[linux-audio-dev] miniDV audio format

[Jamie Guinan]

On Thu, 26 Aug 2004, Eric Dantan Rzewnicki wrote:

> 1)Does anyone know what format digital audio is stored in for miniDVs?
> 
> I know the audio can be 12 or 16 bit and I know that (at least for the
> tapes I have) SP is about 60 minutes and LP is about 90 minutes. So, I
> figure the sample rates are probably something like 48kHz for SP and
> 32KHz for LP, but I haven't found a definitive reference, yet.
>
> I ask because I've had a canon zr60 miniDV camcorder for about a year
> and have recently started using it to collect sounds. For now I'm
> recording from the analog output of the camcorder into my delta66.
> Obviously, this is less than ideal, but far superior to the handheld
> voice recorder analog cassette tape solution I've been using for the
> past 8 years. :-]
> 
> 2)I've briefly glanced over the web page for kino:
> http://kino.schirmacher.de/article/static/2
> It appears kino will handle recording the video from a ieee1394 
> connection and also includes a tool for stripping audio out of the video 
> to a wav file. Anyone here have any experience to share in using kino,
> or any other package, to do something like this?

This works for me, with 2.6.x kernels,

  <press play on camcorder>
  $ cat /dev/ieee1394/dv/host0/NTSC/in > foo.dv
  $ playdv --disable-video --audio-file=foo.raw foo.dv
    Audio is 32.0 kHz, 12 bits quantization, 2 channels, emphasis off 
  <ctrl-c>
  $ sox -r 32000 -c 2 -s -w foo.raw foo.wav
  <fire up favorite .wav editor>

You need to have the right modules loaded/built-in, and the libdv
package (might be in your distro) for playdv.  I saw reference
to audacity having a good .raw loader, so you might try that
instead of sox.

> 3)Does it matter what ieee1394 interface I get, or are they all
> basically the same as long as there's kernel support for them?

Popular OHCI chipsets should work.

Cheers,
-Jamie

> Thanks in advance,
> Eric Rz.
> 
> PS appologies if this has been discussed recently. I've been away on
> vacation and haven't had time to follow the lists closely for 3-4 weeks.
> -edrz