Recording Video to Hard Disk

Ok, openSUSE 11.1 32bit, tv card with source coming from composite video. Security camera providing the entertainment.
I don’t need to setup television channels, I don’t need them, I just need to record the signal coming through the composite video input.

After installing the old tv card, little susie said I’d need this that and the other to see stuff, so I told her sure, I’m in for that if that’s what you think, and she said ok, give me a few seconds and you’ll be fine.

Pretty much, a little application kdetv indeed shows with no problems whatsoever, our front porch. So we know camera works, tv card works, susie is happy to show me the action. Now I just need to record it, and that’s where my whole day has gone.

The wife can’t use her machine, because it’s hers we’re trying to set it up on. I’ve downloaded MythTV, which I then had to download MySQL for, and despite reading the documentation, can find absolutely no way to actually make the database for it to connect to, so I’ve seen exactly nothing from this so far. I’m sure if I could just actually have it make a database called mythtvconverg or whatever it’s asking for, then everything else would come together just fine.

I searched then for alternatives on the forums here (after I couldn’t find any useful help to other people having a similar issue) and one was called TV-Viewer. Well, that one not only requires me to open a console to activate, it gets all upset and refuses to do anything at all (no valid channels etc).
Someone else mentioned klear, and lo and behold, it gets all ballsed on the fact it can’t find any channels.

I don’t want channels, there’s no cable plugged into the cable socket to get any. There’s just a couple of leads plugged into the composite and audio sockets, which kdetv can both see and hear just fine (I have to cancel the thing at startup blabbing about channels etc).

I just need to record the composite video signal, period, no tv channels or anything. What can I use to do this seemingly very simple thing, which is turning out to be more than a little evasive. Everything I’ve downloaded so far won’t let me even select a source or anything, because it won’t get past the fact that there are no tv channels for it to find. I don’t want them!

Any suggestions, would be much appreciated.

Can’t find how to edit post, had so many windows didn’t end up posting in the right thing, so if someone that can move it stick it in multimedia for me, be very much appreciated.

I think the simplest (not easiest) way would be to use mencoder to record it for you. For example, a few years ago I used the command below to record tv channel 12 for 1 hour, compressing to divx4:

$ mencoder tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:input=0:normid=4:channel=12:chanlist=us-bcast:width=640:height=480:device=/dev/video0:adevice=/dev/dsp0:audiorate=32000:forceaudio:forcechan=2:buffersize=64 -quiet -oac mp3lame -lameopts preset=medium -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=3000:keyint=132 -vop pp=lb endpos 01:00:00 -o /home/username/video.avi

You’d have to tweak the above parameters to suit your needs, like actual device names, lower res than 640x480, source composite instead of channel=12, no audio if your security camera gives video only, etc. A read of mencoder man or info page should suffice.

It seems complex, but once you put it in a shell script text file, it’s only a click away. It’s also possible to watch the video (in mplayer, for instance) as it’s being recorded.

Depending on resolution, framerate, compression codecs choosen and CPU power the capture consumes few CPU cicles, so you can use the computer for other tasks.

Of course there are probably a couple GUI frontends that will do the job for you, but I haven’t checked on that yet.

You can try Kalva, it was my default program before I change to DVB.