[AG-TECH] Wierd problems with video using VIC in fedora 3/4

[Proshanta Saha <proshanta@gmail.com>]

Hi,

I've been debugging a non-responsive vic window problem for days, what
happens is that for the first 5 mins, I get perfect motion on all 3
cameras. All of a sudden one of them will freeze up. Stoping the
session and staring it again causes vic to show a green window, and
essentially render that capture card useless. Still works under tvtime,
just not with vic. I am almost hitting a brick wall, ie. tried almost
everything I could to find out if it was my server(dual core dell
380s), capture card (Hauppauge Winttv 401 c88xx version), linux (fedora
4), or the vic software. 

Step 1: was making sure that the Wintv cards were all good, and had not
problem running simultaneously for hrs, a fair amount of burn in tests
were done, the tv cards all seem to be able to run at capture mode for
hrs with no problem. 

Step 2: was to see if vic was kind of not so nvidia friendly, the video
capture server has a dual head 128mb PCI-E, which I've heard people
find not so great to work with under linux. I personally did not find
any such problems, running at 1600x1200 just fine, perfect response
time and etc. But just for kicks I brought out a dual xeon dell box I
had lying around, with more than ample horse power with a pretty simple
video card, probably an intel i810 type of a card. Unfortunatley I
faced the same problem.

Step 3: Fedora 4 versus Fedora 3. So I decided to try Fedora 3 with
some spare hard disks. Fedora 3 seems surprisingly easy to setup AG
with, unlike the mountain I had to climb for Fedora 4. However, it
seems to also mysteriously freeze one of the vic screens, after which
every session would produce a greed screen on the frozen vic. Only a
reboot will fix the green screen problem. But then after 5 mins of
starting AG, I'm back to the frozen screen problem.

Step 4: AG2.3 versus AG2.4, I was very excited when I saw that the
screen did not freeze up after five minutes. But alas after about 15
mins or so I get a frozen window, and will show up as a green screen
everytime after that. Only a reboot will fix that problem, and would
eventually freeze up again.

Step 5::Move 1 capture card to another machine, as it seems to be able
to handle 2 just fine. But it appears that even in this case VIC would
cause a frozen screen on one of the windows. And the usual green screen
appears. The one with just 1 works perfectly. 

So I'm kind of running out of ideas, since the capture cards on their
own pass the burn in test. Software capture tests all pass. The VIC
however mysteriously causes a frozen screen followed by a green screen
in next vic startup. 

Any suggestions would be most welcome. Kind of running out of hair to pull aswell. Thanks in advance.

Proshanta