help with a real ezcap usb capture device please

georgecarter · 2015-10-20 23:11:38

Hello All,
Could I have some help with getting video and audio from a usb capture device please.
The devie is an ezcap116, heres the link http://www.ezcap.tv/usb-video-capture/e … pture-card

I've been using it with a dell laptop running windoze xp and it captures video and audio perfectly.

With the ezcaP116 connected to my eeepc901, uname -a command shows;

Linux 901 3.16.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt11-1+deb8u3 (2015-08-04) i686 GNU/Linux

lsusb command shows;

Bus 004 Device 004: ID eb1a:2861 eMPIA Technology, Inc.

lsmod | grep em28xx command shows;

em28xx_rc              17069  0 
rc_core                22028  1 em28xx_rc
em28xx_v4l             34909  0 
em28xx                 67614  2 em28xx_v4l,em28xx_rc
tveeprom               16473  1 em28xx
videobuf2_vmalloc      12720  2 em28xx_v4l,uvcvideo
videobuf2_core         39059  2 em28xx_v4l,uvcvideo
v4l2_common            12867  4 saa7115,em28xx_v4l,em28xx,videobuf2_core
videodev              107701  6 saa7115,em28xx_v4l,uvcvideo,em28xx,v4l2_common,videobuf2_core
i2c_core               36838  11 drm,i915,i2c_i801,saa7115,drm_kms_helper,i2c_algo_bit,em28xx,v4l2_common,tveeprom,em28xx_rc,videodev
usbcore               170994  9 uhci_hcd,em28xx_v4l,snd_usb_audio,uvcvideo,usb_storage,em28xx,snd_usbmidi_lib,ehci_hcd,ehci_pci

dmesg command shows;

[21250.446788] em28xx: New device   @ 480 Mbps (eb1a:2861, interface 0, class 0)
[21250.446799] em28xx: Video interface 0 found: isoc
[21250.447565] em28xx: chip ID is em2860
[21250.542328] em2860 #0: board has no eeprom
[21250.600226] em2860 #0: No sensor detected
[21250.615573] em2860 #0: found i2c device @ 0x4a on bus 0 [saa7113h]
[21250.658975] em2860 #0: Your board has no unique USB ID.
[21250.658988] em2860 #0: A hint were successfully done, based on i2c devicelist hash.
[21250.658995] em2860 #0: This method is not 100% failproof.
[21250.659000] em2860 #0: If the board were missdetected, please email this log to:
[21250.659005] em2860 #0:     V4L Mailing List  <linux-media@vger.kernel.org>
[21250.659012] em2860 #0: Board detected as EM2860/SAA711X Reference Design
[21250.736110] em2860 #0: Identified as EM2860/SAA711X Reference Design (card=19)
[21250.736131] em2860 #0: analog set to isoc mode.
[21250.736244] em28xx audio device (eb1a:2861): interface 1, class 1
[21250.736303] em28xx audio device (eb1a:2861): interface 2, class 1
[21250.736466] usbcore: registered new interface driver em28xx
[21250.772402] em2860 #0: Registering V4L2 extension
[21250.790521] usbcore: registered new interface driver snd-usb-audio
[21251.180878] saa7115 6-0025: saa7113 found @ 0x4a (em2860 #0)
[21252.624973] em2860 #0: V4L2 video device registered as video1
[21252.624983] em2860 #0: V4L2 VBI device registered as vbi0
[21252.624990] em2860 #0: V4L2 extension successfully initialized
[21252.624997] em28xx: Registered (Em28xx v4l2 Extension) extension
[21252.641599] em2860 #0: Registering snapshot button...
[21252.642369] input: em28xx snapshot button as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb4/4-2/input/input14
[21252.642637] em2860 #0: Remote control support is not available for this card.
[21252.642646] em28xx: Registered (Em28xx Input Extension) extension

My probable wrong conclusion is, the device is recognised and drivers are loaded.
I'm using vlc but cannot get a flicker out of the capture device.
Do I have to do anything else to ensure the drivers are working correctly ?
Does anyone know what settings to use with vlc ?

I'm newbie so please be gentle.
tara george

Last edited by damo (2015-10-21 11:17:21)

orionthehunter · 2015-10-20 23:49:41

I'm not sure that there is a driver for this in Linux. I could be wrong about this as well. The website doesn't list Linux compatibility. You could try running the windows driver through wine.

I'm not particularly familiar with this type of hardware, but there seem to be quite a few people trying to get it and similar devices to work, especially on Ubuntu. Looks like they've had various degrees of success:

same device? similar problem: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.p … 71663.html

similar device, longer thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=924504

Tiny possibility this driver might work? http://sourceforge.net/projects/syntekdriver/

This guy claims to have his working on linux, though he doesn't actually cite the source: http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-revie … B003YGJLWU

Someone else might be able to help more.

Edit: Typo.

Last edited by orionthehunter (2015-10-20 23:53:00)

damo · 2015-10-21 00:50:45

@georgecarter

Welcome to the forums. If you would take a minute to look over the Forum Rules, and see what it says about posting style (specifically about using [ code ] tags for pasting terminal output), it would help readability greatly

georgecarter · 2015-10-21 11:12:46

I'm very sorry Damo, yes I'll do the code thing next time and read through the guidance. Thanks for the nudge.
Erm....what can I say, it was only my lifetime third ever post on an internet forum - a
beginners senior moment, sorry.
George

damo · 2015-10-21 11:18:44

Hey, no prob

(Fixed it for you. NB you can edit your posts at any time )

georgecarter · 2015-10-21 13:23:53

Damo, that looks much better, thank you.
George

georgecarter · 2015-10-21 13:48:57

Hello Orionthehunter,
Many thanks for the links. I've looked at them and as usual things are not what they first appear. There are a lot of shall we describe them as "clones" of the easycap device without drivers, which is why the original company changed its brand to ezcap to stop counterfeiters. Mine is a genuine article and the drivers are apparently already included in the debian distro. I'm going to cross check my facts before my next posting about this, and I have found a linux user who has posted details in the ezcap forum about getting it to work and what he did - I didnt understand it. I'll have to check this and post it here for comment. I just have to figure out how to do this in the correct BBcode.
Cheerio
George

georgecarter · 2015-10-21 16:18:15

I've looked at the ezcap forum and found these two posts, I hope I'm not infringing anything by posting them here. The first poster explains what they did to get the captue device to work here I quote;

I have EzCap 116 working on Ubuntu 10.10 with 2.6.35.22-generic kernel. The standard em28xx module included with that kernel works but needs the "card=2" option to get the sound since it cannot seem to automatically identify the board properly. I created a text file called "em28xx.conf" with the line "options em28xx card=2" in it (w/o quotes of course). This file goes in the /etc/modprobe.d directory so it will set the card number automatically while loading the module.
Also, my 116 powers up with PAL video standard and S-Video input, with audio muted (probably to avoid speaker pop on the power-up). I am using the gstreamer library in my wxWidgets app, so I use the video4linux2 API to set the capture options: (IMPORTANT: gstreamer's v4l2src element must at least be in the "ready" state before you can get a valid driver file descriptor property to use with the ioctl's.)
------
// Don't forget
//#include <sys/ioctl.h>
//#include <linux/videodev2.h>
// along with the gstreamer includes
//(after creating the gstreamer elements and setting the state):
int fd;
g_object_get(G_OBJECT(m_VideoSrc), "device-fd", &fd, NULL);
int video_input = 1; // Composite Video In
if (ioctl(fd, VIDIOC_S_INPUT, &video_input))
wxMessageBox("Cannot Set Video Input!", "ERROR", wxOK, NULL);
v4l2_std_id video_standard = V4L2_STD_NTSC_M; // NTSC_M video standard
if (ioctl(fd, VIDIOC_S_STD, &video_standard))
wxMessageBox("Cannot Set Video Standard!", "ERROR", wxOK, NULL);
--------
Now for the audio, I set the device name for my gstreamer alsasrc element and I again use the
v4l2 API with the same fd to set the EzCap audio user control to unmuted:
-----------
g_object_set (G_OBJECT (m_AudioSrc), "device", "hw:1,0", NULL);
struct v4l2_control control;
control.id = V4L2_CID_AUDIO_MUTE;
control.value = 0;
ioctl(fd, VIDIOC_S_CTRL, &control);
-----------

Could anyone advise how the ubuntu 10.10 settings used above could be used in BL so I could try it out ?
The second poster just plugs in the device and it works using vlc, here I quote

I bought the ezcap-tv 116 USB 2.0 as it was reputed to run out of box on linux.
Only problem I had was finding the right combination of commands for the various utilites. For vlc
vlc --v4l2-dev /dev/video1 --v4l2-standard NTSC --v4l2-input 1 --input-slave alsa://hw:2,0 --v4l2-width 720 --v4l2-height 576 v4l2://
Worked on my system. the device is video1 because of an inbuilt webcam on my laptop otherwise the default video0 would have worked.
arecord -l lists the sound devices which showed the ezcap on card 2 hence the --input-slave alsa://hw:2,0
The kicker was I had to provide the width,height explicitly, --v4l2-width 720 --v4l2-height 576 otherwise no video.... oh and you also have to get the input right, 0 if you are using the S-Video which is what vlc used by default otherise 1 for the composite (yellow) interface --v4l2-input 1 which I was using.
My distribution happens to be Mageia 4, all the drivers were present by default and automatically loaded when the device was plugged into the usb port.
Now that I know it works its encouraging when trying to find the appropriate parameters and options for other commands...
Just wanted to drop by and report this as I think this is a good device for linux. I bought it so I can salvage some family videos from various tape formats we have laying around for cameras and players which won't work much longer... Also most of the video editing suites on Linux are now much more stable and useable than when I tried a few years ago.
Thanks for the device... has to be the real thing not the knock offs.

So could anyone advise as to how I can set vlc settings the same as the second poster to get this to work.
Do you need anymore info ?
Cheerio
George

georgecarter · 2015-10-21 17:38:56

Hi All,
Sort of exasperated I decided to follow the second poster that I found quoted above.
On the terminal I did the command arecord -l to find out my audio hardware

**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC269 Analog [ALC269 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: U0xeb1a0x2861 [USB Device 0xeb1a:0x2861], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

I then just edited the vlc string to suit my video channel, composite, PAL, audio channel like this

 vlc --v4l2-dev /dev/video1 --v4l2-standard PAL --v4l2-input 1 --input-slave alsa://hw:1,0 --v4l2-width 720 --v4l2-height 576 v4l2://

and voila I have colour picture, with audio all in sync, cannot believe it. So this device just plugged in and it was ready to go with BL. My streaming picture size is not correct and I cannot save it yet to my external HDD and I havent played it back on my TV to really test the capture, but I'm very happy now.
I'm just going to search for the command set for vlc to do this.
Cheerio George

#1 2015-10-20 23:11:38

help with a real ezcap usb capture device please

#2 2015-10-20 23:49:41

Re: help with a real ezcap usb capture device please

#3 2015-10-21 00:50:45

Re: help with a real ezcap usb capture device please

#4 2015-10-21 11:12:46

Re: help with a real ezcap usb capture device please

#5 2015-10-21 11:18:44

Re: help with a real ezcap usb capture device please

#6 2015-10-21 13:23:53

Re: help with a real ezcap usb capture device please

#7 2015-10-21 13:48:57

Re: help with a real ezcap usb capture device please

#8 2015-10-21 16:18:15

Re: help with a real ezcap usb capture device please

#9 2015-10-21 17:38:56

Re: help with a real ezcap usb capture device please

Board footer