Arch Linux

MickeyKnox

Member

Registered: 2010-02-27

Posts: 169

record tv to disk

I have a few old VHS cassettes which i wanted to record to disk on my computer.
I managed to get the picture on my screen, both with mplayer and xawtv.
No sound however, but i connected the VCR sound to line in.

xawtv has a record function, which does not work however on my machine.
The error is:

oss: open /dev/dsp: No such file or directory

How do i get a dsp device? I installed both alsa-oss and pulseaudio, but still no dsp device.

My other approach was to use mencoder, since mplayer already works. And i figured, with
mencoder i could easily mix the sound in from line in. However, mencoder says:

============ Sorry, this file format is not recognized/supported =============

Which is odd, since i found this: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=11843
Looks like, it used to work. And it also complains about:

Unable to open '/dev/dsp': No such file or directory

So, what now? How to fix this? Or is there another way that makes my life easier?

doorknob60

Member

Registered: 2008-09-29

Posts: 404

Re: record tv to disk

Might want to try VLC, it has recording functionality and should probably be able to communicate fine with your capture device.

tigrezno

Member

Registered: 2004-05-10

Posts: 64

Re: record tv to disk

I recorded tv years ago using mplayer command line (mencoder)

Check this thread: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=11843

nomorewindows

Member

Registered: 2010-04-03

Posts: 3,542

Re: record tv to disk

You can set the channel with xawtv, and watch it on vlc, no doubt.
Your /dev/dsp error might be that you need to restart oss, so that it can run its' recompiling of kernel modules.
Check for error messages.

---

I may have to CONSOLE you about your usage of ridiculously easy graphical interfaces...
Look ma, no mouse.

ronnylov

Member

Registered: 2010-12-21

Posts: 65

Re: record tv to disk

I used this commando to capture VHS:

mencoder -tv driver=v4l2:brightness=0:contrast=-7:hue=0:saturation=0:width=720:height=576:device=/dev/video0:norm=PAL-BG:input=2:fps=25.000:alsa:adevice=hw.0,2,0:amode=2:audiorate=48000:forceaudio:immediatemode=0 tv:// -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=ffvhuff:format=yv12 -oac copy -o /mnt/lager4/video4/capture/capture.avi -msglevel all=6 > /mnt/lager4/video4/capture/capture.log 2>&1

I had to enable input and adjust input volume with alsamixer and do some experimenting to find the correct device for audio recording (and some googling too). I have a Philips SAA7134 based analog tv card (Terratec Cinergy 400). The video signal was connected to S-VIDEO input and I think  connected the audio signal to motherboard audio input (I did not use the audio input on the capture card because it does not support 48 kHz sampling rate). I did also decrease the contrast level a little bit to avoid clipped video levels. I logged some debug info to a text file (good way to see if there is dropped frames or other problems).