[mythtv-users] ATI All-in-Wonder

[Bruce Markey]

Patrick Reynolds wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Feb 2004, Bruce Markey wrote:
> 
> 
>>AIW hardware works by writing video data directly into display
>>memory rather than sending it out over the PCI bus. The "km"
>>driver grabs data from the display while the image is on screen.
>>This approach is worthless for any application other than the
>>AVView demo from the GATOS site. MythTV can use the "bttv" driver
>>but AIW requires "km" which no applications can use (xawtv et.al.
>>can't do capture with "km" either). Quoting myself ;-):
> 
> 
> Naive question: is it possible to make the AIW draw to an off-screen
> buffer (still in video memory) and capture from there?

Not a myth question but you could post at the GATOS site in
case there is a prize for being the 1000th person to ask ;-).
That is not the sole problem but the basis of why the hardware
does not lend itself to operating like other V4L drivers.

> I don't have an AIW card.  I'm just intrigued by the bad design.  :)

Well, it probably was a good design nearly a decade ago. When
buses and memory and CPUs weren't fast enough to do anything
with video capture it probably was a pretty spiffy idea to have
the capture chip on the same card so it could poke directly into
display memory without needing any other system resources.

--  bjm