I have a physical storage problem and want to put my VHS tapes onto disk.
I have an unused Hauppauge WinTV-PVR350 which I understand should do the job but can I do it using Linux?
I seek some pointers on what program to use, how to do it and tag the resulting files and help installing my Hauppauge card and any driver if required.
I have openSUSE 11.4 (64bit) installed using KDE desktop.
Grateful for any advice and assistance please.
Budgie2
I may not have the best answer here, but I’ll make a start anyway. Looks like ‘ivtv’ driver is relevant here. From this link, I read
The drivers are now bundled with the mainstream kernel, and work out-of-the-box with any recent Linux distribution, such as Red Hat / Fedora / Ubuntu / Gentoo and all others.
Hope this helps.
Edit: MythTV is the application to use here AFAIU
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/OpenSuSE_11.3
I’ll follow your progress with interest! 
Hi and many thanks for the links. On reflection I may have confused matters by mention of the Hauppauge card. I only mentioned it because I have one and it dates from a time when VHS tapes were still in use.
What I should perhaps ask first is what is the best way to go from VHS to disk using present day kit and what kit do I need in addition to VHS machine?
This project is for long winter nights but am trying to get ready for it now. Will gladly report progress if any in due course.
Regards,
Budgie2
You’ll probably want to look at DVD creation tools from packman.
When I transferred video tapes to DVD, I took the easy way out and simply connected a VCR to a PVR, hit record on the latter and play on the former. Afterwards a bit of snipping on the PVR, then I burnt the clips to DVDs. If you can beg borrow or somehow lay your hands on a PVR, that would be the simplest way.
Budgie2 wrote:
>
> Hi and many thanks for the links. On reflection I may have confused
> matters by mention of the Hauppauge card. I only mentioned it because I
> have one and it dates from a time when VHS tapes were still in use.
>
> What I should perhaps ask first is what is the best way to go from VHS
> to disk using present day kit and what kit do I need in addition to VHS
> machine?
> This project is for long winter nights but am trying to get ready for
> it now. Will gladly report progress if any in due course.
> Regards,
> Budgie2
You could cheat as I did: buy a dual DVD/VHS recorder 
When I finally broke down and bought a DVD recorder for the TV I got a dual
DVD/VHS Toshiba unit with cross-dubbing for about the same price as a
simpler DVD only unit. So far, I haven’t found any tapes that won’t dub so
I’m thinking it even ignores the “do not copy” flag on the commercial tapes.
–
WHonea
Now there’s a thought, I think I have a Sharp or Daewoo device of this type. Will check out. Meanwhile it seems another easy route is using windoze but the Hauppauge still features in the Linux wikis on this topic.
Will report back and thanks for the suggestion.
Budgie2
Budgie2 wrote:
>
> Now there’s a thought, I think I have a Sharp or Daewoo device of this
> type. Will check out. Meanwhile it seems another easy route is using
> windoze but the Hauppauge still features in the Linux wikis on this
> topic.
> Will report back and thanks for the suggestion.
> Budgie2
Looking forward to your results! I’ve got one of those cards that I’m
setting up with some security cameras as the source(s) so I need a similar
capability on the computer. Be nice if the solution were open source so I
could intergrate the camera scan control and streaming software for remote
access - I’m getting too darned old to be running out in the cold winter to
check things out.
–
WHonea
I just saw this link while searching for video issues. I remember this thread so I copied the link, might be of help.
Converting VHS to DVD under Linux HOWTO