[Techtalk] VHS to DVD

[David Sumbler]

On Wed, 2012-07-18 at 10:22 -0700, Carla Schroder wrote:
> On Wednesday, July 18, 2012 04:58:47 PM David Sumbler wrote:
> > I'm running Ubuntu 11.10.
> > 
> > I've bought 2 different devices which supposedly allow you to get data
> > from a VHS videotape player on to a computer.  (I have a number of old
> > VHS tapes which I'd like to put on to DVD.)
> > 
> > One device is a CnM "Click & Convert", which I bought from Maplin.  The
> > other is an Ion "Video 2 PC Mk 2" which I bought from PC World.  In both
> > cases I was assured that they would work fine with Linux.
> > 
> > The first comes with software for Windows, and the second has software
> > for Windows and Mac.  I didn't expect there to be software for Linux,
> > but I hoped that somehow I would be able to read data from the USB port.
> > 
> > Can anyone make any suggestions as to what software I should get in
> > order to read this data and do something useful with it?  Or am I just
> > wasting my time?  Most of what I have found so far on line seems to
> > suggest that video to DVD is next to impossible with Linux, but I find
> > that hard to accept.  Still, if necessary I'll have to take both
> > products back to the shops and get my money back.
> > 
> > David
> 
> The most reliable way that I know is to use a TV capture card to copy the tape 
> to your PC, and here are several that are well-supported in Linux. Then use 
> OpenShot or whatever your fave Linux video editing software is for fine-tuning.
> 
> The Ion gadget outputs raw video, which should be readable by VLC, OpenShot, 
> and other Linux video and transcoding software. If you can find the details of 
> the file formats these devices output then I can probably be more helpful.
> 
> best,
> Carla

Thanks for your helpful reply.  I think I'm missing something fairly
basic, though.

When I connect either of the gadgets to the computer, then 'lsusb' shows
a line such as:
Bus 001 Device 008: ID eb1a:5051 eMPIA Technology, Inc.

I have both OpenShot (which I have just downloaded) and VLC, but I can't
figure out how to get them to read the stream from the USB port.  As I
said, there is probably some basic step I have omitted here!

David