• Why am I getting random corruption on the screen when I capture video?
• Why does my machine freeze/crash when I use your module?
• Why cant I capture with mencoder and watch with xawtv at the same time?
• Why doesnt tvtime work?
• I have multiple video cards and your module does not work
• I am using the GATOS ati.2 driver and all I get is green or garbage when I try to capture
• I am using a 2.4 kernel and I cant get your driver to work
• I am using a kernel with APIC support and your driver doesnt work
• I am getting this error when I try to load your module
  insmod: error inserting './genericv4l.ko': -1 Unknown symbol in module
• When I try xawtv I get an error about VIDIOC_S_CTRL and invalid argument

• Why am I getting random corruption on the screen when I capture video?

The problem is we have to use video memory for frame captures, and there is no way for the module to tell X what part of memory we are using. So X will sometimes use the same memory we are using to store off screen images. As soon as we capture a new frame, that data gets corrupted and X will eventually copy it back to the screen and you see the corruption. (It happens alot with the mouse pointer).
You used to be able to tell X to use less video ram than you really had (using VideoRam in the Device section of your XF86Config file) but that no longer seems to work.
So the only real solution I can think of is a user space program that will allocate the end of memory from X (anyone want to write this? :).
Some other things you can try are, lowering your screen resolution and/or colour bit depth which should free up video ram for X to use. Load the module with disableinterlace set, which will cut the capture resolution in half (so it wont work with tvtime) and require less video ram. Or you could install another video card and use the ATI card just for capturing.


• Why does my machine freeze/crash when I use your module?

It could be a number of things...


• It could be your ethernet card, one person found that removing there 3Com PCI 3c905B card made the system stable.
• Using a mother board with integrated C-media 8738 audio chip the computer randomly freezes when trying to capture video and audio.

There seems to be a problem with the driver for this chip, it randomly freezes with cards that produce a lot of interrupts. (like ethernet cards or video capture cards)
One person had success by moving the ATI card from pci slot 5 to pci slot 2.
If changing the pci slot does not work then your best bet would be to install a new sound card.


• Are you using DRI on the mach64 card?

I have not tested this yet but I have reports that capturing video with DRI enabled will hang the machine. So turn DRI off if it doesnt work.
• Are you trying to capture VBI data?

I have had a lot of problems getting this to work correctly. It seems stable enough for me with NTSC vbi data now, but PAL and SECAM users may still experience freezes.


• Why cant I capture with mencoder and watch with xawtv at the same time?

You can only use one capture program at a time. Even though xawtv is not recording video, it is still capturing frames from the driver. So if you try to run mencoder it would be competing for video frames, and you would end up with a really bad video. This doesnt mean you cant watch and record at the same time though, it just has to be done by one program.


• Why doesnt tvtime work?

Make sure you do not load the module with the disableinterlace option, tvtime requires a capture resolution of 640x480 minimum. Some features in tvtime require more than 2 frame buffers so they will be disabled.


• I have multiple video cards and your module does not work

If you are using multiple video cards and the ATI card is not the primary video card, then you cant load the driver until after X has initialized the ATI card. You can use kmod to automatically load the module when its needed.
• I am using the GATOS ati.2 driver and all I get is green or garbage when I try to capture

The problem here is the GATOS drivers setup the card differently than my driver. As long as you load my module after X starts up, and dont use xawtv in overlay mode (or anything else that would use the gatos drivers) then it should work fine. You can also remove the module and load it again to reinitialize everything.
• I am using a 2.4 kernel and I cant get your driver to work

Make sure you patch your kernel with the V4L2 patch from http://bytesex.org/patches/
• I am using a kernel with APIC support and your driver doesnt work

I am not sure what the problem is here, but on my smp system apic does not seem to deliver the interrupts. So my ethernet card doesnt work either. It might be a hardware thing (I do get apic errors for cpu1). Try disabling apic and see if it works. (add noapic to your kernel parameters)
• I am getting this error when I try to load your module
  insmod: error inserting './genericv4l.ko': -1 Unknown symbol in module

Does your kernel have video4linux support compiled in? If not did you remember to load the video4linux module? (modprobe videodev).
• When I try xawtv I get an error about VIDIOC_S_CTRL and invalid argument

Check that the kernel source you compiled the module with matches the kernel you are running. (the video4linux interface might have changed slightly)

If you still cant get the driver to work email me and I will see what I can do to help!
sellers-eric at rogers.com