Analog video capture

[Kevin J. Cummings]

On 05/20/2011 09:39 PM, JD wrote:
> What do you think of this hauppague gizmo?
> 
> http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4146200

I have no opinion of this device, personally.  I would worry about the
part which says:

> Any other format conversions needs to be done with the MediaConvert program (supplied). 

and that MediaConvert program is probably Windows only.  But, then
again, if you can figure out what it is producing for output, ffmpeg
will usually have a way to convert it into something you can use, though
usually at the expense of your CPU cycles....

And its more than twice the price I paid for my PVR-350 (when I bought
it 4-5 years ago) even on sale!

> I have lot's of 8mm video tapes (which I can still play through the camera),
> and old fashioned VHS tapes which I can play through the VCR tape player.
> These I have relegated to the bin because we have a digital pvr hooked 
> to the
> TV set and is built-in to the Uverse service.

Agreed, I have some 8&16mm films from my parents which were put on VHS
for them.  Now its my job to digitize them into some MPEG format for
future archival.  A VCR composite out to the PVR-350 is simple a
straight forward.  cat /dev/videoN when the VCR starts playing, and a ^C
when the video ends.  The result is a .mpg file.

Once I have the .mpg files, I can use a MythTV script (MythArchive) to
create DVDs with the various movies.  (Now this is also CPU intensive,
more so than the original capture, but that's the price you pay to
convert what you have to what you want.  And, yes, it uses ffmpeg to do
the heavy lifting.)

-- 
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)