View source for Stream a DV-camera using vlc

{{draft}}
In this howto we are going to stream the video coming from a DV-camera connected through ie1394 (firewire).<BR>
vlc is used to stream the content.<BR>
We will be using h264 and AAC to transcode the stream ''(should be fairly easy to change to whatever suits your needs)''.

= Setup Alpine =
== Initial Setup ==
Follow [[Installing_Alpine]] to setup Alpine Linux.

== Install programs ==
{{Cmd| apk add vlc-daemon vlc-dev }}
{{todo| I haven't figured out why vlc-dev is needed. Manually adding all vlc-dev dependencies does not work}}

== Using ACF to control vlc ==
{{todo|Create Makefiles and test acf-vlc-daemon and remove this note when it works}}
{{tip|A easy way to control vlc-daemon would be through [[ACF]]. Consider following these simple steps.<BR>
But as it is ''optional'' you could just skip this [[ACF]] section.}}
Setup/install acf ''(unless it's not already done)''.
{{cmd| setup-acf}}
Install acf-package for vlc
{{cmd| apk add acf-vlc-daemon}}
We won't describe in this tutorial how you would use [[ACF]] to control vlc-daemon ''(basically because it's so simple it does not need any describing)''.<BR>
If you installed [[ACF]], just browse https://ip.of.your.box and you would from this tutorial understand what to do.<BR> 

= Configure vlc =
Configuration is done by modifying '/etc/conf.d/vlc'.<BR>
Here comes the actual configuration that makes vlc stream the DV-camera.
<pre>
###############
BITRATE=500

###############
# DV 720x576, vga 640x480, dcif 528x384
XRES=720
YRES=576

###############
# H.264 options for speed
H264_OPT_FRAMETYPE="keyint=250,min-keyint=25,bframes=3,ref=3"
H264_OPT_RATECONTROL="qcomp=0.1,qpstep=10,ratetol=0.1,vbv-maxrate=${BITRATE},vbv-bufsize=256"
H264_OPT_ANALYSIS="me=hex,subme=3,merange=8,8x8dct,partitions=p8x8,trellis=0"
# Bind everything together
H264="${H264_OPT_FRAMETYPE},${H264_OPT_RATECONTROL},${H264_OPT_ANALYSIS}"

###############
# Transcoder
TVIDEO="venc=x264{$H264},vcodec=h264,vb=${BITRATE},scale=1,width=${XRES},height=${YRES}"
TAUDIO="acodec=mp4a,ab=64,channels=1,samplerate=32000"
TMISC="deinterlace,audio-sync"

###############
TRANSPORT="std{access=http,mux=ts,dst=0.0.0.0:2012}"

VLC_OPTS="--daemon -I dummy dv:///dev/fw0 --rawdv-hurry-up --sout-keep --sout-transcode-audio-sync \
--file-logging --logfile /var/log/vlc/vlc.log \
--sout #transcode{$TVIDEO,$TAUDIO,$TMISC}:$TRANSPORT"
</pre>
{{todo|Finetune the x264 parameters}}

= Start it up =
== Prepare the hardware ==
Here comes the hardest part in this tutorial... Attach the DV-camera to your ie1394/firewire port.<BR>
Well... that wasn't too hard! :-)

== Manual start ==
Start vlc-daemon either from terminal:
{{cmd|/etc/init.d/vlc start}}
or using ACF and just klick [Start].

== Make it start at next reboot ==
You might want to make it automatically start at next reboot
{{cmd|rc-update add vlc-daemon default}}

== Debug ==
In case something goes wrong, consider looking at the logfiles.
{{cmd|less -I /var/log/vlc/vlc.log}}
If you don't find any useful information you could add verbosity by adding '-v' or '-vv' to /etc/conf.d/vlc and restart vlc ''(you would need to restart vlc-daemon to see more information in the logs)''.