Analog video capture

[Kevin J. Cummings]

On 05/20/2011 07:56 PM, JD wrote:
> On 05/20/11 16:43, Dennis Kaptain wrote:
>> I want to convert my analog VCR tapes and analog Camcorder video to digital
>> I plan on purchasing a BT878 card as below.
>> http://cgi.ebay.com/PixelView-PV-BT878P-REV-10B-TV-TUNER-/260776721005?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cb780fa6d

> I do not have experience with this card.
> I do have experience with an ATI Radeon PCI card
> which had a TV tuner. The input to the card was via
> a little box you could hold in the palm of your hand,
> and it converted the coax cable signal to an audio/video
> composite, which I plugged into the card's  composite
> input port.
> But I can tell you it is a CPU killer to do conversion
> to digital on demand, and will quickly fill up many
> gigabytes per movie - like 8 to 12 GB.

You are looking at the wrong thing.  Look for a Hauppague PVR-350 (or a
150, 250, or 500).  They have hardware MPEG (MP2) encoders on them and
produce .mpg files for you.  They support input from both f-connector
(via the analog tuner) and composite video (yellow RCA plug).  Your CPU
spends little time on the encoding because the board is doing all the
work.  The problem here is you won't find them retail anymore because of
the big Digital conversion that just happened.  You might be able to
find them on E-Bay though.  I have one in my server.  They use the IVTV
driver in the Linux Kernel so they are supported natively.  They used to
be the cards of choice in the US of A for MythTV back in the days before
ATSC.  There are also a slew of ATSC capture cards that also do analog
capture (but you need to read the fine print for their Linux support).


-- 
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome at verizon.net
cummings at kjchome.homeip.net
cummings at kjc386.framingham.ma.us
Registered Linux User #1232 (http://counter.li.org)