[Sussex] Video transfer - where to start?

[Gavin Stevens]

Hi Steve & Dave

On Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:26:13 +0100
Steve Dobson <steve.dobson at syscall.org.uk> wrote:

> Hi Gavin
> 
> On Fri, 2008-07-18 at 00:06 +0100, David Morris wrote:
> > Gavin Stevens wrote:
> > > We have a few VHS-C camcorder tapes to transfer to DVD. I have
> > > received a new VHS-C adapter cassette
> >  from Maplins so that these tapes play in a standard VHS player. So
> > far, so good.
> > > 
> > > Am I right in thinking that I need a video capture card (these
> > > presumably have the right holes in
> > them to connect to a video player) in order to get the content onto
> > my hard drive in the first instance? Does anyone have any
> > recommendations regarding the best capture cards to use with Linux
> > & the best places to get them?
> > > 
> > > Once the old tapes have been transferred onto my hard drive, I
> > > then need to be able to create DVDs that
> > will play in a standard DVD player & behave in all respects like a
> > normal DVD. Any suggestions as to the best software to use for this
> > would be much appreciated.
> > > 
> > > As you can probably gather from the above, I have absolutely zero
> > > experience with respect to working
> > with video in Linux (well, not just Linux - anything really). Audio
> > work I do very regularly, but video is uncharted territory for me.
> > > 
> > > TIA for any help,
> > 
> > I posted on my blog about this last night.  It's actually really
> > easy.
> > 
> > http://davemorris.wordpress.com/2008/07/16/digitalising-home-movies-on-ubuntu-hardy-with-a-pvr-150/
> 
> Dave is correct, it isn't nearly as hard as it use to be for a
> Hauppauge capture card.  A few kernel releases back the driver for
> the Hauppauge family of cards was declared stable enough and included
> into the kernel as standard.  The result is that the driver just load
> these days.
> 
> There is the old firmware load issue so some distro may not ship with
> the firmware packaged but it is not difficult to find and download the
> latest version and install it.
> 
> Are you thinking of building your own Personal Video Recorder (PVR)?
> If so there are a few more things to consider.
> 
I don't think so - all I want to do is to be able transfer VHS-C to DVD using our video player & my PC.

When I get the WinTV card that Dave mentioned, I shall most likely put it into my AMD64 running Debian Lenny.

Thanks to Dave for the info on the blog.

Gavin.