Choppy v4l2/bttv capture

[Andrew Clayton]

Hi,

Been looking at converting VHS tapes into nice open digital media,
using GStreamer naturally. However I'm having problems getting smooth
recordings.

I'm doing this on a Dual core Intel 3.06GHz with 4GB RAM running Fedora
16 (64bit) and using a Hauppauge Win/TV pci, Brooktree Corporation
Bt878 Video Capture card.

Using tvtime to watch videos works fine and I can capture video (and
audio) using mencoder with the following:

mencoder tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:device=/dev/video1:alsa:adevice=hw.1,1 -oac copy  -ovc lavc -o video.avi

and playback of the resultant video is smooth.


However, I just can't get smooth video with GStreamer.

E.g, using the following:

gst-launch oggmux name=mux ! filesink location=vid.ogv v4l2src device=/dev/video1 ! videorate ! video/x-raw-yuv,width=320,height=240,framerate=25/1 ! ffmpegcolorspace ! queue ! theoraenc bitrate=800 ! queue ! mux. alsasrc buffer-time=100000 device=hw:1,1 ! audio/x-raw-int,channels=1,rate=119466 ! audioconvert ! queue ! vorbisenc ! mux.

Works in as much as I get a Ogg Theora file that plays back and bits
where there isn't a lot of movement look fine, however, scenes with a
lot of (or not even that much) motion become choppy.

Note: The above command was cobbled together by a lot of scouring the
internet and trial and error. So I wouldn't be surprised if it's wrong
in various ways.

Any idea's would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Andrew