The collected works of biosci3c

I am looking at using an O2 I acquired as a way to record TV shows (eventually to DVD). I will be doing this in standard definition (480i, possibly 480p).

I have the A/V module, so I plan to pipe in S-video/composite signals.

Unfortunately, the harddisk is tiny (around 6 GB), so I would not be able to capture very much video (maybe one show).

Therefore, I need to do one of three things:
1a) Find a way to hook up a bigger SCSI hard drive (hard, since I can't find a cheap SCSI drive, and I probably don't have room for it in the case)

2)...use an IDE-SCSI adapter to hook up a bigger IDE drive (also hard, probably no room in case, and I really don't want to pay much for an adapter)

3) Stream the video out as it comes in to another computer (over Ethernet) and capture it there.

Either way, I plan to process the video on another computer.

Does anybody have advice for me? It is too bad I can't simply hook the computer up to my laptop and use it as a glorifed video capture card.


I also will need advice on what codecs to use, etc.


Thanks.

Ummm, that would be great, if I wanted to spend $200.

Anyone else?

I should add that I have Irix 6.5 installed, but I am open to using any operating system that would fulfill my requirements (I know a few flavors of BSD and GNU/Linux have SGI MIPS compatible versions, and have successfully installed one of them in the past).

I am not picky with the capture format, as long as it would look good with a 480i feed (i.e. that I couldn't tell I had recorded it). Therefore, I am open to the idea of compressing it.

What I want to do is use the A/V module (s-video/composite) to pipe in the video, then pipe it out to my laptop (which has a nice big hardrive and a beefy processor) for processing/saving to DVD. I could partially get around the hard drive space limit by only doing one show at a time.

What I need to know is:
a) is there a way of cheaply increasing my amount of storage space without swapping out the main drive (since this is not working as is)? Can I use a USB stick (is there a driver for this)?
and/or
b) is there a way I can pipe out the video feed over ethernet/USB etc while it is being captured (or perhaps lagging a few seconds/minutes behind)?


Incidentally, how much do you think I could get if I sold it (I would rather not, but I'm just curious)?

Hmm. I have tried installing Debian some time ago, but it didn't work correctly. I could try again.

Could you give me some more information/links regarding this VINO driver?


The reason I am doing this rather than simply buying a capture card is that I don't want to spend much money (and cheap capture cards absolutely stink)

Incidentally, if anyone could point me to a cheap capture card that works well, I could use that instead, but I doubt such a think exists.

Okay, so what I am getting from this is that I need to get a fiber channel card (which I have seen for around $10/15, not bad).

I am not familiar with this connection scheme.

Does this require a special drive, or just a special IDE-FC adaptor?

I guess I mistitled this thread, since I am really using my O2 as a glorified video capture card rather than a DVR.

Basically, I need to know the cheapest way to get additional storage on the O2 of reasonable bandwith, considering that I have a few 7200 RPM IDE drives laying around?

I really appreciate all your help so far.