[SWLUG] Recording VHS on linux

[justin]

On Sun, 2009-01-25 at 12:43 +0000, Lyn David Thomas wrote:
> Matthew Moore wrote:
> > All,
> >
> > I was wondering if anyone has any experience of recording VHS on linux 
> > using a capture card or similar.  Any good software out there?  And 
> > hardware recommendations?
> >
> > I'd like to copy all my old VHS to DVD/Hard drive before the VCR gives 
> > out, so we don't have to buy another VCR when it goes pop.

pretty much any video recording software can handle this, the only
question becomes what format to record to.  with modern hardware you
should be able to capture and compress in realtime to most formats (like
mpeg2 if your making dvds), but if your hardware is a bit slower then
youll want a lightweight format like rtjpeg that you can compress
further later.

programs like ffmpeg, vlc, mencoder can all grab from a v4l source (e.g.
any cheap bttv based card) and output a compressed format.

> I would be interested in this, my video player has died but they are 
> still cheep, the alternative is to get for about 150 quid one of those 
> video to dvd recorders... rather do it via my linux box if I could.
theyre not all that expensive, dvd recorders start from about £50, i
recently bought one with an internal hdd for under £90, its cheap
because its analog and standard def only, but it does record RGB mode
scart, which you cant do with a normal capture card.

capture cards of a sane price only do composite or s-video input, which
is all youd get out of a VHS video anyway, but is lower quality than the
output of say a sky decoder.

you can also go the whole hog and setup a MythTV system for a full DVR
system, but thats another subject