Download Pages - DCAM Capture Software, Linux

Installation instructions for the DCAM Capture Software, Linux

  1. Install the the Capture software
  2. Install an IEEE 1394 card
  3. Plug in the DCAM and check functionality with the bin/dcam program
NOTE: We are discontinuing support for 2.2.x kernels.  Please upgrade to 2.4.18 or greater kernels, preferably with RH 7.3.


1. Install the Capture software

Download the Capture software package from the link shown on the right.  You must have a username and password to access the download page.

There are two versions of the software, one for GCC 2.95/96, and one for GCC 3.x.  RedHat 7.3 has GCC 2.96, RedHat 8.0 has GCC 3.2.  To find out which version of GCC you have, type:

   gcc -v

After downloading the correct .tgz file, unpack it in a new directory.  This directory will be your top-level DCAM directory.


DCAM latest version, 0.4 MB


2. Install an IEEE 1394 card

To run DCAM, you must install a 1394 OHCI card, or have a working 1394 port on your PC. To install the 1394 card supplied by Videre Design, or your own 1394 card, follow the directions on the right.  


IEEE 1394 PCI / PCMCIA card (Linux RH 7.3, kernel 2.4.18)

Under 2.4.18 and greater kernels, there is no need to recompile the kernel or the drivers, everything will work "out of the box".   Still, there are two problems that might occur.

One problem is that sometimes the drivers do not set the root device appropriately.  Use the following sequence to install the driver modules:

modprobe ohci1394 attempt_root=1
modprobe video1394
modprobe raw1394

DCAM requires the libraw1394 libraries, which may not be installed on your machine.  These libraries are available from www.linux1394.org, under the libraw1394 project.  There are binary distributions for Red Hat and Debian distribution.  Get the latest distribution (libraw1394-0.9.0), and install it (you can get the i386 rpm, which installs the binaries directly).

Another problem is with PCMCIA cards.  The ohci1394 driver cannot be loaded before the card is plugged in.  FIrst plug the card in, then run the modprobe sequence above.  Also, before the card is ejected, video1394 and ohci1394 must be removed from the driver list.  This problem is fixed if you upgrade to the latest CVS version of the IEEE 1394 drivers.

More detailed directions can be found here.

 


3. Try the bin/dcam application


Set the library path to find the libraries for DCAM:

 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=*DCAM*/bin

*DCAM* is the top-level DCAM directory.

Plug in your DCAM, and try running the bin/dcam application.  If bin/dcam complains about not finding some library files, then LD_LIBRARY_PATH has not been set up correctly.

See the DCAM documentation for instructions on using bin/dcam, and on other programming examples.