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Best Capture Card For Linux?


Guest carl
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I'm looking into buying a new tv capture card for my computer, I've got one now but it doesn't work. It was given to me by a friend, I've used it before for copying video from a camcorder to my harddrive using windoze, but it tends to lock my puter up more than it does anything. I've tried the software that came with the card, I've tried windows movie maker, all the same thing, as soon as I start recording it locks up. Just last night I installed xawtv and tried that, locked it up again. I'm using Mandriva 2008.1, my processor I guess is fast enough to do this type of work (1.93 Ghz) and I've got plenty of memory installed (2 Gb), just wondering if anyone has any suggestions on what would be the best card for this. I've heard the Hauppauge card works pretty good with Linux, but the 2 I found on the site where I usually buy my electronics doesn't look all that great.

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I found that Kaffeine was the only program that worked with my capture card. (see my signature for the card type.) The only function I have not been able to get working is getting input from a Video tape recorder.

The free to air broadcast capturing works brilliantly. It has no trouble scanning for the broadcast channels, both Digital and Analogue.

Cheers. John.

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I use mencoder eg.

 

mencoder -tv device=/dev/video0:driver=v4l2:width=640:height=480:fps=30 tv://last_channel_setup -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=3000 -oac copy -endpos 00:01:00 -o movie

look before

xawtv -hwscan

See man mencoder. Or Cinerella and Avidemuxer for work ....Lex

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No luck, I've tried Kaffeine, Kmediagrab, mencoder, everything locks my pc up. I'm going to replace the card, it's a cheapy anyways and was given to me, was just trying to find a good one that would work with Linux and was relatively inexpensive. So far I cannot find one with composite inputs that looks as if it would stand a chance with Linux. Any ideas?

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I gave you a reference for a card that works but you seem to have ignored it. On top of that this card is recommended on a couple of Linux video centric websites.

 

Since it was obviously much too hard to check my reference before saying "So far I cannot find one with composite inputs that looks as if it would stand a chance with Linux", here it is to save you looking.......LeadTek WinFast-DTV2000-H Video Capture Card, It includes composite input and provides the appropriate connectors. If you google this card you will find all details about it. Don't waste time by asking the company, LeadTech, about Linux use with the card, they will pull the usual Windows centric crap of saying Linux is not supported. On top of that their tech reps barely speak passable English.

 

John.

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For AussieJohn:

Please take a look at your first post for this topic. "The only function I have not been able to get working is getting input from a Video tape recorder."

I'm looking for a video capture card, not a video watching card. Pay attention to the subject. I have three televisions in my house, if i want to watch tv I can, I don't need to watch it on my pc. I need a card that I can hook a camcorder to and copy video from it and it seems like the LeadTek ain't gonna do it for me. And by the way, it wasn't all that hard to check your reference, I found the LeadTek site with no problem, the problem is finding a vendor that still carries this obviously outdated piece of hardware. In the future I would appreciate it if you would not reply to any topic I post.

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If that is the case then why didn't you say so earlier. It appeared that you had ignored entirely, my earlier post to try and help and appeared to be deliberately so.

 

And whether I respond to any of your posts is my choice and always will be. You certainly wont decide it.

 

If you want to be selective about who responds to your posts then perhaps other members may decide to not respond to you. You might even have to consider going elsewhere instead if you persist with that attitude.

 

The Card I use captures video, captures video off tv. It is not just to watch TV as you imply. The fact that, under Linux, it has difficulty with other video sources does NOT make it Not a video capture device.

I would hardly call LeadTek a supplier of outdated Video capture devices. I am sure there are more recent models than the one I have.. I doubt that newer cards by any maker will do much better than the current one I use since the important chips have remained basically the same, having changed very little.

You asked for a suggestion of a Video Capture Card and I suggested one. You try to take a cheap shot by saying "please pay attention to the subject" as if you are talking to some school kid.

 

 

The following is for other readers on this topic who may be more appreciative of any and every little bit of help available on this subject.

"Kino is a video capture (from DV camcorders: IEEE 1394 and USB), edit (cuts only) and play software. It is based on GTK+ 2.0, uses OSS or ALSA audio and supports PAL and NTSC"

"This pcHDTV card works with Xine. The pcHDTV HD-5500 supports ATSC/NTSC TV reception and accelerated motion compression support with NVidia GeForce4 and Quadro 4 cards. Also supports MPEG-1/2/4 video capture."

A possible card source........................ http://store.bluecherry.net/category_s/63.htm ............ http://www.artistx.org/site2/hardware/hard...o-hardware.html .................... http://www.ituner.com/new_pdf/spectra8.pdf .......... http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hauppauge ........... Note the Linux support for many models.

According to the hauppauge website..."Drivers for Hauppauge cards are now included in the kernel (version 2.2 and newer)". Hauppage devices are certainly worth looking at. It seems the company is not interested in developing Linux drivers but has assisted Linux developers to devise Linux drivers for some models and so on.

Kaffeine has the best tv scanning of tv stations, both analogue and digital, and as a consequence can be easily captured to the hard drive. It is so easy to set up and use that makes the other TV viewing or capturing programs to be a waste of time.

 

I am not new to the problem of selecting and getting Video Capture Cards working in Linux. Been examining the subject for a couple of years now. The major thing I have learned in that time is that almost nothing has improved much in that time. Even doing an extensive googling on the subject today draws up stuff mostly from people around 2006-2008 asking for help and ideas and mostly getting not even a single response. Obviously no one had any suggestions to try. Pretty much the situation to date. Fellow members will remember how little members were able to help me when I had questions on this same subject in the past. The only reason I haven't tried to solve the VCR input problem is because it was not important enough to me to be bothered with trying to resolve it.

 

The Linux websites dedicated to Video aspects, especially Video Capture, still don't have much more to offer than they did 2 or 3 years ago and some haven't been updated for more than a year so it is a very sorry subject indeed.

 

John.

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carl: if you'd like to ignore AussieJohn (or other users), it may be useful to find the ignore feature for the forum. This can be done from the users profile page, by clicking the "Options" drop-down menu and selecting "Ignore User".

 

AussieJohn: I find this humorous:

You try to take a cheap shot by saying "please pay attention to the subject" as if you are talking to some school kid.
in light of this:
Since it was obviously much too hard to check my reference
When being patronizing, expect to be patronized in kind.

 

Sorry, carl, I have nothing useful to add regarding your original inquiry. Is component your only option for the connection? Note that most video capture cards will have a generic "video-in" connection, but you can connect a composite with the proper "dongle" (usually included with the card, if you don't purchase it OEM).

Edited by tyme
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