Installation and testing

This document attempts to describe the general process of installing bttv2. There is also a HOWTO which describes precisely the process needed to install bttv2 on a RedHat 6.2 system. Try this if you need a few more pointers.

1) Go to:

  • http://me.in-berlin.de/~kraxel/bttv.html

    2) Follow all the instructions on installing bttv. You will probably also want xawtv from that site. Make sure everything works, including stereo modes, and stuff like that.

    3) Make yourself a directory (eg. bttv2), where you can download the packages (as listed below). You can also untar the packages under this directory. The actuall location is irrelevant - the files will be place in the correct directories by "make install".

    4) Download videodevX-xxxxxx.tgz (from the downloads directory), do a "make", then "make install". NOTE: The "xxxxxx" following the package name is the date the package was released, in the format DDMMYY (day-month-year). The videodev2 packages are an older, unsupported version.

    5) Download driverxxxxxx.tgz (from the downloads directory), do a "make" and then "make install".

    6) Look at the module paramters below and see if there is anything extra you need (remember to make an "options bttv2 ... " entry in conf.modules!).

    7) Do "depmod -a"

    8) (If the bttv driver is loaded.) "rmmod -r bttv.o"

    9) modprobe bttv2

    10) Start up xawtv, and send me an email saying what is broken (If it is not in "KNOWN_BUGS").

    11) To revert to bttv, just do "rmmod bttv2.o" and "modprobe bttv.o".

    Module Parameters

    Please refer to the bttv documentation for most of the module parameters. Some old parameters are not supported, and will give an error.

    bttv_norm=x

  • x=0 -> PAL-BDGHI
  • x=1 -> NTSC
  • x=2 -> SECAM L
  • x=3 -> PAL-NC
  • x=4 -> PAL-M
  • x=5 -> PAL-N
  • x=6 -> NTSC-Japan

    (The default is PAL-BDGHI. Many will need this because some tv apps break the v4l2 spec, and tries to change norm while preview is active, and thus fail.)

    bttv_maxmem=x

  • x is the maximum amount of memory in MB (per device) to allocate for capture buffers (default 8MB).

    bttv_radio=w,x,y,z

  • w..z are the minor numbers of the radio devices. Defaults to 0 for disabled, for v4l1 compatuble minor numbers, use bttv_radio=64,65,66,67 (if you have radio on four bt8x8 based devices). If for example, you only have one card with radio, you can use bttv_radio=64.