DV support is listed as being available, albiet experimental, in the 2.4.19 and 2.4.20 kernel sources. I have confirmed, through four days of frustration, that it only works with 2.4.21+ kernels. The URL I listed confirms this. With 2.4.20 kernels dvcont can control the camcorder, make it play, rewind, etc, but it cannot receive video through dvgrab, kino, or cinelerra. Furthermore, attempts to do so sometimes causes the kernel to panic. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Emerge a 2.4.20 kernel, such as gentoo-sources 2. Compile with Firewire and DV support 3. Emerge kino or cinelerra (or manually compile dvgrab, command line tool) 4. Attempt to capture video from the camera Actual Results: No video, often program crashes (segfault, etc), other times it reports "lost frames", and occassionally causes a kernel panic. On very rare occassions, many fewer times than I've managed to cause a kernal panic, some video frames were received. These cases don't happen nearly often enough to be useful. Expected Results: Video should have been captured. If 2.4.19 and 2.4.20 kernel sources are to maintain in portage I believe the DV support should be removed from them. Doing so may help eliminate alot of stress by video producers looking at Gentoo as a viable alternative.
it being marked as experimental is enough. People should observe the kernels warnings. In any case we are in the process of updating all kernels to be based on at least 2.4.22.
*** Bug 35384 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***