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Ask Slashdot: Got the BigPicture? 40

Posted by Cliff from the does-it-work? dept.
Here's a followup to an article we did earlier on video converencing. Dave Dash and another nameless submittor both wish to know if 3Com's Big Picture videoconferencing can work under Linux. If it does work, Dave also wants to know whether whatever software necessary will also work with NetMeeting users. Any takers?
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Ask Slashdot: Got the BigPicture? More

Ask Slashdot: Got the BigPicture?

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  • 3com camera (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The 3com camera doesn't have NT drivers, moreover Linux drivers. I've been hassling them for NT support, but when I call their support lines the people are SUPER clueless (to be expected.) I asked for a feature request of NT and Linux drivers, but he said he had no way of submitting that.

    So. If we want drivers for it, we need a way to send 3com mail or something to let them know that a lot of people want to use this that AREN'T on win95/98.

    Suggestions?

  • h232 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://www.openh323.org/
  • http://www.h323.org is a repository for the development of free video conference and mirrors the OpenH323 Project.

    The introduction is interesting reading, but the site appears to be in development and they are asking for people participate.

  • big picture on zdtv (Score:3)

    by John Kozan ( 157 ) on Tuesday May 04, 1999 @08:04PM (#1904024) Homepage
    If you ever watch ZDTV [zdtv.com] you'd notice that they have a big deal with Intel [intel.com] to give away a couple tons of the net cams, then have people call in and ask questions on the air and such... it would be great if some of us linux and solaris users could get on there also... and tell Leo and Kate what thier doing wrong (despite all thier cool linux props on the set) I remember seeing the Intel Bigpicture card/capture card as being one of the few supported by Video4Linux... pretty cool also, if anyone can point me to the java version of the Zdtv realplaces chat software, that would be great (I just cant find it)
  • I've recently gotten a bttv card and have been playing with it on a Windows machine for now to judge whether it'll suit my needs in a "native" environment, before I put it in my Linux box. Anyway, is there any utils, commercial or free, to do minor editing of video files, like concat mpegs into bigger ones, strip off the leading/trailing X number of frames, etc? It doesn't have to be as fancy as Adobe Premiere (but that would be a nice port for Adobe to start with :)).

    I have found a handful of older mpeg/avi utils. But so far, they haven't liked the files my card outputs, different codecs and the like.
  • Um... Not sure what you're talking about here...

    The 3Com BigPicture card is a Bt848-based card. Bt848 cards happen to be one of the best-supported video capture systems under Linux, due to the fact that Brooktree/Rockwell release full specs for all their video capture chipsets. (Hmm... Maybe the video output card manufacturers should take a hint from the dominant video input chipset supplier.)

  • The BT848 support IS excellent. The card I'm using now is nothing but a bt848, an RCA jack, and a crystal, and was dirt cheap. I got it at a steal because under windows, it was a dog (2fps). Apparently, that was a driver/OS issue.

  • What do you think this is? A poll? :)
  • I actually don't have one myself but I know of two people that are doing really well with the 3com card.

    My gf, Carrie [merciless.org], has been using her BigPicture kit with streamer and stamp to do her web cam page. She is running

    • 2.2.x kernel
    • loads i2c module
    • loads bttv modules
    She also uses this setup when she boots into win95. Before this she was using the Quickcam approach and picture quality was lower, not to mention it was a resource hog. Using the PCI based video capture board is the best way to do it.

    Why do I think this is the best one for Linux? Well, I have a WinTV 401 card but I still like the way her web cam looks. You get a really good card and the camera is worth the extra cost.

    Another examples of BigPicture with Linux is DocTV in the lab [nstuff.org] where I work (it runs on Doc's Linux box).

    What I would really like to see happen is either QSeeMe being worked on some more. If I could have any application ported to Linux though to use the video4linux support it would be iVisit. I have posted on /. about it before. It just never seems to catch peoples attention for some odd reason. I mean Tim Dorcey even said he would welcome a port to Linux. Search on /. for "iVisit" or go to the support page for iVisit if you are interested. Tim seemed really interested in the project.

    "You cannot uncook Mushoo pork once is has been cooked" -- wiseman
    "That's a really dumb idea" -David Card

  • This page has a rather lengthy listing of programs for videoconf and there are listings that do support Linux.

    http://members.iworld.net/soonjp/vidc onf.html [iworld.net]



    "You cannot uncook Mushoo pork once is has been cooked" -- wiseman
    "That's a really dumb idea" -David Card

  • All of today's news gone?
    Wh'appened??
  • Hrm...I've run my camera under Win98, NT, and Linux just fine. I don't remember if my camera came with WinNT drivers; the way I got it working was kinda weird. I have a Hauppauge WinTV-PCI tv tuner card, and fortunately, the capture card bundled with the 3Com camera is a Hauppauge WinTV card (just with the tv tuner stuff removed), so all I did was plop it in, and my system loaded up the WinTV driver, and it worked like a charm.
    See my post below for Linux stuff.
  • Sorry, I maybe was a bit confusing...I was addressing his point that the 3Com camera doesn't work under NT (I replied in the main thread about how I got it working under Linux, so I thought I'd post my bit about hwo I got it working under NT in this smaller thread).

    I have a Hauppauge WinTV tuner card, with the NT drivers already installed...when I plopped in the 3Com PCI capture card for the BigPicture kit, it detected it as a second Hauppauge WinTV card, and used my existing drivers from my WinTV tuner card to drive it - and it worked perfectly..

  • BigPicture does work under Linux (Score:4)

    by kaese ( 9996 ) on Tuesday May 04, 1999 @08:30PM (#1904034) Homepage
    I have the 3Com/USR BigPicture kit (the Camera + PCI card), and I have it working fine under Linux. I couldn't get it working under the 2.0.x kernel with V4L (Video4Linux) added in manually, but under 2.2.x kernels it has worked like a charm. I just modprobe the standard built-in BTTV module, and it loads it up and works perfectly without any changes necessary or anything; honestly, this has been one of my best hardware experiences under Linux.

    I'm not aware of any Netmeeting-compatible tools out there though.
  • Actually, multicast is not the greatest solution if you are talking about teleconferencing. If you are talking about sending it to thousands of people, sure, but there are better tools out there for 10-20.
    Check out the SPREAD group communication toolkit [jhu.edu] from The Center for Networks and Distributed Systems [jhu.edu] at JHU. It is pretty powerful and simple to develope around.

    -- my slashdot for your jesus
  • Mine works fine under linux, I even had a web cam
    setup for a while. I use the 2.2 kernel with the VfL stuff compiled in. Before 2.2 I was using the
    VfL modules stand alone. Both worked incredibly well. The only complaint I have about the cam is that it is very hard (at least with mine) to get a good color picture. If the lights aren't bright in the room, I get people asking me if the cam is black and white. However, I never noticed this type of problem with my old quickcam (may it rest in pieces). I do think this is a fault of the cam and not of the linux support.
    I will send in a vmail to zdnet using some linux app to record, that would be neat. I do spend some time on their
    "Netcam" forum, and frequently post messages of linux advocacy.
  • Sure you're gonna get much more efficient bandwidth utilization with multicast. That goes without saying. If that's your goal, use vic, (r)vat, sdr and the like. Unfortunately most ISP's don't route multicast traffic, and that means you're all by your lonesome with your spiffy multicast setup. Until they get a clue, you might as well use the unicast stuff.
    -earl
  • Actually, you lose nothing by using multicast in a two way conference. So why develop separate tools? If you use multicast tools for 1:1 conferencing, you can then add conferencees with a linear increase in network traffic. My feeling is that the smart vendors will build tools that use multicast when it's available, and only unicast when multicast isn't available.
    You can really apprecicate the valueof multicast when you see it in action. At NASA HQ we sent out the NASA TV Broadcast of the John Glenn Shuttle launch with multicast tools. It's awesome to see a couple hundred people join the session, and watch a 200K+ video/audio stream without theh network ever breaking a sweat. Imagine what woulda happened with RealAudio... -earl
  • Thanks! It looks like I'll be up all night reading. ;-)
    I'll have to pass this along to some friends of mice. BTW at fist glance, it looks like this project focuses on multicast :)
    "Spread is a toolkit and daemon that provide multicast and group communications support to applications across local and wide area networks."

    But like I said "at a glance", I'll have to dig a little deeper.
    -earl

  • ... and it is called H.323. Check out http://www.openh323.org/ [openh323.org].
    ---
  • This is a project that I am working on, yes the 3com, as you can read works under Linux ... I have a good old Bt848 TV capture card ... if building the Video4Linux package though - I say beware - if you have a tuner card - be very scared. (grin) Now as for Netmeeting Go to http://www.openh323.org/ [openh323.org] There you will find out that Netmeeting and VDOphone use a standard called H323 - which is the good old ISDN videoconferencing standard - for us people who remember ISDN ;-) ... it works with a 28.8 modem - but not great ... Mind you if you want to download the document, you should go to the library and get the ITU standards book because it will cost you money to download it :/

    But there is hope -- as for a client it would appear that there is one that is being developed called Voxilla [voxilla.org] - check it out - I am guessing that they would be more than happy to get ahold of some coders... I think that having a vdo phone would be a wonderful addition to any Linux (granted enough bandwidth).
  • Replying to myself -- how lame ;-)
    Rhad Labs [linux.org] is doing some work on this also - there are more than Voxilla out there... check it out :-)
  • gPhoto does not yet support video conferencing streams over networks, allthough it has a live
    camera plugin. You might want to check out the
    project pages at www.gphoto.org [gphoto.org]
    and help write a driver for your 3COM (?) camera.
  • actually, my kernel is 2.1.131 and the camera locks up my system. i got another bigpicture for my NT box at work but can't find drivers. maybe i should try the wintv drivers.
  • I forget exactly when 3com claimed they'd support linux (someone feel free to refresh my memory, please), but i believe it was fairly recently. 3com employs 13,000 people - it can take a looooong time for a company of that size to set things into motion, especially if a sizable portion of the company is management :). My company only has 50 employees, and it seems like it takes us forever to mobilize on small projects as well as large ones. Give them a little time before we start calling for blood :)

    -Sean
  • No, I am sorry to say that Linux STILL does not have any good conferencing applications. And if it did, in order to work with NM, those applications would have to support H.323 which even most windows apps don't. I really wish it were different... Danny.
  • yeah - this was the most useful post of the whole thread...
  • if it's still using the bttv card, any of the
    normal capture programs work. i use fxtv or some such program. i don't know about the actual teleconferencing part though, i've never tried it.
  • I looked for a number of hours yesterday and the only package I could find that had anything was here http://www.pangea.org/~mavilar/qseeme/
    I get my camera tonight and will post back my findings.

  • YES IT WORKS WITH LINUX! (Score:3)

    by Richard Head ( 41682 ) on Tuesday May 04, 1999 @10:59PM (#1904050)
    yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
    I use it as a web cam. as for video conferencing there is some software out there for linux, but alas, most "popular" windows video conferencing software is crapware and use a bizzare/wierd compression setup. Net video conferencing is still in it's alpha phase and shouldnt be looked at as a serious thing for at least another 3-4 years when the linux groups get together and make a standard that the big companies obviously cant get together..
    Other than that the 3com bigpicture makes a killer video capture device.at an affordable price! not like that video capture card project for linux that wants to charge users $500.00 for a crappy card and even crappier drivers.

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