Linux video capture over firewire (IEEE1394)

Packages

You may need to add the debian multimedia repository to your sources list.

apt-get -y install dvgrab libraw1394-8 libavc1394-0 libiec61883-0

Plug the firewire PCI card into the PC and boot up.

grep 1394 /var/log/messages
Nov  8 11:49:09 colourbox kernel: ohci1394: fw-host0: OHCI-1394 1.1 (PCI): IRQ=[11]  MMIO=[42100000-421007ff]  Max Packet=[2048]  IR/IT contexts=[4/8]
Nov  8 11:49:09 colourbox kernel: eth1394: eth1: IEEE-1394 IPv4 over 1394 Ethernet (fw-host0)

This tells you that linux has registered the card and has activated two interfaces: A firewire host controller and an Ethernet over firewire device.

This is a potential problem because I don't want to use firewire for networking. What happened in may case was that the firewire ethernet driver was binding to the camera device, preventing dvgrab from being able to record the video.

In order to do DV video we use libraw1394 to import a digital video stream from the camera and also to give it commands like pause, record and fast-forward (known as AVC commands).