system_requirments

System Requirements:

Gtk-2.0 or above required
It requires hardware overlay or XVideo YUV420P(I420).
'v4l-conf' of xawtv must be present in $PATH.
'640x480' mode must be useable ( for fullscreen).
tcron (atx power cron, 0.4.3 required (November 2003 release) for scheduled power-on/off recording) (optional)
LIRC (linux infrared remote control) (optinal)
ogg vorbis library for audio recording (optional)

Installation:

$ tar xvfj fftv-version.tar.bz2 ; cd fftv-version; ./configure ; make

su as root

# make install

On some distributions, the files videodev.h videodev2.h in /usr/include/linux are too old. You may have to update both from linux kernel source.

cd /usr/src/linux/include/linux
cp videodev2.h videodev.h /usr/include/linux

Running fftv/ffradio

Run /usr/local/bin/fftv, /usr/local/bin/ffradio.If you want to change the TV system(ntsc,pal), you must
rm -fr ~/.fftv.freqtab

By default fftv uses hardware overlay to display. If your system freezes, your system probably has a problem with overlay. You can
export FFTV_DISP_GRAB= (bash)

Scheduled recording/reminding
   fftv now has a user interface for scheduled recording/reminding. Press Alt-R to invoke the UI window with predefined current channel, day of week and hour. Press Control-R to bring up the window only.
You must install tcron before installing fftv. And you must setup autologin otherwise fftv cannot open X display.
If you use Mandrake, you can open
    Configration -> Configure your computer -> Boot -> Drake Boot (9.2)
    Configration -> Mandrake Control Center -> Boot -> Drake Boot (9.1)
to enable the autologin.

Black border cropping
   Only the left and right borders are cropped in the recorded output. Press shift-arrow keys to shink the border and control-arrow keys to grow back.

v4l/v4l2 driver
   Kernel 2.6 can support both v4l and vl42 for bt-878. By default fftv tries v4l first, then v4l2. On my bt-878 based Winfast TV-2000, v4l2 driver has a problem. If you use overlay mode to display while recording, the video display is freezed every 3 seconds. Reducing the recording frame rate to 25 frames/sec solves this problem.