I have a number of VHS tapes which I'd like to digitize, and I'm
trying to figure out where to start, hardware- and software-wise.
I'm running Debian Buster (10.5), kernel 4.19.0-10-amd64. I found a
pcHDTV HD-5500, which I believe is basically a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150
tweaked for Linux, and dropped it into my box, where it is found by
lspci and shows up as /dev/video0. The card has an extender cable
which leads to a bracket with RCA connectors for audio and composite
video, as well as an S-Video connector. (For now, at least, I'm not
interested in the TV tuner on the card.)

Presumably, with the proper software and configuration settings,
I should be able to plug a VCR into the RCA connectors and have
video come up on the computer's screen, and hopefully save it to
disk in some sort of standard format.

What's a good starting point to find information on how to do this?

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | has stolen their car and parked
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Mayayana

On 15/05/2021 22:52, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> I have a number of VHS tapes which I'd like to digitize, and I'm
> trying to figure out where to start, hardware- and software-wise.
> I'm running Debian Buster (10.5), kernel 4.19.0-10-amd64. I found a
> pcHDTV HD-5500, which I believe is basically a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150
> tweaked for Linux, and dropped it into my box, where it is found by
> lspci and shows up as /dev/video0. The card has an extender cable
> which leads to a bracket with RCA connectors for audio and composite
> video, as well as an S-Video connector. (For now, at least, I'm not
> interested in the TV tuner on the card.)
>
> Presumably, with the proper software and configuration settings,
> I should be able to plug a VCR into the RCA connectors and have
> video come up on the computer's screen, and hopefully save it to
> disk in some sort of standard format.
>
> What's a good starting point to find information on how to do this?
>
Been there failed to do that. Get a second hand DVD and VHS recorder -
they allow transcription - and save yourself a whole world of pain

--
Truth welcomes investigation because truth knows investigation will lead
to converts. It is deception that uses all the other techniques.

On 2021-05-15, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> Been there failed to do that. Get a second hand DVD and VHS recorder -
> they allow transcription - and save yourself a whole world of pain

That's what I do, use the DVD recorder for the initial capture and then
use Handbrake to create an mp4 from that. Works well enough with a minimum
of aggravation.

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Blake (Posts from Google Groups killfiled due to excess spam.)

18 Reasons I won't be vaccinated -- https://tinyurl.com/ebty2dx3
Covid vaccines: experimental biology -- https://tinyurl.com/57mncfm5
The fraud of "Climate Change" -- https://RealClimateScience.com
Don't talk to cops! -- https://DontTalkToCops.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On 15 May 2021 21:52:35 GMT, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid>
wrote:

>I have a number of VHS tapes which I'd like to digitize, and I'm
>trying to figure out where to start, hardware- and software-wise.
>I'm running Debian Buster (10.5), kernel 4.19.0-10-amd64. I found a
>pcHDTV HD-5500, which I believe is basically a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150
>tweaked for Linux, and dropped it into my box, where it is found by
>lspci and shows up as /dev/video0. The card has an extender cable
>which leads to a bracket with RCA connectors for audio and composite
>video, as well as an S-Video connector. (For now, at least, I'm not
>interested in the TV tuner on the card.)
>
>Presumably, with the proper software and configuration settings,
>I should be able to plug a VCR into the RCA connectors and have
>video come up on the computer's screen, and hopefully save it to
>disk in some sort of standard format.
>
>What's a good starting point to find information on how to do this?

There are hardware thingies that will do that. I used to have one.
Ought to be plenty on E-Bay. Downside, you have to convert
at normal speed. That'll take awhile.

The UGLY way - a VCR and commercial DVD burner. I still
have both (a hard-drive model DVD burner too - a whopping
80MB of custom-formatted disk I doubt even 'dd' could handle :-)
Would suggest running it through a movie program afterwards
where you can apply some sharpening and contrast tweaks.

There USED to be PCI cards with RCA/composite, sometimes
even S-Video or the 3-wire, inputs so you could capture directly
to a PCs hard drive. Again, try E-Bay.

On 2021-05-15, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> I have a number of VHS tapes which I'd like to digitize, and I'm
> trying to figure out where to start, hardware- and software-wise.
> I'm running Debian Buster (10.5), kernel 4.19.0-10-amd64. I found a
> pcHDTV HD-5500, which I believe is basically a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150
> tweaked for Linux, and dropped it into my box, where it is found by
> lspci and shows up as /dev/video0. The card has an extender cable
> which leads to a bracket with RCA connectors for audio and composite
> video, as well as an S-Video connector. (For now, at least, I'm not
> interested in the TV tuner on the card.)
>
> Presumably, with the proper software and configuration settings,
> I should be able to plug a VCR into the RCA connectors and have
> video come up on the computer's screen, and hopefully save it to
> disk in some sort of standard format.
>
> What's a good starting point to find information on how to do this?

It's possible to digitize VHS tapes using a Hauppauge PVR-USB2,
although it was long enough ago that I don't remember details.

If I remember correctly, I needed to use the v4l2 interface to
set the device to switch to the baseband inputs rather than the
tuner. Then, IIRC, I just copied bits (using cat, cp, dd, pv, or
something else) from /dev/video0.

Alternatively, it may be possible to use mplayer to do the job.
This is the relevant command from my script that captures the
nightly TV news using a PVR-USB2 unit:

mplayer -dumpfile $pififo -dumpstream -really-quiet dvb://$station

.... where $pififo is the output file (a FIFO in my case but could
be a regular file) and $station is the station's ID string. If I
had to repeat my digitizing efforts, I would check the mplayer
man page to see if it tells how to set the PVR-USB2 device to
analog inputs.

HTH

--
Robert Riches
spamtrap42@jacob21819.net
(Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)

On 2021-05-16, The Doctor <doctor@doctor.nl2k.ab.ca> wrote:
> Must try!

It's a bit time consuming to go VHS-->DVD-->MP4 but you can go do something
else while the initial recording and then the conversion are taking place.

I have some DVD+RW rewriteable discs so I don't have to have a stack of
coasters left over after doing the DVD-->MP4 conversions.

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Blake (Posts from Google Groups killfiled due to excess spam.)

18 Reasons I won't be vaccinated -- https://tinyurl.com/ebty2dx3
Covid vaccines: experimental biology -- https://tinyurl.com/57mncfm5
The fraud of "Climate Change" -- https://RealClimateScience.com
Don't talk to cops! -- https://DontTalkToCops.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On 2021-05-16, Roger Blake <rogblake@iname.invalid> wrote:
> On 2021-05-15, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> Been there failed to do that. Get a second hand DVD and VHS recorder -
>> they allow transcription - and save yourself a whole world of pain
>
> That's what I do, use the DVD recorder for the initial capture and then
> use Handbrake to create an mp4 from that. Works well enough with a minimum
> of aggravation.
>

Thanks for those links you have in your sig. I've read and forwarded some
of them.

I won't get political but *thank-you* again.

pH in Aptos

Thanks, everyone, for the replies. Using one of those combo
VHS/DVD units sounds like a decent last resort, although I
was really hoping for a direct-to-disk solution using the
hardware I have. I posted my question to the debian-users
mailing list, and got the following response there:

On Mon May 17 10:56:10 2021 Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> wrote:

> The subsystem you are looking for is V4L2, Video For Linux 2.
>
> Showing up as /dev/video0 is an extremely positive sign.
>
> https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/V4L_capturing is what you
> want to read.

This looks like a possibility - v4l2-ctl identifies the tuner,
composite, and S-Video inputs on my card. So far, though,
mpv just shows noise. I'll continue puttering...

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | has stolen their car and parked
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Mayayana

Groovy hepcat Charlie Gibbs was jivin' in comp.os.linux.misc on Sun, 16
May 2021 07:52 am. It's a cool scene! Dig it.

> I have a number of VHS tapes which I'd like to digitize, and I'm
> trying to figure out where to start, hardware- and software-wise.
> I'm running Debian Buster (10.5), kernel 4.19.0-10-amd64. I found a
> pcHDTV HD-5500, which I believe is basically a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150
> tweaked for Linux, and dropped it into my box, where it is found by
> lspci and shows up as /dev/video0. The card has an extender cable
> which leads to a bracket with RCA connectors for audio and composite
> video, as well as an S-Video connector. (For now, at least, I'm not
> interested in the TV tuner on the card.)
>
> Presumably, with the proper software and configuration settings,
> I should be able to plug a VCR into the RCA connectors and have
> video come up on the computer's screen, and hopefully save it to
> disk in some sort of standard format.

I assume you have a VCR. What connectors does it have? Composite?
S-Video? Some (older ones especially) only have RF, which connects to
the antenna input of the TV (card).
If you do have to go the RF route, you may have problems with the TV
card. I've had problems with some analog TV devices on Linux. Some of
them require an onboard LNA (low noise amplifier) to be enabled before
they'll work worth a damn; but Linux drivers for most don't have an
option to enable this, unfortunately. However, if, as you say, your
card is tweaked for Linux, maybe the driver has this option or the card
doesn't need it. Some cards work fine without such an option.
I have experience with VCRs with composite output, and have used
straight-through composite as well as composite to S-Video. For the
former setup, you will need an RCA cable for the video. For audio, it
depends what connectors your TV card has and whether it has its own
built-in sound device or audio pass-through to the sound card. You may
need a 2 RCA to audio jack cable to connect to the sound input of the
TV card or directly to the sound card.
For composite to S-Video you need a composite to S-Video cable
(obviously). This will typically have 3 RCA female connectors, so you
need 3 RCA cables (or a 3 in 1 RCA cable). Two of these are for sound,
while the third is for video. It's all pretty basic and easy to set up.
Just make sure you plug the right cables into the right sockets.
Software-wise, you'll need V4L2 drivers. But since your card seems to
be detected and set up automatically, you already have these. That's
all fine.
For application software, there are loads of programs you can use. I
use mplayer/mencoder. This is a command line tool with a complex set of
options. This is quite old software, but there's a newer fork of this
called mpv. You may prefer to use something more user friendly and GUI
based. The advantage of using something command line driven, though, is
that you can easily script the video capture. For analog capture, you
use the tv:// URL with mencoder. The -tv command line option has many
parameters that can be set, separated by colons, such as the input
source (TV, Composite, S-Video, etc.), channel (if capturing from RF
input), driver (V4L2, usually) and others. For mpv the command line
syntax is a little different. It uses individual options beginning
with --tv- instead of a single -tv option. For example, --tv-input=1
instead of -tv ...:input=1:... There are some other differences too.
Here's an example. You can do a simple capture using either of the
following, depending on whether you have mencoder or mpv installed:

mencoder tv:// -tv \
driver=4vl2:input=1:norm=pal:width=720:height=576:fps=25 \
-endpos 1:30:00 -ovc lavc -oac copy -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 \
-o filename.avi

mpv tv:// --tv-driver=v4l2 --tv-input=1 --tv-norm=pal \
--tv-width=720 --tv-height=576 --tv-fps=25 --length=1:30:00 \
--ovc=mpeg4 --oac=copy --o=filename.avi

(Note that I don't have much experience with mpv, so I may have made
mistakes in the above command.)
I have a script that I use for all my (DVB as well as analog from VCR)
TV recording. It's become very complicated (quite a mess, actually), in
several files, but makes it quite easy to capture and even transcode
video on the fly using different capture methods (V4L2, DVB). It can
even use the at utility to start a capture at a particular time, so I
can record a TV show automatically. Anyhow, the point is you can put
everything you need in a script and make the whole process quick and
easy.

--

----- Dig the NEW and IMPROVED news sig!! -----

-------------- Shaggy was here! ---------------
Ain't I'm a dawg!!

Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On Mon May 17 10:56:10 2021 Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> wrote:
>> The subsystem you are looking for is V4L2, Video For Linux 2.
>> https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/V4L_capturing is what you
>> want to read.
>
> This looks like a possibility - v4l2-ctl identifies the tuner,
> composite, and S-Video inputs on my card. So far, though,
> mpv just shows noise. I'll continue puttering...

Silly question, but you did have a proper signal connected to the card,
and you had selected that connected input via v4l1-ctl, before you
tried mpv, right?

Because in the analog video world, 'noise' is what you get when you try
recording from an input with no signal attached.

On 2021-05-17, Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:

> Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On Mon May 17 10:56:10 2021 Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> wrote:
>>
>>> The subsystem you are looking for is V4L2, Video For Linux 2.
>>> https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/V4L_capturing is what you
>>> want to read.
>>
>> This looks like a possibility - v4l2-ctl identifies the tuner,
>> composite, and S-Video inputs on my card. So far, though,
>> mpv just shows noise. I'll continue puttering...
>
> Silly question, but you did have a proper signal connected to the card,
> and you had selected that connected input via v4l1-ctl, before you
> tried mpv, right?
>
> Because in the analog video world, 'noise' is what you get when you try
> recording from an input with no signal attached.

I suspect that I haven't configured something quite right, and it sounds
like I might have missed a step or to. For the benefit of others in the
thread, I have a VCR with (NTSC) composite output, which I'm hooking to
the composite input on the tuner card. As far as I know, the VCR is
working OK, but I'll move it back to the TV and double-check. And I'll
also check those steps about selecting the right input.

Thanks for the help, folks - this is turning out to be quite a ride.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | has stolen their car and parked
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Mayayana

Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On 2021-05-17, Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
>
>> Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon May 17 10:56:10 2021 Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The subsystem you are looking for is V4L2, Video For Linux 2.
>>>> https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/V4L_capturing is what you
>>>> want to read.
>>>
>>> This looks like a possibility - v4l2-ctl identifies the tuner,
>>> composite, and S-Video inputs on my card. So far, though,
>>> mpv just shows noise. I'll continue puttering...
>>
>> Silly question, but you did have a proper signal connected to the card,
>> and you had selected that connected input via v4l1-ctl, before you
>> tried mpv, right?
>>
>> Because in the analog video world, 'noise' is what you get when you try
>> recording from an input with no signal attached.
>
> I suspect that I haven't configured something quite right, and it sounds
> like I might have missed a step or to. For the benefit of others in the
> thread, I have a VCR with (NTSC) composite output, which I'm hooking to
> the composite input on the tuner card. As far as I know, the VCR is
> working OK, but I'll move it back to the TV and double-check. And I'll
> also check those steps about selecting the right input.

Yes, double checking that you have something other than noise from the
VCR is good. Because if you do have noise from the VCR, then you have
a different issue which must be corrected first.

In your initial post you also said this: "The card has an extender cable
which leads to a bracket with RCA connectors for audio and composite
video". Presumably the "extender cable" connects to a pin header on
the card. Have you double checked that you plugged in the header with
the right orientation (i.e., is the extender cable plugged in upside
down)? This assumes the typical pin header without any "keyed shell"
to prevent reverse plug-in, which is all too common on PC expansion
cards.

On 2021-05-17, Peter 'Shaggy' Haywood <phaywood@alphalink.com.au> wrote:

> mencoder tv:// -tv \
> driver=4vl2:input=1:norm=pal:width=720:height=576:fps=25 \
> -endpos 1:30:00 -ovc lavc -oac copy -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 \
> -o filename.avi

I finally found the time to do some more experimenting. The example
above is a good starting point. I found that I can watch VHS tapes
(or whatever else is plugged into the composite video input) on my
machine with the following command:

mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:input=1:norm=NTSC-M:width=720:height=480

Here's what gets written when I tee stdout:

MPlayer 1.3.0 (Debian), built with gcc-8 (C) 2000-2016 MPlayer Team

Playing tv://.
TV file format detected.
Selected driver: v4l2
name: Video 4 Linux 2 input
author: Martin Olschewski <olschewski@zpr.uni-koeln.de>
comment: first try, more to come ;-)
Selected device: pcHDTV HD5500 HDTV
Tuner cap: STEREO LANG1 LANG2
Tuner rxs: MONO
Capabilities: video capture VBI capture device tuner read/write streaming
supported norms: 0 = NTSC-M; 1 = NTSC-M-JP; 2 = NTSC-443; 3 = PAL-BG; 4 = PAL-I; 5 = PAL-DK; 6 = PAL-M; 7 = PAL-N; 8 = PAL-Nc; 9 = PAL-60; 10 = SECAM-B; 11 = SECAM-G; 12 = SECAM-H; 13 = SECAM-DK; 14 = SECAM-L;
inputs: 0 = Television; 1 = Composite1; 2 = S-Video;
Current input: 1
Current format: UYVY
v4l2: current audio mode is : MONO
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [raw] RAW Uncompressed Video
Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
VO: [vdpau] 720x480 => 720x480 Packed UYVY
Selected video codec: [rawuyvy] vfm: raw (RAW UYVY)
==========================================================================
Audio: no sound
Starting playback...
V: 0.0 1/ 1 ??% ??% ??,?% 0 0 [counts up]

v4l2: 137 frames successfully processed, 0 frames dropped.

Exiting... (Quit)

Note the "Audio: no sound" line. I still have to figure that one out
to get beyond silent movies. Any hints?

If I get the parameters wrong (which I did a lot while trying to get
the aspect ratio right), my screen and keyboard lock up. The machine
is still alive, though; I can ssh in from another machine and send
a kill -HUP to mplayer's PID, and it does an orderly shutdown and
releases everything.

Once I get sound working, the next step is to persuade mencoder
to write the video to a file. I tried adding the other parameters
you mentioned above, starting with -ovc, but I get the message:

Unable to open '/dev/dsp': No such file or directory.

It's really upset about this; the message appears three times.
And indeed, /dev/dsp doesn't exist. How do I get one?

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | has stolen their car and parked
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Mayayana

On 28 May 2021 23:11:22 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
> I finally found the time to do some more experimenting. The example
> above is a good starting point. I found that I can watch VHS tapes
> (or whatever else is plugged into the composite video input) on my
> machine with the following command:

[...]

> Note the "Audio: no sound" line. I still have to figure that one out
> to get beyond silent movies. Any hints?

Watch something newer than from 1920. ;-)

Well, Composite does not carry audio information.

> mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:input=1:norm=NTSC-M:width=720:height=480

Once audio cables are connected it might work. Using mpv here, mplayer
should also know -ao. Try

mplayer -ao help

to see, if the source connected to the VCR shows up. Replace "help" in
your command line with what seems to be appropriate.

> If I get the parameters wrong (which I did a lot while trying to get
> the aspect ratio right), my screen and keyboard lock up. The machine
> is still alive, though; I can ssh in from another machine and send
> a kill -HUP to mplayer's PID, and it does an orderly shutdown and
> releases everything.

You could try

sleep 20;killall mplayer

in another terminal. That should take care of it after 20 seconds.

> Once I get sound working, the next step is to persuade mencoder
> to write the video to a file. I tried adding the other parameters
> you mentioned above, starting with -ovc, but I get the message:
>
> Unable to open '/dev/dsp': No such file or directory.
>
> It's really upset about this; the message appears three times.
> And indeed, /dev/dsp doesn't exist. How do I get one?

Try something at /dev/snd/...

To really use /dev/dsp (I use that for old games which don't know about
ALSA and expect OSS instead) you can install aoss. Then:

aoss mplayer ....
--
Andreas

PGP fingerprint 952B0A9F12C2FD6C9F7E68DAA9C2EA89D1A370E0

On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 5:53:25 AM UTC+8, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> I have a number of VHS tapes which I'd like to digitize, and I'm
> trying to figure out where to start, hardware- and software-wise.
> I'm running Debian Buster (10.5), kernel 4.19.0-10-amd64. I found a
> pcHDTV HD-5500, which I believe is basically a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150
> tweaked for Linux, and dropped it into my box, where it is found by
> lspci and shows up as /dev/video0. The card has an extender cable
> which leads to a bracket with RCA connectors for audio and composite
> video, as well as an S-Video connector. (For now, at least, I'm not
> interested in the TV tuner on the card.)
>
>
I have only done this with Windoze. Old tapes are a PITA. I tried 3 different TV cards to get good sync. It also helps if you have a VCR with timebase corrector. Generally you would need one of the last VCRs made. A VHS-DVD combo has a fair chance of doing timebase corrector.

Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:

> Unable to open '/dev/dsp': No such file or directory.
>
> It's really upset about this; the message appears three times.
> And indeed, /dev/dsp doesn't exist. How do I get one?

There was once upon a time an audio system called OSS which used
/dev/dsp. Just leave it be, mplayer prints out many things,
unfortunately there's no qualification as to what matters and what
doesn't.

As for capturing audio, it looks to me -tv can take alsa as an option
for audio capture using alsa. Then you'd just need to select the input
source in alsamixer and mencoder would capture sound.

On Fri, 28 May 2021 20:44:43 -0700 (PDT), Falscher Bruce wrote:
>
> On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 5:53:25 AM UTC+8, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>> I have a number of VHS tapes which I'd like to digitize, and I'm
>> trying to figure out where to start, hardware- and software-wise.
>> I'm running Debian Buster (10.5), kernel 4.19.0-10-amd64. I found a
>> pcHDTV HD-5500, which I believe is basically a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150
>> tweaked for Linux, and dropped it into my box, where it is found by
>> lspci and shows up as /dev/video0. The card has an extender cable
>> which leads to a bracket with RCA connectors for audio and composite
>> video, as well as an S-Video connector. (For now, at least, I'm not
>> interested in the TV tuner on the card.)
>>
>>
> I have only done this with Windoze. Old tapes are a PITA. I tried 3
> different TV cards to get good sync. It also helps if you have a VCR
> with timebase corrector. Generally you would need one of the last VCRs
> made. A VHS-DVD combo has a fair chance of doing timebase corrector.

Another idea is to use ffmpeg to record. From its man page:

| ffmpeg is a very fast video and audio converter that can also
| grab from a live audio/video source. It can also convert between
| arbitrary sample rates and resize video on the fly with a high
| quality polyphase filter.
| | ffmpeg reads from an arbitrary number of input "files" (which can
| be regular files, pipes, network streams, grabbing devices,
| etc.), specified by the "-i" option, and writes to an arbitrary
| number of output "files", which are specified by a plain output
| url. [...]

@Falscher Bruce: I notice you probably post via Google Groups. Your text
looks nice, while the majority of users using Google Groups produce text
which isn't wrapped properly and just looks awful. How did you produce
your text? Manual line feed or a special setting in the web interface?
--
Andreas

PGP fingerprint 952B0A9F12C2FD6C9F7E68DAA9C2EA89D1A370E0

On 2021-05-29, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:

> On 28 May 2021 23:11:22 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> I finally found the time to do some more experimenting. The example
>> above is a good starting point. I found that I can watch VHS tapes
>> (or whatever else is plugged into the composite video input) on my
>> machine with the following command:
>
> [...]
>
>> Note the "Audio: no sound" line. I still have to figure that one out
>> to get beyond silent movies. Any hints?
>
> Watch something newer than from 1920. ;-)
>
> Well, Composite does not carry audio information.
>
>> mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:input=1:norm=NTSC-M:width=720:height=480
>
> Once audio cables are connected it might work. Using mpv here, mplayer
> should also know -ao. Try
>
> mplayer -ao help
>
> to see, if the source connected to the VCR shows up. Replace "help" in
> your command line with what seems to be appropriate.

It lists a lot of audio _output_ parameters, but I'm looking for
an audio _input_ selector. There's an "adevice" subparameter to
the -tv parameter, but I have no idea what kind of value it's
looking for.

$ arecord -l
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC892 Analog [ALC892 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 2: ALC892 Alt Analog [ALC892 Alt Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: CX8801 [Conexant CX8801], device 0: CX88 Digital [CX88 Digital]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

I think I need something that maps to one of the Conexant devices:

$ lspci | grep Conexant
04:00.0 Multimedia video controller: Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder (rev 05)
04:00.1 Multimedia controller: Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder [Audio Port] (rev 05)
04:00.2 Multimedia controller: Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder [MPEG Port] (rev 05)
04:00.4 Multimedia controller: Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder [IR Port] (rev 05)

Maybe it's time to change the subject from "How to capture composite
video" to "How to capture audio"...

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | has stolen their car and parked
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Mayayana

Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 28 May 2021 20:44:43 -0700 (PDT), Falscher Bruce wrote:
>>
>> On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 5:53:25 AM UTC+8, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>> I have a number of VHS tapes which I'd like to digitize, and I'm
>>> trying to figure out where to start, hardware- and software-wise.
>>> I'm running Debian Buster (10.5), kernel 4.19.0-10-amd64. I found a
>>> pcHDTV HD-5500, which I believe is basically a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150
>>> tweaked for Linux, and dropped it into my box, where it is found by
>>> lspci and shows up as /dev/video0. The card has an extender cable
>>> which leads to a bracket with RCA connectors for audio and composite
>>> video, as well as an S-Video connector. (For now, at least, I'm not
>>> interested in the TV tuner on the card.)
>>>
>>>
>> I have only done this with Windoze. Old tapes are a PITA. I tried 3
>> different TV cards to get good sync. It also helps if you have a VCR
>> with timebase corrector. Generally you would need one of the last VCRs
>> made. A VHS-DVD combo has a fair chance of doing timebase corrector.
> [snip]
> @Falscher Bruce: I notice you probably post via Google Groups. Your text
> looks nice, while the majority of users using Google Groups produce text
> which isn't wrapped properly and just looks awful. How did you produce
> your text? Manual line feed or a special setting in the web interface?

His text isn't wrapped at all for me, I'm guessing you've confused
your newsreader's automatic wrapping with the formatting of the
original post.

On the missing audio topic, I notice the original post says the
capture card's bracket has RCA audio sockets on it. If correct,
this probably means it's one that has audio input built-in (some
do, some don't). I wouldn't take it for granted that ALSA will have
detected that, so I'd suggest getting an RCA to 3.5mm adapter and
connecting to the sound card's line-in socket if the capture card
doesn't show up with "arecord -l".

Personally I've only ever done video capture in Windows due to the
limited Linux driver options (or at least they seemed very limited
when I was looking a few years ago). Using the sound card for audio
input there was an issue with audio/video being out of sync, which
had to be manually corrected by adjusting an offset setting in the
capture software I was using (VirtualDub, not relevent to Linux).

I captured to a lossless format, then converted the video to MPEG4
as a second process with ffmpeg. That way the computer doesn't need
to do so much processing while capturing the video, which risks
causing glitches if it can't keep up for a moment, and it also
allows you to have multiple tries at the final video compression
settings.

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

On 2021-05-30, Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> wrote:

> Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>
>> @Falscher Bruce: I notice you probably post via Google Groups.
>> Your text looks nice, while the majority of users using Google
>> Groups produce text which isn't wrapped properly and just looks
>> awful. How did you produce your text? Manual line feed or a
>> special setting in the web interface?
>
> His text isn't wrapped at all for me, I'm guessing you've confused
> your newsreader's automatic wrapping with the formatting of the
> original post.

Speaking as the original poster, his message headers include a
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
line. When I become king, I shall declare the use of this
encoding punishable by being forced to post everything using
a Univac keyboard (whose layout is screwed up even worse than
the original IBM PC's) with no key rollover - just like some
of us suffered on the console of a System 80 model 8. Each
line of my quoted message ends with "=20" (which I _definitely_
did not put there, having used hard line breaks instead), and
his response has apparently been typed as one long line, which
something broke arbitrarily every 75 characters without regard
to word boundaries.

That's not to say I don't appreciate Falscher Bruce's response.
Hate the sin, love the sinner. (Unless it's Google.)

> On the missing audio topic, I notice the original post says the
> capture card's bracket has RCA audio sockets on it. If correct,
> this probably means it's one that has audio input built-in (some
> do, some don't). I wouldn't take it for granted that ALSA will have
> detected that, so I'd suggest getting an RCA to 3.5mm adapter and
> connecting to the sound card's line-in socket if the capture card
> doesn't show up with "arecord -l".

I'm suspecting that I'll probably wind up trying to capture audio
via the "line in" jack which hooks to something on the motherboard.

> Personally I've only ever done video capture in Windows due to the
> limited Linux driver options (or at least they seemed very limited
> when I was looking a few years ago). Using the sound card for audio
> input there was an issue with audio/video being out of sync, which
> had to be manually corrected by adjusting an offset setting in the
> capture software I was using (VirtualDub, not relevent to Linux).

Audio/video being out of sync seems to be becoming the new standard,
along with car headlights that blind everyone in the vicinity.
(Yes, I've been practising my curmudgeonly skills.)

> I captured to a lossless format, then converted the video to MPEG4
> as a second process with ffmpeg. That way the computer doesn't need
> to do so much processing while capturing the video, which risks
> causing glitches if it can't keep up for a moment, and it also
> allows you to have multiple tries at the final video compression
> settings.

That sounds like a good tip. Thanks.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | has stolen their car and parked
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Mayayana

Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On 2021-05-29, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
> Maybe it's time to change the subject from "How to capture composite
> video" to "How to capture audio"...
>

You can capture just the video like you did, and use your soundcard to
capture the audio at the same time. You have to connect the audio cable
to the input of your soundcard in that case. This will give you a better
sound than your capture devide in most cases.

Here is like I do it:

-------------------------
nice -19 mencoder -oac pcm -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=dvvideo \
-vf yadif,harddup tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:norm=PAL:width=720\
:height=576:outfmt=uyvy:device=/dev/video0:input=0:fps=25\
:buffersize=1024:alsa:amode=1:forcechan=2:audiorate=48000\
:adevice=hw.1:forceaudio:immediatemode=0 -o raw.avi
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
|- This selects the audio-input-device.

-------------------------

You may have to tweek the script a litle for your hardware. You seem to
want NTSC which also needs other values for hight and witdth.

I use a devuan system and have only alsa installed. No pulseaudio.

Regards Friedhelm

On Sun, 30 May 2021 00:33:23 +0000 (UTC), Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
>
> Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>> On Fri, 28 May 2021 20:44:43 -0700 (PDT), Falscher Bruce wrote:
>>>>
>>> I have only done this with Windoze. Old tapes are a PITA. I tried 3
>>> different TV cards to get good sync. It also helps if you have a VCR
>>> with timebase corrector. Generally you would need one of the last VCRs
>>> made. A VHS-DVD combo has a fair chance of doing timebase corrector.
>> [snip]
>> @Falscher Bruce: I notice you probably post via Google Groups. Your text
>> looks nice, while the majority of users using Google Groups produce text
>> which isn't wrapped properly and just looks awful. How did you produce
>> your text? Manual line feed or a special setting in the web interface?
>
> His text isn't wrapped at all for me, I'm guessing you've confused
> your newsreader's automatic wrapping with the formatting of the
> original post.

His source here shows:

====
I have only done this with Windoze. Old tapes are a PITA. I tried 3 differe=
nt TV cards to get good sync. It also helps if you have a VCR with timebase=
corrector. Generally you would need one of the last VCRs made. A VHS-DVD c=
ombo has a fair chance of doing timebase corrector.
====

Wrapped here.
--
Andreas

On 2021-05-30, Friedhelm Mehnert <honk@friedhelms.net> wrote:

> Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 2021-05-29, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>
>> Maybe it's time to change the subject from "How to capture composite
>> video" to "How to capture audio"...
>
> You can capture just the video like you did, and use your soundcard to
> capture the audio at the same time. You have to connect the audio cable
> to the input of your soundcard in that case. This will give you a better
> sound than your capture devide in most cases.
>
> Here is like I do it:
>
> -------------------------
> nice -19 mencoder -oac pcm -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=dvvideo \
> -vf yadif,harddup tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:norm=PAL:width=720\
>:height=576:outfmt=uyvy:device=/dev/video0:input=0:fps=25\
>:buffersize=1024:alsa:amode=1:forcechan=2:audiorate=48000\
>:adevice=hw.1:forceaudio:immediatemode=0 -o raw.avi
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> |- This selects the audio-input-device.

I suspected that was the magic keyword. Now I just need to find
the proper value. In my case, hw.0 seems to get farther.

> -------------------------
>
> You may have to tweek the script a litle for your hardware. You seem to
> want NTSC which also needs other values for hight and witdth.

I can view NTSC composite video with this command:

mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:input=1:norm=NTSC-M:width=720:height=480

Making mencoder happy takes more work. I combined our two commands
and tried this:

mencoder -oac pcm -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=dvvideo -vf yadif,harddup \
tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:input=1:norm=NTSC-M:width=720:height=480:\
alsa:amode=1:forcechan=2:audiorate=48000:adevice=hw.0:forceaudio:\
immediatemode=0 -o test.avi >~/foo 2>~/bar

The redirected stdout (foo) is as follows:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MEncoder 1.3.0 (Debian), built with gcc-8 (C) 2000-2016 MPlayer Team
success: format: 9 data: 0x0 - 0x0
TV file format detected.
Selected driver: v4l2
name: Video 4 Linux 2 input
author: Martin Olschewski <olschewski@zpr.uni-koeln.de>
comment: first try, more to come ;-)
Selected device: pcHDTV HD5500 HDTV
Tuner cap: STEREO LANG1 LANG2
Tuner rxs: MONO STEREO
Capabilities: video capture VBI capture device tuner read/write streaming
supported norms: 0 = NTSC-M; 1 = NTSC-M-JP; 2 = NTSC-443; 3 = PAL-BG; 4 = PAL-I; 5 = PAL-DK; 6 = PAL-M; 7 = PAL-N; 8 = PAL-Nc; 9 = PAL-60; 10 = SECAM-B; 11 = SECAM-G; 12 = SECAM-H; 13 = SECAM-DK; 14 = SECAM-L;
inputs: 0 = Television; 1 = Composite1; 2 = S-Video;
Current input: 1
Current format: UYVY
v4l2: current audio mode is : STEREO
[V] filefmt:9 fourcc:0x59565955 size:720x480 fps:29.970 ftime:=0.0334
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [pcm] Uncompressed PCM audio decoder
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 1536.0 kbit/100.00% (ratio: 192000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [pcm] afm: pcm (Uncompressed PCM)
==========================================================================
libavcodec version 58.35.100 (external)
Mismatching header version 58.18.100
Opening video filter: [expand osd=1]
Expand: -1 x -1, -1 ; -1, osd: 1, aspect: 0.000000, round: 1
Opening video filter: [harddup]
Opening video filter: [yadif]
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [raw] RAW Uncompressed Video
Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
Opening video filter: [scale]
Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
[swscaler @ 0x7f7fb2902000]bicubic scaler, from uyvy422 to yuv420p using MMXEXT
[swscaler @ 0x7f7fb2902000]using unscaled uyvy422 -> yuv420p special converter
videocodec: libavcodec (720x480 fourcc=64737664 [dvsd])
VDecoder init failed :(
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffrawuyvy] vfm: ffmpeg (RAW UYVY)
==========================================================================
Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
videocodec: libavcodec (720x480 fourcc=64737664 [dvsd])

Exiting...
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The redirected stderr (bar) is as follows:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
v4l2: ioctl set format failed: Invalid argument
v4l2: ioctl set format failed: Invalid argument
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Found no DV profile for 720x480 yuv420p video. Valid DV profiles are:
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x480; pixel format: yuv411p, framerate: 30000/1001
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x576; pixel format: yuv420p, framerate: 25/1
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x576; pixel format: yuv411p, framerate: 25/1
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x480; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 30000/1001
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x576; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 25/1
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 1280x1080; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 30000/1001
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 1440x1080; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 25/1
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 960x720; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 60000/1001
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 960x720; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 50/1
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x576; pixel format: yuv420p, framerate: 25/1
Could not open codec.
FATAL: Cannot initialize video driver.
Forcing audio preload to 0, max pts correction to 0.
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Found no DV profile for 720x480 yuv420p video. Valid DV profiles are:
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x480; pixel format: yuv411p, framerate: 30000/1001
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x576; pixel format: yuv420p, framerate: 25/1
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x576; pixel format: yuv411p, framerate: 25/1
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x480; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 30000/1001
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x576; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 25/1
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 1280x1080; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 30000/1001
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 1440x1080; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 25/1
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 960x720; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 60000/1001
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 960x720; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 50/1
[dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x576; pixel format: yuv420p, framerate: 25/1
Could not open codec.
FATAL: Cannot initialize video driver.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Whew! There's a lot to this, and the man page is quite intimidating.

> I use a devuan system and have only alsa installed. No pulseaudio.

I'm using ALSA on a Debian Buster system.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | has stolen their car and parked
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Mayayana

On 30 May 2021 16:49:00 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
> On 2021-05-30, Friedhelm Mehnert <honk@friedhelms.net> wrote:
>
>> You may have to tweek the script a litle for your hardware. You seem to
>> want NTSC which also needs other values for hight and witdth.
>
> I can view NTSC composite video with this command:
>
> mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:input=1:norm=NTSC-M:width=720:height=480
>
> Making mencoder happy takes more work. I combined our two commands
> and tried this:
>
> mencoder -oac pcm -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=dvvideo -vf yadif,harddup \
> tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:input=1:norm=NTSC-M:width=720:height=480:\
> alsa:amode=1:forcechan=2:audiorate=48000:adevice=hw.0:forceaudio:\
> immediatemode=0 -o test.avi >~/foo 2>~/bar
>
> The redirected stdout (foo) is as follows:
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> MEncoder 1.3.0 (Debian), built with gcc-8 (C) 2000-2016 MPlayer Team
> success: format: 9 data: 0x0 - 0x0
> TV file format detected.
> Selected driver: v4l2
> name: Video 4 Linux 2 input
> author: Martin Olschewski <EMAIL_ADDRESS>

Aww, poor Martin might get spammed by spammers harvesting from the
usenet. ;-)

> comment: first try, more to come ;-)
> Selected device: pcHDTV HD5500 HDTV
> Tuner cap: STEREO LANG1 LANG2
> Tuner rxs: MONO STEREO
> Capabilities: video capture VBI capture device tuner read/write streaming
> supported norms: 0 = NTSC-M; 1 = NTSC-M-JP; 2 = NTSC-443; 3 = PAL-BG;
> 4 = PAL-I; 5 = PAL-DK; 6 = PAL-M; 7 = PAL-N; 8 = PAL-Nc; 9 = PAL-60;
> 10 = SECAM-B; 11 = SECAM-G; 12 = SECAM-H; 13 = SECAM-DK; 14 = SECAM-L;
> inputs: 0 = Television; 1 = Composite1; 2 = S-Video;
> Current input: 1
> Current format: UYVY
> v4l2: current audio mode is : STEREO
> [V] filefmt:9 fourcc:0x59565955 size:720x480 fps:29.970 ftime:=0.0334
> ==========================================================================
> Opening audio decoder: [pcm] Uncompressed PCM audio decoder
> AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 1536.0 kbit/100.00% (ratio: 192000->192000)
> Selected audio codec: [pcm] afm: pcm (Uncompressed PCM)
> ==========================================================================
> libavcodec version 58.35.100 (external)
> Mismatching header version 58.18.100
> Opening video filter: [expand osd=1]
> Expand: -1 x -1, -1 ; -1, osd: 1, aspect: 0.000000, round: 1
> Opening video filter: [harddup]
> Opening video filter: [yadif]
> ==========================================================================
> Opening video decoder: [raw] RAW Uncompressed Video
> Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
> Opening video filter: [scale]
> Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
> [swscaler @ 0x7f7fb2902000]bicubic scaler, from uyvy422 to yuv420p using MMXEXT
> [swscaler @ 0x7f7fb2902000]using unscaled uyvy422 -> yuv420p special converter
> videocodec: libavcodec (720x480 fourcc=64737664 [dvsd])
> VDecoder init failed :(
> Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
> Selected video codec: [ffrawuyvy] vfm: ffmpeg (RAW UYVY)
> ==========================================================================
> Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> videocodec: libavcodec (720x480 fourcc=64737664 [dvsd])

[From other snippet]

> Could not open codec.
> FATAL: Cannot initialize video driver.

Not having mencoder installed anymore, using ffmpeg, so cannot test
it. But the man page (also available online) suggests

lavcopts=vcodec=mpeg4:autoaspect=1

That should provide the missing aspect ratio as well as a codec. Still just
guessing here.
--
Andreas

Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On 2021-05-30, Friedhelm Mehnert <honk@friedhelms.net> wrote:
>
>> Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2021-05-29, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> Maybe it's time to change the subject from "How to capture composite
>>> video" to "How to capture audio"...
>>
>> You can capture just the video like you did, and use your soundcard to
>> capture the audio at the same time. You have to connect the audio cable
>> to the input of your soundcard in that case. This will give you a better
>> sound than your capture devide in most cases.
>>
>> Here is like I do it:
>>
>> -------------------------
>> nice -19 mencoder -oac pcm -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=dvvideo \
>> -vf yadif,harddup tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:norm=PAL:width=720\
>>:height=576:outfmt=uyvy:device=/dev/video0:input=0:fps=25\
>>:buffersize=1024:alsa:amode=1:forcechan=2:audiorate=48000\
>>:adevice=hw.1:forceaudio:immediatemode=0 -o raw.avi
>> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> |- This selects the audio-input-device.
>
> I suspected that was the magic keyword. Now I just need to find
> the proper value. In my case, hw.0 seems to get farther.
>
>> -------------------------
>>
>> You may have to tweek the script a litle for your hardware. You seem to
>> want NTSC which also needs other values for hight and witdth.
>
> I can view NTSC composite video with this command:
>
> mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:input=1:norm=NTSC-M:width=720:height=480
>
> Making mencoder happy takes more work. I combined our two commands
> and tried this:
>
> mencoder -oac pcm -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=dvvideo -vf yadif,harddup \
> tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:input=1:norm=NTSC-M:width=720:height=480:\
> alsa:amode=1:forcechan=2:audiorate=48000:adevice=hw.0:forceaudio:\
> immediatemode=0 -o test.avi >~/foo 2>~/bar
>
> The redirected stdout (foo) is as follows:
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> MEncoder 1.3.0 (Debian), built with gcc-8 (C) 2000-2016 MPlayer Team
> success: format: 9 data: 0x0 - 0x0
> TV file format detected.
> Selected driver: v4l2
> name: Video 4 Linux 2 input
> author: Martin Olschewski <olschewski@zpr.uni-koeln.de>
> comment: first try, more to come ;-)
> Selected device: pcHDTV HD5500 HDTV
> Tuner cap: STEREO LANG1 LANG2
> Tuner rxs: MONO STEREO
> Capabilities: video capture VBI capture device tuner read/write streaming
> supported norms: 0 = NTSC-M; 1 = NTSC-M-JP; 2 = NTSC-443; 3 = PAL-BG; 4 = PAL-I; 5 = PAL-DK; 6 = PAL-M; 7 = PAL-N; 8 = PAL-Nc; 9 = PAL-60; 10 = SECAM-B; 11 = SECAM-G; 12 = SECAM-H; 13 = SECAM-DK; 14 = SECAM-L;
> inputs: 0 = Television; 1 = Composite1; 2 = S-Video;
> Current input: 1
> Current format: UYVY
> v4l2: current audio mode is : STEREO
> [V] filefmt:9 fourcc:0x59565955 size:720x480 fps:29.970 ftime:=0.0334
> ==========================================================================
> Opening audio decoder: [pcm] Uncompressed PCM audio decoder
> AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 1536.0 kbit/100.00% (ratio: 192000->192000)
> Selected audio codec: [pcm] afm: pcm (Uncompressed PCM)
> ==========================================================================
> libavcodec version 58.35.100 (external)
> Mismatching header version 58.18.100
> Opening video filter: [expand osd=1]
> Expand: -1 x -1, -1 ; -1, osd: 1, aspect: 0.000000, round: 1
> Opening video filter: [harddup]
> Opening video filter: [yadif]
> ==========================================================================
> Opening video decoder: [raw] RAW Uncompressed Video
> Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
> Opening video filter: [scale]
> Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
> [swscaler @ 0x7f7fb2902000]bicubic scaler, from uyvy422 to yuv420p using MMXEXT
> [swscaler @ 0x7f7fb2902000]using unscaled uyvy422 -> yuv420p special converter
> videocodec: libavcodec (720x480 fourcc=64737664 [dvsd])
> VDecoder init failed :(
> Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
> Selected video codec: [ffrawuyvy] vfm: ffmpeg (RAW UYVY)
> ==========================================================================
> Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
> videocodec: libavcodec (720x480 fourcc=64737664 [dvsd])
>
> Exiting...
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The redirected stderr (bar) is as follows:
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> v4l2: ioctl set format failed: Invalid argument
> v4l2: ioctl set format failed: Invalid argument
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Found no DV profile for 720x480 yuv420p video. Valid DV profiles are:
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x480; pixel format: yuv411p, framerate: 30000/1001
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x576; pixel format: yuv420p, framerate: 25/1
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x576; pixel format: yuv411p, framerate: 25/1
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x480; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 30000/1001
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x576; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 25/1
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 1280x1080; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 30000/1001
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 1440x1080; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 25/1
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 960x720; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 60000/1001
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 960x720; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 50/1
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x576; pixel format: yuv420p, framerate: 25/1
> Could not open codec.
> FATAL: Cannot initialize video driver.
> Forcing audio preload to 0, max pts correction to 0.
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Found no DV profile for 720x480 yuv420p video. Valid DV profiles are:
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x480; pixel format: yuv411p, framerate: 30000/1001
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x576; pixel format: yuv420p, framerate: 25/1
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x576; pixel format: yuv411p, framerate: 25/1
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x480; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 30000/1001
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x576; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 25/1
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 1280x1080; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 30000/1001
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 1440x1080; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 25/1
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 960x720; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 60000/1001
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 960x720; pixel format: yuv422p, framerate: 50/1
> [dvvideo @ 0x7f7fb1dc7820]Frame size: 720x576; pixel format: yuv420p, framerate: 25/1
> Could not open codec.
> FATAL: Cannot initialize video driver.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Whew! There's a lot to this, and the man page is quite intimidating.
>
>> I use a devuan system and have only alsa installed. No pulseaudio.
>
> I'm using ALSA on a Debian Buster system.
>

That's very close. Seems you got the dimensions and/or the mode wrong.

Found this within the documentation of my grabber:

# test standard width height format input sound
# # 1 NTSC_M 640 x 480 UYVY CVBS yes
# 2 NTSC_443 720 x 480 UYVY CVBS yes
# 3 NTSC_M 640 x 480 UYVY S-VIDEO yes
# # 4 NTSC_443 720 x 480 YUY2 CVBS yes
# 5 NTSC_443 720 x 480 RGB24 CVBS yes
# 6 NTSC_443 720 x 480 BGR24 CVBS yes
# 7 NTSC_443 720 x 480 RGB32 CVBS yes
# 8 NTSC_443 720 x 480 BGR32 CVBS yes
# # 9 NTSC_M 320 x 240 UYVY CVBS yes
# 10 NTSC_443 360 x 240 UYVY CVBS yes
# 11 NTSC_M 320 x 240 UYVY S-VIDEO yes
# # 12 NTSC_443 360 x 240 YUY2 CVBS yes
# 13 NTSC_443 360 x 240 RGB24 CVBS yes
# 14 NTSC_443 320 x 240 BGR24 CVBS yes
# 15 NTSC_443 320 x 240 RGB32 CVBS yes
# 16 NTSC_443 360 x 240 BGR32 CVBS yes

Perhaps you should try NTSC_443 or change the dimensions to 640 x 480.

Can't help you further, since I have ony PAL here.

Good Luck!