FXTV (BSD X TV) Ver. 1.03 (Updated 2/12/01)

What is it?

To use Fxtv, you need FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, or BSDI as well as a capture card based on the Brooktree 848, 849, 878, or 879 chips. Examples include the Hauppauge Win/TV, the STV TV PCI, and the Intel Smart Video Recorder III.

What features are implemented?

• New: Flip channel feature - fast switch to last channel (Steve Reid)
• New: Support for France channel set (Daniel Dagneaux)
• New: DEV3 video input, VIDEO/LINE[1-3] audio input support
• New: Various fixes (see ChangeLog)

• Support for PixelView Remote Control (Roger Hardiman and Bryan Collins)
• Support for Hauppauge Remote Control (Jukka Simila and Roger Hardiman)
• Multi-TV card support
• Multi-/no-soundcard support, and TV audio on CD-, MIC-, or LINE-IN
• Video Window Annotation & Action Rtns for Full-Screen Surfing
• Tuning Features, Station IDs, Freq Tuning, Fmt Sel
• Direct Video enhancements for moving and restacking TV window
• Image, Audio, and Video (w/ Audio) Save-to-Disk w/ MPEG encode option
• FPS control and Zoom Fullscreen enhancement
• Video-mode switching when video window is zoomed
• Menu and toolbar capture controls
• Zoom and Freeze video; Audio mute and volume control
• Visual support: 8/15/16/24/32bpp
• Transfer Modes: Direct video, shared XImage, standard XImage
• Moveable/resizable X window (all transfer modes)
• Auto-selection of best visual and transfer mode
• Dynamic color cube size for pseudo-color visuals
• App-resource file and command-line options and Xt action routines

Where do I get it?

• fxtv-1.03-port.tgz (ChangeLog)

• ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/pkgsrc/graphics/fxtv/README.html

But in case you prefer otherwise, here's a link to the source package it will fetch and build for you (fxtv-1.03.tgz).

You'll also need the BSD Brooktree (bktr) driver. Normally, newer driver revisions can be found at http://www.telepresence.strath.ac.uk/bt848/ or ftp://telepresence.dmem.strath.ac.uk/pub/bt848.

How do I build & run it?

See the BSD Brooktree driver page (http://www.telepresence.strath.ac.uk/bt848/) for further details.

What's it look like?

1. New: The first clip is a 320x240 MPEG system stream of the "Special Ops Force" intro. It was captured in IYUV on Fxtv 1.00 with CD-quality audio (44KHz 16-bit stereo). Capture rate 24fps, encode rate 24fps, two capture files on separate disks were used, and for max quality I chose to use all I-frames in the MPEG.
   • SpecialOpsForce.mpg - 11.5M - MPEG System Stream

   For size comparison, note that for the same input data an IBPB frame pattern given to mpeg_encode squeezes the video down to a 6.4M file, and an IBPBIBPBPB pattern drops it down to 6.1M.

   Capturing this data at 15fps and encoding at 24fps (mpeg_encode's min frame speed) with IBPBIBPBPB yields a 5.9M file. So basically capturing slower doesn't buy you much for MPEGs, and you should only drop down below 24fps to avoid capture pauses from disk bandwidth saturation. In my case, 30fps capture looks real nice, but has pauses. Adding raw partition, AIO, or vinum write support in the future may help.

   Keep in mind that in all the above, the CD-quality audio was 2.9Meg of the MPEG system stream's size.

2. Here's a 320x240 MPEG system stream captured in IYUV on Fxtv 0.72 with CD-quality audio. The source raw capture data was just over 360 Meg:
   • Sentinel2.mpg - 4.5M - MPEG System Stream

3. Here's an older 240x180 system stream of a show teaser captured in RGB:
   • KR2k.mpg - 2.9M - MPEG System Stream

NOTE: All of these clips were captured on standard (non-AV) EIDE drives on a Pentium motherboard. So you don't have to have a power system to capture movies -- just some average disk bandwidth.