[MEncoder-users] Video buffer full problems

[Andrew Bowden]

Hello

I'm emailing hoping someone might be able to give some advice on my
mencoder setup. 

To give an overview I'm trying to use an EasyCap device in Linux to
digitise some VHS tapes.  The EasyCap has truly naff sound so I'm
feeding the audio from the VCR in to a USB soundcard.

After a LOT of experimentation I finally found a mencoder setup which
seemed to work (I had a lot of experiments due to a/v sync) and the
setup tends to work for about 60-90 minute recordings without trouble.

However when I try and do anything longer I get the dreaded "Video
Buffer Full".  Now I have some tapes that are roughly three hours long
at least, and some tapes are 8 hours in total (thanks to Long Play).  I
don't mind splitting the tapes up in to one or two files but I need to
be able to do 3 hour recordings really.

Has anyone any advice or ideas on how I could potentially solve the
problem?  I've done lots of searching around but haven't been able to
find something that would work and I'm not an expert at all on this.  

My mencoder line is below:

mencoder tv:// -tv
driver=v4l2:width=720:height=576:outfmt=uyvy:device=/dev/easycap0:input=0:adevice=/dev/audio2:audiorate=48000:amode=1:forceaudio:immediatemode=0 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=4000:vhq:vqmin=2 -vf pp=lb,harddup,softskip -oac mp3lame -lameopts abr:br=192 -mc 0 -o file.mp4

Any help or advice very gratefully appreciated.

thanks