Camera 420 TVL, size unknown - finding the correct size

Question

I have a safer ccd camera which provides infra led lighting at night, which does not produce a good pic with motion downloaded as an rpm via this site. After reading/googling I have been trying to find the camera size which will produce a visible picture.

I have tested it on a video VCR - the camera appears to work. The card is a generic BT878. Video ouput from the camera works on both xawtv and tvtime as PAL-NC (holland?) - the card appears to work. The info on the camera says that it is 420TVL for which I cant find via google anything useful. The supplier has so far not been able to help in this case.

I have tried a number of sizes - listed below are the ones which show something, but nothing so far produces a usable pic on Firefox (http://localhost:8081/) Only the sizes listed below do produce a clear recognizable pic, The pattern found by my trial and mostly error seems that only anything with a height of 97 does produce a pic without streaks or tearing, just the sync is out, sometimes even showing the 4 split quarters of the pic.

Any suggestions?

As an aside, if the config file option PAL-nc were to be named PAL-bw, this would have prevented my earlier confusion with PAC-NC, a PAL format that this camera may be using.

Hopefully the relevant Section of my config file
# Videodevice to be used for capturing  (default /dev/video0)
# for FreeBSD default is /dev/bktr0
videodevice /dev/video0

# Tuner device to be used for capturing using tuner as source (default /dev/tuner0)
# This is ONLY used for FreeBSD. Leave it commented out for Linux
; tunerdevice /dev/tuner0
# The video input to be used (default: 8)
# Should normally be set to 1 for video/TV cards, and 8 for USB cameras
;input 8
input 1

# The video norm to use (only for video capture and TV tuner cards)
# Values: 0 (PAL), 1 (NTSC), 2 (SECAM), 3 (PAL NC no colour). Default: 0 (PAL)
norm 0
;norm 3

# The frequency to set the tuner to (kHz) (only for TV tuner cards) (default: 0)
frequency o

# Rotate image this number of degrees. The rotation affects all saved images as
# well as mpeg movies. Valid values: 0 (default = no rotation), 90, 180 and 270.
rotate 0

# Image width (pixels). Valid range: Camera dependent,

Partial Output from motion -n
 Thread started
[1] cap.driver: "bttv"
[1] cap.card: "BT878 video ( *** UNKNOWN/GENER"
[1] cap.bus_info: "PCI:0000:01:06.0"
[1] cap.capabilities=0x05010015
[1] - VIDEO_CAPTURE
[1] - VIDEO_OVERLAY
[1] - VBI_CAPTURE
[1] - TUNER
[1] - READWRITE
[1] - STREAMING
[1] v4l2_select_input: name = "Composite1", type 0x00000002, status 00000000
[1] - CAMERA
[1] - video standard PAL
[1] Supported palettes:

sizes that produce some output that is recognizable, but not in sync
best(1/4,2/3 pic shown sync lost)pic too wide/high  80/96,96/96,112/96,176/96,192/96,208/96,224/96,240/96,256/96,272/96,288/96,304/96,230/96 240/96

some sites found via google said this may help:
xaw-hwscan provides
 xawtv -hwscan
This is xawtv-3.95, running on Linux/i686 (2.6.22.9-91.fc7)
looking for available devices
port 65-65
    type : Xvideo, image scaler
    name : NV Video Overlay

port 66-97
    type : Xvideo, image scaler
    name : NV Video Blitter

/dev/video0: OK                         [ -device /dev/video0 ]
    type : v4l2
    name : BT878 video ( *** UNKNOWN/GENER
    flags: overlay capture tuner 

v4l-info | grep height
        fmt.pix.height          : 576
        fmt.win.w.height        : 240
        fmt.height              : 0
        maxheight               : 576
        minheight               : 32
        height                  : 0
        height                  : 240

 v4l-info | grep width
        fmt.pix.width           : 720
        fmt.win.w.width         : 320
        fmt.width               : 0
        maxwidth                : 640
        minwidth                : 48
        width                   : 0
        width                   : 320

/etc/modprobe.conf:
alias eth0 forcedeth
alias scsi_hostadapter sata_sil
alias scsi_hostadapter1 sata_nv
alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
options snd-card-0 index=0
options snd-intel8x0 index=0
remove snd-intel8x0 { /usr/sbin/alsactl store 0 >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-intel8x0

Environment

Motion version:	3.2.8
ffmpeg version:	FFmpeg version SVN-r8876,
Libraries:	ffmpeg
Server OS:	Fedora Core7 kernel 2.6.23.1-21

-- JoBlk - 11 Nov 2007

Answer

Do you get a clear picture when you use xawtv? If not, try connecting the camera to input0 of the card. If that doesn't work, you will most probably have an incorrect card-type when loading the bttv module. You have to search the web a bit to get the right one. The auto detection feature of the bttv module does not work very well with a lot of cards.

Once you have it working with xawtv, make sure to use the right 'input' in motion.conf. The correct PAL resolution with bttv cards should be 384 x 288.

-- JoergWeber - 11 Nov 2007

Video works great on xawtv, but it when I start motion xawtv shows the same as what I am seeing with motion. I am fairly confident i have the right input for the card, as I can actually see the picture, but the sync is wrong - it is viewable but wrapping around both sideways and vertically when I have the height as 96. Other inputs give a plain bluescreen. Trying with width 384 and height 288 provides a picture that is not recognizable. Attaching a pic.

by creating a file /etc/modprobe.d/bttv.modprobe with the contents

options bttv card=77

Now Motion shows a good pic with the size 384x288. Thanks.