[pvrusb2] V4L2_CAP_STREAMING, zoneminder, motion.

[A. F. Cano]

I've recently tried again to connect the OnAir Creator and I'm happy to
report that it's working much better than a few years ago, when I gave up.
The system today is an up-to-date wheezy system with 3.2 kernel.

Then, I had essentially no reception.  The digital transition was about
to happen.  I've since moved.

Then, I wasn't aware of the firmware for the device that I downloaded from
the pvrusb2 page.  I believe at the time I was using the ivtv firmware and
it wasn't working, or maybe I wasn't doing something right.  Maybe the
OnAir-specific firmware wasn't available then.

Now it's working great with mythtv.  I get 47 channels from the digital
tuner.  Mythtv knows about the analog input (I set it as an input source)
but I haven't used it for anything within mythtv.  Interestingly, I'm
seeing that mythtv only has spotty EPG, many channels missing, while
kaffeine seems to have no trouble with the EPG.  Every channel has
entries when the appropriate menu entry is selected.  There is something
about the EPG in the prvusb2 page, so it seems to be a known issue.

Kaffeine also works, although this machine is too slow to display
HD content.  The HD channels soon lose sound and slow down, the non-HD
channels work fine.  Kaffeine doesn't need any command line options, just
a bit of set up, such as the channel scan.

The analog section also works.

I have connected an NTSC camera with a "component input" cable.
After putting the firmware blob (v4l-cx2341x-enc.fw) in /lib/firmware,
I can see the analog input from the camera, after doing this:

v4lctl setnorm ntsc-m
v4lctl setinput 1

vlc stream:///dev/video0

This seems to imply that streaming is supported.  Next I tried "motion".
No success so far.  I get an error about an invalid palette.  The values
in the motion.conf file are:

# V4L2_PIX_FMT_SN9C10X : 0  'S910'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_SBGGR8  : 1  'BA81'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_MJPEG   : 2  'MJPEG'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_JPEG    : 3  'JPEG'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_RGB24   : 4  'RGB3'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_UYVY    : 5  'UYVY'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_YUYV    : 6  'YUYV'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_YUV422P : 7  '422P'
# V4L2_PIX_FMT_YUV420  : 8  'YU12'

So it looks like motion is not capable of dealing with mpeg input.
I would like to be able to use motion, but I suppose adding the proper
palette to support MPEG input is an issue to be dealt with in the motion
code.  It might not be possible; that package seems to have been stable
(dead?) for years now.  There might not even be a current developer.

Next I tried zoneminder.  Nice piece of software, but somewhat complicated
for a new user.  After some reading and testing, I'm now stuck at this
error message:

2013-11-28 22:20:20.265144	zmc_dvideo0	17116	FAT	Video device does not support streaming i/o	zm_local_camera.cpp	373

followed by this:

2013-11-28 22:20:20.274940	zmdc	17044	ERR	'zmc -d /dev/video0' exited abnormally, exit status 255	zmdc.pl

A google search for the first error message found the code here:

http://svn.zoneminder.com/svn/zm/trunk/src/zm_local_camera.cpp

The message is what you get after checking V4L2_CAP_STREAMING.

So, what is happening here? Streaming is obviously possible , per the vlc
line above.  Zoneminder obvioualy supports MPEG input.  Is this a problem
with zoneminder or with pvrusb2?  Is it a symptom of a known problem?
Is there anything that can be done short of changing code (in pvrusb2 or
zoneminder)?

If zoneminder is a dead end, are there other motion detection and recording
applications that would work with the analog mpeg input that the OnAir
Creator/pvrusb2 provides?

Mike, your work with the pvrusb2 driver is VERY MUCH appreciated.  Thank
you.

Augustine