netmaster.dk

If you have seen the Olympics Basketball Final in Munich 1972 USSR vs USA you know that game clock is of the essence.

A bit more recent we have Michael Jordan Buzzer Beaters.

This article describes one way of getting the game clock on screen when you record a sport event. Follow this link to see ex. of videos.

For recording I use:

• ASUS 5800 - an relatively old but powerful pc - Pentium4, 2800 MHz.
• A low budget JVC GR-D720E DV Camera.
• A Nautronic Scoreboard System, see http://www.nautronic.dk/, from which I have a serial connection to my ASUS.

On the ASUS I have this directory structure:

• ./ffmpeg
• ./pipmanipulator
• ./gamevideo01
• ./gamevideo02
• ./scripts
• etc.

./pipmanipulator holds a program (link to source!) that reads serial data from the Nautronic Scoreboard System and continually updates a file ("/mnt/ramdisk0/pipmanipulator.dat") with scoreboard information.

./ffmpeg holds a modified version of ffmpeg. (link to source!) Look for "tps" in source code to find modifications. The standard package ffmpeg is adjusted to use information from the file with scoreboard information. ffmpeg reads a number of bitmaps and put these bitmaps on screen, ie. see lower left part of image above. The bitmaps are created by the script makeboardGraphics.sh before run of ffmpeg. ffmpeg picks up bitmaps at run time depending on values in the file with scoreboard information. Ie. if the score is 17 vs. 11 then bitmaps 17.bmp and 11.bmp are inserted to illustrate the score. There are bitmaps for all numbers, team names, logos, period etc. As mentioned all these bitmaps are created by makeboardGraphics.sh prior to run of ffmpeg. Bitmaps are put on top of the DV input to ffmpeg. Hereby ffmpeg creates a picture in picture (pip). In script makeboardGraphics.sh as well as in modified version of program ffmpeg bitmap manipulation is done using ImageMagick

./scripts holds various scripts I use for the record/burn process. Please see below.

Set up the environment to record video:

• Get latest version of ffmpeg
• Get ImageMagick
• Ajust code so ffmpeg can handle the file with scoreboard information. See link above!
• Before you compile the modified version of ffmpeg you must call ./configure with the following parameters - note that include ImageMagick ressources `./configure --enable-libx264 --enable-gpl --enable-libmp3lame --extra-cflags="`MagickWand-config --cflags`" --extra-cflags=`MagickWand-config --cppflags` --extra-ldflags="`MagickWand-config --ldflags`" --extra-ldflags="`MagickWand-config --libs`"`

The scripts I have to ease the record and burn process are:

• author.sh Create a DVD file structure that we can burn to DVD.
• burn.sh Burn the DVD file structure to DVD
• createdvdauthorconfigfile.sh Create the input file for the author script
• createfilefordownload.sh Create a scaled down version of the DVD that we will use for download
• makeboardGraphics.sh Create bitmaps so ffmpeg can build the scoreboard to put on screen.
• record.sh Call dvgrab and pipe through our modified version of ffmpeg creating the mpg files
• testrecord.sh Show what will be recorded

Record video and burn to DVD.

• Create new directory, ie. ./gamevideo03
• Goto new directory
• Call ../scripts/makeboardGraphics.sh. Supply needed parameters. Usage: makeboardGraphics.sh height namehome nameaway logohome logoaway
• Call ../scripts/testrecord.sh If you get raw1394 - failed to get handle: Permission denied. then run chmod 777 /dev/raw1394 to enable access to device for video camera.
• Call ../scripts/record.sh. Call for each sequence you want to capture. Typically I have one sequence for each quarter of a basketball game. Each sequence will turn into a chapter on the DVD making it easy to navigate the DVD.
  Note how the name of the output mpg file is set according to local time. This way you don't overwrite existing mpg files and files are sorted chronologically when put on DVD.
• Call ../scripts/createauthorconfigfile.sh cnce all the mpg files have been recorded
• Call ../scripts/author.sh
• Insert a blank DVD in your DVD burner, in my case /dev/scd1
• Call ../scripts/burn.sh

With the ASUS I am able to record a new game while burning the previous game. This speeds up the process if you have games coming right after each other and you still want to be able to deliver DVDs not to long after first game ended.