Date: Fri, 17 Jan 1997 09:19:26 +1100 From: Nick Repin <nrepin@digiteyes.com.au> To: Wm Brian McCane <root@bmccane.uit.net> Cc: multimedia@FREEBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Bravado Message-ID: <2.2.32.19970116221926.006acdf8@mail.ozemail.com.au>
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At 01:04 AM 14/01/97 -0600, you wrote: >Greets, > > I have been looking at several different video editing boards, >(Miro DC20, Bravado 1000, Matrox Meteor) and I think I have decided on the >Bravado 1000. I "borrowed" these from a friend which sells them, and I >was happiest with the Bravado. Now for the important question. Is there >anybody out there using this beast under FreeBSD. I had thought about >contacting TrueVision through their Web page and asking for the >programming information. Then if it's not too complex I was going to >modify the Meteor driver to drive it. I will mostly use this in >Windows95, because it comes with Adobe Premiere 4.2 which does a nice >job, but I would love to be able to do a simple capture to disk/display >from disk under FreeBSD. Any suggestions?? > > In my experience, Truevision supply hardware but do not document it to allow driver development. They supply drivers for OS's of their choice. The net effect is that their products tend to become orphans after the OS's move on e.g. Targa 2000 EISA products are capable and now cheap, but no longer supported under current version OS's by current Truevision drivers. This forces you to upgrade Truevision hardware in tandem with OS upgrades. The same situation is likely with the Bravado 1000 - I would be surprised if you can get adequate hardware doc from them to support Un*x development as they appear committed to Windoze and the Adobe Premiere style of editing. The good news is that the Bravado is based around the Zoran JPEG/PCI chipset ( see http://www.zoran.com/jpgaplct.htm#enduser ) as are a number of other capture boards. Drivers for these are likely to be similar using the same PCI interface chip and similar design philosophy (eg no onboard frame buffers, etc). A reference to the Zoran JPEG chip (ZR36050 referred to as MIRO_36050) is present in a Linux patch (linux/drivers/pci/pci.c) so there may be a Linux driver for Miro in development that could be ported. We are developing a FreeBSD driver (modification of Meteor driver?) for yet another Zoran-based video/audio capture board that will be tailored more toward real-time disk-based editing (no rendering) - FreeBSD or Linux are the only OS that make sense for a particular application we have in mind. I'm not sure whether the driver source will be released (for reasons out of my control) but, all going well, binary drivers should become available for FreeBSD. Hope this helps, -Nick --- Nick Repin [Daraga/Digiteyes] GSM:+61 419 259780, Fax:+61 2 9427 9028 http://www.digiteyes.com.au
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