Garmbled / scrambled video with bt848 (bttv card=98)

[FuriousGeorge]

I built the bttv driver as a module, and modprobed it with and without card=98...

http://www.ubintel.com/files/nph-zms.jpeg
This is a still shot of the video I get as seen from ZoneMinder. In case you can't tell what you are looking at, the bottom and top of the image are transposed across the black horizontal bar going through the shot. That bar moves as the video is played, giving it the appearance of an 8mm movie film which has gone off track. The others are worse than that. I have 12 non-identical cameras which all do that to varying degrees.

If i cat the video to a file and try to play it in VLC, i get no video, and the output of VLC says:

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[mp3 @ 0x2aaabda32340]Could not find codec parameters (Audio: mp1, 448 kb/s)
[00000308] ffmpeg demuxer error: av_find_stream_info failed
[00000308] ps demuxer error: cannot peek
[00000304] main input error: no suitable demux module for
`/:///home/brian/Desktop/test.mpg'
[00000232] main playlist: nothing to play
[00000232] main playlist: stopping playback

When I load the module, I got one of these in my dmeg for every PVR chip:

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isabel ~ # modprobe bttv card=98,98,98,98,98,98,98,98,98,98,98,98,98,98,98,98     (i have 2 x 8-chip cards so i pass 16 '98's)

isabel ~ # dmesg |tail -n 16

bttv: Bt8xx card found (15).
bttv15: Bt878 (rev 17) at 0000:05:0b.0, irq: 21, latency: 32, mmio: 0xfdbf1000
bttv15: subsystem: 1836:1540 (UNKNOWN)
please mail id, board name and the correct card= insmod option to
video4linux-list@redhat.com
bttv15: using: ProVideo PV150 [card=98,insmod option]
bttv15: gpio: en=00000000, out=00000000 in=00ffffff [init]
i2c-adapter i2c-15: adapter [bt878 #15 [sw]] registered
i2c-dev: adapter [bt878 #15 [sw]] registered as minor 15
i2c-adapter i2c-15: found normal entry for adapter 15, addr 0x50
i2c-adapter i2c-15: master_xfer[0] W, addr=0x50, len=0
i2c-adapter i2c-15: master_xfer[0] W, addr=0x50, len=0
i2c-adapter i2c-15: client [tveeprom] registered with bus id 15-0050
bttv15: tuner absent
bttv15: registered device video16
bttv15: registered device vbi15
bttv15: PLL: 28636363 => 35468950 . ok

If i dont pass the card=98 option and I load the module, it autodetects card=0


lspci says:

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isabel ~ # lspci -vv|grep -A 12 -m 1 Brooktree

04:04.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video
Capture (rev 11)
       Subsystem: Credence Systems Corporation Device 1540
       Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop-
            ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
       Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium
            >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort>SERR- <PERR- INTx-
       Latency: 32 (4000ns min, 10000ns max)
       Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 21
       Region 0: Memory at fdcff000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K]
       Capabilities: [44] Vital Product Data <?>
       Capabilities: [4c] 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-
       Kernel driver in use: bttv
       Kernel modules: bttv

Interestingly, only ZoneMinder gives me any playable "video" in the form of mjpeg, while neither mplayer nor VLC can play the files i make from catting /dev/videoX. Not sure how exactly it does it, but in ZM Ive tried PAL vs NTSC, RGB24 vs Everything Else, and standard monitor resolutions like 640x480, 320x240. etc. Nothing seems to stabilize the video.

[kevin_robson]

Have you tried card=77
This seems to me the most popular type, even if it doesn't defualt to that.

[agoodm]

You need card=77 - my card displays the same image when auto detected.

[FuriousGeorge]

[solved] I just needed a new cable.

What follows is the original reply
--------------------------------------------

Since posting last night I did something to improve the image, though i'm not sure what. It still has issues though.

Now there is only about 1/8 - 1/4 of the image that is cropped off at the top and showing up on the bottom. Sometimes the part on the bottom is completely obscured by a black bar, and sometimes it isnt, but it doesnt seem to matter what card type i load.

This is autodetected

This is card=77,77,77...

This is card=98,98,98...

That black bar is static now, whereas before it moved around and made the image almost unintelligible. I'm on my way to the location now, so I'll update this thread shortly.