[Techtalk] VHS to DVD

[David Sumbler]

On Wed, 2012-07-18 at 23:38 +0200, Rudy Zijlstra wrote:
> On 18-07-12 21:32, Carla Schroder wrote:
> > On Wednesday, July 18, 2012 07:44:54 PM David Sumbler wrote:
> >>> 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
> > I wonder if the V4L wiki will help:
> >
> > http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Video_via_USB
> >
> > So maybe all you need is V4l, though I haven't figured out the magic VLC
> > incantation.
> >
> > This really should be do-able.
> >
> > Carla
> >
> you typically record from /dev/video0
> 
> Check dmesg to see whether those devices are created when you insert the 
> USB connector. The lines will typically also tell you what each device 
> is for
> Example from ivtv, which handles a HW MPEG encoder:
> [   24.954081] Linux video capture interface: v2.00
> [   25.672673] ivtv0: Registered device video0 for encoder MPG (4096 kB)
> [   25.672738] ivtv0: Registered device video32 for encoder YUV (2048 kB)
> [   25.672849] ivtv0: Registered device video24 for encoder PCM (320 kB)
> 
> So you would want to record from video0, in order to have nicely 
> compressed video. You can specify the compression quality for this card.
> 
> as the Ion apparently gives raw video, you would use VLC or another tool 
> to record and compress.
> 
> the reason that card is in this system, is to rip old PAL recordings to 
> digital ;)
> 
> Good luck,
> 
> 
> Rudy

I get:

[16097.348750] Linux video capture interface: v2.00
[16097.355277] em28xx: Video interface 0 found
[16099.384138] em28xx #0: V4L2 video device registered as video0

If I enter 'cat /dev/video0' I get a continuous stream of gibberish,
which is what I would expect.  But I can't get VLC to display anything
at all.

I had a look at the V4L wiki, as suggested by Carla.  Neither of the
devices I bought is listed as being supported, so perhaps this is the
problem.

David