Region 0: Memory at fa600000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
               Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
                       Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
                       Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-

       61:04.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394) [0c00]: Pinnacle Systems Inc. Unknown device [11bd:0015] (prog-if 10 [OHCI])
               Subsystem: Pinnacle Systems Inc. Unknown device [11bd:0023]
               Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B-
               Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
               Latency: 64 (8000ns min, 20000ns max), Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
               Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 5
               Region 0: Memory at fa601000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2K]
               Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2
                       Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1+,D2+,D3hot+,D3cold-)
                       Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-

Making it work

Current status This author has attempted to load all Conexant (cx*), BTTV (card=52), SAA*, IVTV and em28xx modules provided with the Linux 2.6.18 kernel but no /dev/video* devices appear after restarting udev. The test machine is an HP xw9300 Workstation running Debian Etch amd64.

In order for this card to work on Linux, a Pinnacle AV/DV2 Linux driver is needed to be written.