[ILUG] Linux video capture

[Kevin Philp]

Frank,
I don't know about USB but I have just started the same type of home 
project - trying to save all the Hi-8 and VHS video I have. I have an 
old Haupage TV card based on the BT878 chipset - it does analogue 
capture but doesn't do digital.

There isn't much software around to capture analogue video - most sites 
recommend xawdecode or the offshoot xdtv - however I had problems with 
this and it often crashed. I ended up using mencoder based on the 
following website:

http://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/converting-vhs-to-dvd-under-linux-howto-t307679.html

I fed the video composite cable into the TV card, the audio into the 
standard line input on the computer and just ran the following from the 
website:

PAL HIGH ('DVD' QUALITY) RES CAPTURE

mencoder -tv norm=PAL:driver=v4l2:width=720:height=576:input=1:fps=25 
tv:// -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd -vf 
pp=lb/ha/va/dr,hqdn3d,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000 
-lavcopts 
vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1500:vrc_maxrate=8000:vbitrate=7000:keyint=15:acodec=mp2:abitrate=192:aspect=4/3 
-o capture.mpg

Worked perfect and last night I captured the first 1 1/2 hours of Hi-8 
tape with no problems - you can then import to Kino and convert to 
digital video - quality looks quite good after all that crunching.

I captured to mpeg2 - can anyone with digital video knowledge tell me if 
that is a sensible format to save my tapes in or should I use something 
else?

Kevin.


Frank Duignan wrote:
> Has anyone successfully used a usb tv capture device with Linux that is
> compatible with RTE's free to air digital tv (DVB-T?)?
> Does it do analog capture so I can move home movies into the digital arena?
> Thanks
> f.
>