Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 16:07:19 -0400 (EDT) From: "Don's FList drop" <freelist@elf.kendall.mdcc.edu> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: multimedia@freefall.FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: OK, I need to get something for a video teleconferencing app! Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.950816154922.1315C-100000@elf.kendall.mdcc.edu> In-Reply-To: <11724.808473867@time.cdrom.com>
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On Tue, 15 Aug 1995, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > What's the best bet, currently? I need to be able to take video in > and stick it in a window, and some hardware decompression support for > a known video compression standard probably wouldn't hurt either. My shopping for these has always been limited to for the DOS/Lose (oops-Win) platform, but I'll tell ya what I know: The Intel Video Capture board has support for as-you-go digitizing under the Indeo algorithm, but apparenly lacks support for overlay - if you're gonna grab images and toss them onto YOUR screen, you'll have to decode them as well. You can decide if this is a good thing - I've never liked the chromakey concept as an overlay device personally, though it has the advantage of not taking up cycles just to display direct-through video. Turtle Beach makes some MPEG capturing boards with playback ability and hardware MPEG decoding. I have had little experience with them, except a PCMCIA sound card. Their tech support email (they're tbeach.com) was answerd in a very complete and comprehensive manner, but it took them about 4-5 days to do it. > I've been promising someone I'd help them port what I'll refer to only > as "a video conferencing tool from a major manufacturer" for reasons > of discretion and it'd be VERY VERY nice to have this running native > under FreeBSD. The only problem has been that I really don't know > what board to get and so I've been sort of stalling on the project. Well, the additional question is do you want to appeal to the largest possible audience with this card or is that relevant? The Creative Labs card (which I will never buy again based not on their hardware but their snotty tech support attitude and poor documentation) probably has the widest market penetration, though I wouldn't swear to that. Also, doesn't someone have a VideoBlaster driver mostly written? If they're as difficult about tech specs on it as they used to be on the SB cards, however, you could be in for a rough ride. If you want to go to a card that is simply well documented, pick up a copy of Circuit Cellar - there are a few PC capture cards that come with tech specs galore, though it won't have a manf name you'll recognize.
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