I need a good video capture app any suggestions

[gll99]

A bit of fun background:
On my AMD Linux test box, I have an older all in one type (vga video, tv tuner, composite in and composite tv-out it's an ATI 3d rage pro with a bt829 tuner on-board. Although the card works ok as a vga video card it doesnt get recognized in Linux as a tuner card too but it does in XP.

I also have an older pci ATI Wonder ve. This is not a video card it's just a tv tuner card and it's supposed to be ok in Linux because it uses a bt848/878 tuner but so far it too produces a device not found in Linux. I noticed that the tuner on the 2 ATI cards is the same Philips FI 1236 or (F1 1236).

The other spare card I have that now works is a Pine bt878 and it too has a Philips tuner but this one is recognized by mepis Linux.

Anyway here I am finally with bt878 tv viewer / capture card working.

The best tv viewing software I found is TVTime but it lacks capture options.

What I need is something that will let me capture in xvid/divx and mp3 audio. That's my preferred configuration for files to view on the Philips dvp-642.

What is the most professional looking muti featured capture program you can recommend for use on the NTSC system?

I've looked at aatv, motv,xawtv and they can't even lock in the display window properly the top half is ok the bottom screwed, the menus are crude and the capture mode when available is uncompressed RGB.

I also looked at TV option in KMplayer but that didn't work. It wouldn't tune in the stations even though TVtime has no problems locking them in. The KMplayer has no way to scan them even though it has a window where they should be displayed but it seems to be only for Pal and Secam ready.

I tried DVR but it does not display the video nor capture. It creates an avi file but when I disable the audio it captures 0 frames so I know no video capture is taking place and in any case the resulting file won't play.

I searched the repositories for something better but nothing came up so unless it's hidden under some funny descriptor or I just plain missed it I can't find anything else. it's time to search elsewhere.

Any suggestions.

[tekkieman]

I don't capture (although my WinTv GO card works in linux), so I don't have first-hand knowledge of these, but you could try Zapping, MythTV, or any of the players (Xine, VLC, or mplayer). They all say they can capture through v4l.

Other than the players, you won't find the others in the Mepis repos. You'll need to search for a deb, rpm, or the source.

[gll99]

Thanks tekkieman, there must be many others here who need standard every day basic analogue video capture. Hopefully someone will jump in and mention their favorite Linux program.

Zapping and mplayer (the gui) don't have any visible capture options.

MythTv is a pain to set up. I've never had success with it. Neither do I want to network or link to outside servers.

Xine shows a settings option for analogue tv but the settings are not retained nor is there any option to activate it. The desktop menu button is geared to dvb tv digital broadcast.

VLC doesn't display the video although I hear the default audio channel from the previous viewing only app I used like tvtime. When I try to use the encoders it can't find the encoder ie.. ffmeg errors can't find encoder and no mp3 encoder. I can probably play with this a bit more to fix path problems but it's far from what I need. The encoder offers a mpeg4 option but uses a generic encoder which is not exactly what I want.

These types of programs (including some of the video conversion and encoding programs I've seen so far) all seem to use the same type of frontend GUI which passes raw data from one step to the next in a daisy chain of programs like ffmpeg or mencoder etc.. written by others. It looks like all the first guy does is write a "new" front-end (often almost too similar to the others) and then pass it off as a new program with very little "new" programming functionality added. This reminds me very much of what I find on the vbPlanet site where people just keep recycling the same ideas and code displayed with a new face. When someone posts something new all of a sudden 5 or 6 new programs will show up using the same idea but under a different gui claiming to be a new program. A case in point see http://www.shrinkwrapvb.com/videocap.htm look at Ray Mercer's avi tutorial and vb capture code. He rarely gets credit anymore for porting those C api libs to vb and providing the sample code and tutorial yet many have used it for vfw apps. In playing with this, I figured out to add audio muxing to his code for creating an avi from bmp bitmaps but the day I share it expect a bunch of "new" apps on VBPlanet.
I've also expanded one of these VB vfw capture apps to do timed captures and added my own front-end gui, similar to a vcr but occasionally it would lock up so I use a commercial app called WINVDRpro based on wdm drivers (not WINDVR) which is very reliable.

What I'm really looking for is a commercial grade self contained video capture program that offers scheduled captures with the option of choosing any resident avi codec like xvid or divx and mp3 audio encoding for on the fly video/audio capture.

I use this feature all the time in windows to capture sports, tv and movies for later viewing. It's one of the things on the absolutely must have list of programs.

[tekkieman]

Well, you have some valid points, but in a way, that's not going to change too much. One of the premises behind linux is one application for one task. That is why you see so many applications that pass information off to another. FFMPEG is considered to be an excellent encoder. So, others build some additional functionality around it, and pass the parameters off to the best tool for the job. The same goes for the GUIs. FFMPEG will no doubt do what you need it to do, but the string of optional parameters will give you carpal tunnel the first time you use it, so thers have put some GUI around it to make it easier(?).

And, while not trying to sound like an apologist for linux, a lot of these applications were created by one person to do the job they needed to do with what they had to work with. While some others found them useful, others couldn't use them without the identical equipment (or something in the same line like bt878 based capture cards). Back when capture cards were first popular, almost every one had a btxxx chipset, so they tend to work well. Sometimes, they were able to adapt the application for use by others. Sometimes, once their need was met, the application was abandoned to anyone else who wanted to do anything further with it.

As a last resort of my knowledge, I believe Cinelerra can capture as well, but again, I think you will find that all of these are going to use v4l on the back end, so you may want to make sure that is configured properly. Commercial software obviously is going to be a little more difficult to locate.

At some point, I can get my bt-based card back into the system, and try to figure some of this out, but I don't expect it will be any time soon with my current schedule. While people at linuxquestions tend to route people here for video related questions, you might try posting there just for the benefit of several thousand more opinions than the few linux users here.

Finally, you might want to take a quick look at geeXboX ( http://geexbox.org/en/index.html ) and see if that does anything for you. Granted, it isn't an app that works inside your current install, but for a LiveCD that is supposed to be a standalone HTPC, it sounds somewhat interesting (and solves the MythTV setup headache).

I agree, you need someone with more experience in this task to jump in and educate us both.

[gll99]

My understanding with FFMpeg is that while it is pure Linux and is very good at encoding it doesn't report dropped frames which makes it less desirable for video capture. I also found a program called avicap which is probably ported from windows. I think it is a gui for avirec which comes with a set of avitools package. Anyway I tried it and dropped frames like crazy and had only audio in the output and scratchy at that.

Too bad the makers of TVtime didn't go the next step and incorporate video capture. It performs a clear full screen video display where with every other program I've tried produces a black screen and the gui navigation is first rate and the options all work. I give credit to whoever wrote this. I can't do it by name because it lacks an about box but there is a site reference in the package. That's the only thing that I couldn't find. http://tvtime.net/

[gll99]

I found the solution to one problem that was plaguing me. The one where the tuner always looked like it was being detected as pal as default and caused the video to either not show or to show as top half ok and lower half garbled green or some other garbage look.

The site for tvtime had a solution. Apparently this is common with Ati tv tuner cards although my Pine card is not ATI but still has the problem.

The fix:

with the bttv driver use the following:

modprobe bttv tuner=2

You may have to first remove the bttv module if it is already loaded.

To make this change automatic, in your /etc/modules.conf file, add the following line:

options bttv tuner=2

My module file did not have the extension conf but I edited in the last line as above and it worked.
The tuner is recognized properly as NTSC in most programs I've tried. When it is not I can now change it in programs that have an option to change it but previously ignored the change. The only program that seems not to work is KMplayer but it doesn't even have a selection for the NTSC tuner.

I was able to capture a few small test clips now but it still drop frames like crazy so that's still on my to-do list.

[tekkieman]

Have you looked at fftv yet?