FWCTL(8)

NAME
fwctl - IEEE1394 control utility

SYNOPSIS
fwctl [-prt] [-b pri_req] [-c node] [-d node] [-g gap_count] [-l file] [-M mode] [-m EUI64 | hostname] [-o node] [-R filename] [-S filename] [-s node] [-u bus_num]

DESCRIPTION
The fwctl utility is designed to provide a way for users to access and control the NetBSD IEEE1394 subsystem. Without options, fwctl will output a list of devices that are/were connected to the bus.

The following options are available:

-b pri_req
    Set the PRIORITY_BUDGET register on all supported nodes.

-c node
    Show the configuration ROM on the node.

-d node
    Hex dump of the configuration ROM.

-g gap_count
    Broadcast gap_count by phy_config packet.

-l file
    Load hex dump file of the configuration ROM and parse it.

-M modeExplicitly specify either
    dv or mpeg mode for the incoming stream. Only meaningful in case of and must precede the -R option. If not specified, the program will try to guess. If you get an error complaining about "format 0x20", try to force the "mpeg" mode.

-m EUI64 | hostname
    Set default fwmem target. Hostname will be converted to EUI64.

-o node
    Send a link-on PHY packet to the node.

-p  Dump PHY registers.

-R filename
    Receive DV or MPEG TS stream and dump it to a file. Use Ctrl-C to stop the receiving. Some DV cameras seem not to send the stream if a bus manager exits. If you cannot get the stream, try the following commands:

        sysctl hw.ieee1394if.try_bmr=0
        fwctl -r

    The resulting file contains raw DV data excluding isochronous header and CIP header. It can be handled by the pkgsrc/multimedia/libdv package. Resulting MPEG TS stream can be played and sent over a network using the VideoLAN vlc tool in the FreeBSD Ports Collection. The stream can be piped directly to vlc, see EXAMPLES.

-r  Initiate bus reset.

-S filename
    Send a DV file as isochronous stream.

-s node
    Write to the RESET_START register on the node.

-t  Show the topology map.

-u bus_num
    Specify the IEEE1394 bus number to be operated on.

FILES

/dev/fw0.0

EXAMPLES
Each DV frame has a fixed size and it is easy to edit the frame order.

    fwctl -R original.dv

Receive a DV stream with DV camera attached.

    dd if=original.dv of=first.dv bs=120000 count=30

Get first 30 frames (NTSC).

    dd if=original.dv of=second.dv bs=120000 skip=30 count=30

Get second 30 frames (NTSC).

    cat second.dv first.dv | fwctl -S /dev/stdin

Swap first and second 30 frames and send them to DV recorder.

For PAL, replace “bs=120000” with “bs=144000”.

    fwcontrol -R file.m2t

Receive an MPEG TS stream from a camera producing MPEG transport stream. This has been tested with SONY HDR-FX1E camera that produces HD MPEG-2 stream at 25 Mbps bandwidth.

To send the stream from the camera over the network using TCP (which supprisingly works better with vlc), you can use
    fwcontrol -R - | nc 192.168.10.11 9000
with netcat from ports and to receive the stream, use
    nc -l -p 9000 | vlc -

To netcast via UDP, you need to use buffer program from ports, since vlc is not fast enough to read UDP packets from buffers and thus it experiences dropouts when run directly. The sending side can use
    fwcontrol -R - | nc 192.168.10.11 9000
and to receive the stream, use
    nc -l -u -p 9000 | buffer -s 10k -b 1000 -m 20m -p 5 | vlc -

For more information on how to work with vlc see its docs.

SEE ALSO
mplayer(1), vlc(1), fwip(4), fwohci(4), ieee1394if(4), sbp(4)

HISTORY
The fwctl command first appeared in FreeBSD 5.0, as fwcontrol. It was added to NetBSD 4.0 under its present name.

AUTHORS
Hidetoshi Shimokawa <simokawa@FreeBSD.org> Petr Holub <hopet@ics.muni.cz> - MPEG TS mode. KIYOHARA Takashi <kiyohara@NetBSD.org>

BUGS
This utility is still under development and provided for debugging purposes. Especially MPEG TS reception support is very rudimental and supports only high-bandwidth MPEG-2 streams (fn field in CIP header equals 3).