What device is my conexant board using?

English Multimedia
1

I have an openSUSE 12.3 box with a capture card loaded with a conexant cx2388xx chip.
When I open up xawtv I can get the output from the capture card by selecting what xawtv knows as the ‘composite1’ device.
The output is reasonable but varies a lot in size and quality depending on the source signal, which is decoded by a DVB receiver.
It would be helpful to play this signal directly in VLC where I would have more control over the quality and size, but I have no idea what device name the system would use for this capture card.
/dev/video0 just produces a blue screen, but that is probably my regular vid card.

How to find the device label that the system is using?

2

Resolved. 2 steps for anybody that has a similar issue:

  1. install v4l2ucp - excellent little app which will display info about your capture card including device names applicable
  2. since my capture card has 2 inputs, in capture device dialog go to advanced options and select the right input number

Hey presto! video in VLC and able to adjust display. Resolved.

3

The blue screen simply is the expected behaviour when the hardware driver is properly configured but there is no (active) signal on the selected input … as you discovered, your device apparently has two inputs and you needed only to select the correct one. video0 is the default, but it would obviously appear that your line in from the DVB receiver/STB was attached to the capture devices video1 interface

Note: /dev/videoN nodes are only associated with V4L devices (i.e. not applicable to your regular video card/adapter) … I described them here if you (or anyone else) is interested in a bit of further detail: Device nodes and character devices - LinuxTVWiki