[mythtv-users] Getting VCR Recordings Into MythTV/MythVideo

Da Worm daworm at comcast.net
Wed Jan 12 23:12:24 EST 2005


On 1/12/2005 at 1:49 AM Brad Templeton wrote:

>I mean you have a video capture card in your system.  It
>is probably video4linux compatbile, and if you go to the 4vl web pages
>there are a number of recording programs of all stripes, some of them
>with built in editors etc. for doing a manual recording to a file and
>cleaning it up nice.

I have a PVR-250 and a PixelView card.  So far, the TV apps I have tried only
use the PixelView card, not the PVR (xawtv, tvtime), and neither does recording,
only playback.

>If you have the pvr-250, you can actually record trivially from the
>current source, which you can set with ivtvctl.
>
>It's literally as simple as
>    cat /dev/video0 >file.mpg

Yes, I mentioned that, but you can't watch it as it plays to see when to start
and stop recording.

>Anyway, once you have your file.mpg, you can edit and transcode it
>and simply copy it to your mythtv "videos" directory (I think it's
>/var/lib/video by default but most people move it.)

That's no problem, I've got many recordings already installed into MythVideo.

>Check out:
>
>    http://www.exploits.org/v4l/
>
>For video4linux software.

I only see a couple there that look useful, but I'll be sure to try them out.  The
big reason I was wondering if there was a Myth solution is that I'd like to remove
the monitor from this system going completely with TV output, and using normal
programs in the 960x540 tv screen (especially with the overscan) can be a real
pain, and it will take months to capture my tape/laser library.  I would rather use
the hardware MPEG on the PVR, rather than put my spare PixelView into another
box, and its in the Myth box.  Plus, some tapes I may not archive, and would like 
to play them through Myth anyway, so I don't have to bother with changing TV 
inputs (the TV remote will eventually end up in the closet somewhere) and the 
cables around.

Thanks for the response.  Perhaps I'll look into building a module for this, as I really
need to hone up on my C coding.

Jeff.




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