[MPlayer-users] Re: Which TV card ?

[Tuukka Toivonen]

On Thu, 21 Aug 2003, Rainer Hantsch wrote:

>Anyway, now I have a working card, and the image doesn't look such bad. I also
>tried meanwhile to record something to disk with xawtv, but I am very unsafe
>what I do. I get big files for video and audio, but I have no idea what to do
>with them.

What are the file names? What says "file filename.xxx"? What happens if
you try playing it with mplayer "mplayer -v filename.xxx"?

>Trying kWinTV gives no result. I get a file named video0.avi, but it cannot be
>played.

What programs you tried for playing, mplayer I suppose? What mplayer says?

>Could somebody give me a step-by-step instruction how to record a bit of TV?

Ok: first, install xawtv, xawtv-tools, and streamer. Start xawtv. Select
some good channel. Start mixer program, e.g. aumix if using OSS or
alsamixer if using ALSA.

While still running xawtv and the mixer, run record program (should come
with xawtv-tools). It will display the recording level. Now fiddle with
mixer controls so that it records the video sound at a good level. Note
that even if you'd hear finely TV while watching it with xawtv, it still
might not record it at proper level. Also remember to select correct
recording source.

Then quit xawtv and record (you may leave mixer program running).
Then run streamer with options:

streamer -r 25 -s 768x576 -t 10:0 -f jpeg -F mono16 -o test.mov

this will record 10 minutes of jpeg-compressed video into a Quicktime file
with 16-bit mono sound. This is the maximum resolution 768x576 that BTTV
card gives. However, if you had 800 MHz P3, it probably isn't fast enough.
Try uncompressed at lower resolution if you have problems:

streamer -r 25 -s 384x288 -t 10:0 -f yv12 -F mono16 -o test2.mov

Mplayer 0.90 will be able to play back both files, but in the uncompressed
case you need to make the following modification into your codecs.conf
file: add line
	fourcc yv12 I420
under the block "videocodec rawi420".