1
2 Some hints to get the bttv driver up and running
3 ================================================
4
5 general hints
6 -------------
7
8 (1) Make sure if your board is recognized correctly. The bttv driver
9 should print a line like this one (Use the 'dmesg' command to see
10 the kernel messages):
11
12 bttv0: model: BT848(Hauppauge old)
13
14 If your card isn't autodetected correctly, you have to specify the
15 board type as insmod argument (card=n). You might also have to
16 specify tuner=x and pll=x.
17 Check the driver documentation for details and a list of supported
18 cards. The standard kernel has the bttv documentation in the
19 Documentation/video4linux/bttv directory.
20
21 (2) If you are using a vanilla 2.2.x kernel kernel, it is worth trying
22 to upgrade as the very first step. Either download and build bttv
23 0.7.x for your 2.2.x kernel, or upgrade to 2.4.x which includes
24 the 0.7.x driver already.
25 bttv 0.7.x knows a lot more cards than the 2.2.x kernel driver, the
26 autodetect is much improved and a number of known problems is
27 fixed.
28
29 (3) If you have problems with xawtv, you should open a xterm (or
30 whatever your favorite terminal app is) and start xawtv from
31 there. This way you'll see any error messages xawtv might print on
32 stderr which should help to find the source of the problems.
33
34 (4) If something broke after an update, have a look at the changelog.
35 It might be mentioned there.
36
37
38 common problems
39 ---------------
40
41 ?: I have a black screen in overlay mode
42 !: The driver was not initialized correctly, v4l-conf (or the
43 X-Server) has to configure the bttv driver with the current video
44 mode and framebuffer address first. Check if v4l-conf is installed
45 suid root, it needs root priviliges to do this. You can also start
46 v4l-conf from a terminal and check the messages it prints.
47
48 ?: I have a blue screen.
49 !: Good, the overlay is working. A blue screen is what you get if the
50 grabber chip has no input signal. You are probably using the wrong
51 video source, pick another. Also happens sometimes if the tuner
52 type is wrong, check the driver configuration.
53
54 ?: I have a noisy screen and/or can't tune (some) stations.
55 !: Most likely the tuner types is wrong, check the driver configuration.
56 It's no problem to do trial-and-error here.
57
58 ?: The video is outside the window and spread in thin lines over the
59 screen.
60 !: xawtv / v4l-conf didn't autodetect the color depth for your screen
61 correctly. You can fix that with xawtv's -bpp switch.
62
63 ?: Only the left part of the window is updated, the right one is updated
64 never / sometimes / only if the window is small.
65 !: Your graphics card and/or motherboard can't deal with the data rate
66 going over the PCI bus, leading to canceled PCI transfers. Reduce
67 the color depth, with 16 bpp instead of 32 bpp should work much
68 better.
69
70 ?: I get no sound.
71 !: (a) If your TV-Card is connected to the sound card's line in with a
72 short cable: Make sure the sound driver is loaded, sound cards
73 are usually quiet until initialized by the driver. Also check
74 the mixer settings.
75 (b) Double-check the card type is correct (see above).
76 (c) If there is still no go, have a look at the Sound-FAQ in the
77 bttv documentation.
78
79
80 hardware specific problems
81 --------------------------
82
83 * bttv + DRI seem not to play nicely together with some cards (ATI
84 Rage128). The linux box just freezes. Don't know why. Suspect
85 it's either a hardware problem or a bug somewhere in DRI (either
86 kernel or xfree86). The only workaround I know of is to turn off
87 DRI.
88
89 * Some motherboard chipsets have PCI bugs, especially with PCI-PCI
90 transfers which are used for video overlay. The bt848/878 chips
91 have some bug compatibility options, which can be enabled to
92 workaround these problems. Have a look at the triton1 and vsfx
93 insmod options. For some known-buggy chipsets these are enabled
94 automagically.
95
96 * Sometimes IRQ sharing causes trouble. It works most of the time,
97 but in combination with some hardware and/or drivers it doesn't work.
98 Especially graphic cards are known to cause trouble due to the lack
99 of a IRQ handler. Try disabling the VGA IRQ in the BIOS. Try moving
100 cards to another PCI slot. Your motherboard manual should tell you
101 which PCI slots share IRQ's.
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