DVGRAB(1) General Commands Manual DVGRAB(1)
NAME
dvgrab -- Grab DV video and audio data via IEEE1394 links
SYNOPSIS
dvgrab [--autosplit] [--card num] [--channel num] [--format fmt] [--frames num] [--help] [--testmode] [--timestamp] [--version]
[base]
DESCRIPTION
This manual page was written for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution because the original program does not have a manual page. Instead, doc-
umentation is provided online at http://www.schirmacher.de/arne/dvgrab/dvgrab_manual1_e.html.
dvgrab is a program that captures DV video and audio data from digital camcorders via an IEEE1394 link. (IEEE1394 is also known under the
various trademarks FireWire, i.Link, or Lynx.) The DV data is stored in one or several files and can later be processed by video editing
software. dvgrab will NOT remote control the camcorder nor show the video's content on screen.
The base argument is used to construct the filename to store video data in, like base_id.ext where id is a running number starting from 001
and ext is the file name extension specifying the file format used, e.g. avi. A different naming scheme is used whenever the --timestamp
is given (see below).
OPTIONS
--autosplit
Try to detect whenever a new recording starts, and store it into a separate file. If used together with the --frames option, a
new file will be started whenever the given frame count is reached.
Autosplit is off by default.
--card num
Tells dvgrab to receive data from IEEE1394 card num. Defaults to 0, i. e. the first card found.
--channel num
Isochannel to receive data from. Defaults to 63, which is pretty much standard among DV camcorders these days.
--format dv1 | dv2 | raw | test
Specifies the format of the output file(s). dv1 and dv2 both are AVI files with slightly different DV codecs. While dv1 pro-
duces smaller output, some applications won't grok it and require dv2 instead.
raw stores the data unmodified. Some old Linux software can handle this format. Furthermore, you can trick the Windows QuickTime
app into playing such files by renaming them to file extension .dv.
test as the name suggests is used for testing purposes only. The output can be fed back into dvgrab using the --testmode option.
Defaults to dv1
--frames num
This option tells dvgrab to store at most num frames per file. The corresponding time depends on the video system used. PAL
shows 25, NTSC about 30 frames per second.
Defaults to no frame limit. AVI output, however, has an implicit limit on file size, causing AVI file to be split unconditionally
when the grow near 1GB.
--help Show summary of options.
--testmode
Read complete video transmission from a file. Used for development only.
--timestamp
Put information on date and time of recording into file name.
--version Show version of program.
EXAMPLES
dvgrab foo
Captures video data from the default IEEE1394 source and stores it to files foo_001.avi, foo_002.avi, etc.
dvgrab --frames 25 foo
Assuming a PAL video source, this command records one second's worth of video data.
dvgrab --autosplit --frames 750 --timestamp foo
Records video data from the default IEEE1394 source, cuts it into chunks of 30 seconds (assuming PAL) and names the resulting
files according to date and time info in the videostream.
AUTHOR
This manual page was written by Daniel Kobras kobras@debian.org for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others). It is heavily
based on the online documentation at http://www.schirmacher.de/arne/dvgrab/dvgrab_manual1_e.html.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or
any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts and no Back-Cover Texts. A
copy of the license can be found under /usr/share/common-licenses/FDL.
DVGRAB(1)