README file for easycap-somagic-linux

The aim of project is to make useful under linux the SoMagic variant of the EasyCap video capture device.
On insertion, the device has the USB id of 1c88:0007
After what looks to be a firmware initialisation, the USB id changes to 1c88:003c
It is at this point that the device exposes data endpoints and video can be captured.

What DOES work:
* Device initalisation
* Capture of PAL video input as a UYVY stream

What DOES NOT work at the moment:
* No sound capture
* Only configures capture for PAL TV system


Files:
/UsbSnoop_logs  - captured log files from a Windows machine running the drivers provided with the device
/tools - a perl script to process the captured logs and create code to replay the logged events
/include - some files required to compile the per script output, for isochronous transfers.
/generated - C programs generated from several of the logs

init1.c - first initialisation program to run against the device as 1c88:0007
init2.c - second initialisation, to run against 1c88:003c
capture.c - a program which should capture a composite PAL input signal
               and output 720 * 576 line UYVY data frames at 25 per second.

Requires:
libusb AND libusb-1.0
mplayer can be used to decode and display the UYVY frames (see below)

Compilation:
gcc init1.c -o init1 -lusb
gcc init2.c -o init2 -lusb
gcc capture.c -o capture -lusb-1.0

Usage:
* insert EasyCap device
* sudo ./init1 1c88 0007
* sudo ./init2 1c88 003c
* sudo ./capture 1c88 003c  | mplayer -  -demuxer rawvideo -rawvideo "w=720:h=576:format=uyvy:fps=25"
You should now be able to see the captured video.
Note: init1 and init2 only need to executed once per device power-up.

TODO:
* LOTS!
* Combining the 3 programs into one.
* MUCH refactoring and clean up of code
* Adding additional command line options to capture.c ( such as number of frames to generate / output format, etc)
* And in decreasing likelyhood of me doing them (but feel free to step up, anyone else)...
** PAL/NTSC config
** Audio capture
** Creation of a proper v4l2 driver would be nice