[MEncoder-users] Record from DVB-T frontend1 and dvr1 with Mencoder?

Fri Jan 1 23:33:53 CET 2016

Hi everybody!

Starting from:

https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Tzap

, this I got working (for my old Hauppauge HVR3000):

$ tzap -f1 -d1 -r "HTV1"
(or with any other channel that w_scan found).

and:

$ cat /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr1 > testvideo.mpg &

saves it fine, and also I can play it as it is being saved (recorded):

$ mplayer testvideo.mpg

But I'd like to be able, and I am currently not, [to be able] to use Mencoder
to do so. [*]

I have been using Mencoder for really long years now. [**]

But I have only successfully used/been using it. Either...

1) I used it on my old Hauppauge HVR3000 (or HVR4000) to record from the old
SCART output, from say a Set-top Box, which Composite I divided:

x) the video into its S-video input of the card;
x) the audio from that old composite, via composite to to Cinch adapter
plugged into the line audio input in the MBO (and the line recording set in
alsamixer [***]).

Or...

2) to record DVB-S via the satellite input. Via this one use of Mencoder, I
have also been recording, apart from with the already mentioned Hauppauge
HVR's, with, another old card model, with Technisat SkyStar2 (which is a poorly
named DVB-S only card).

In the sense which you can get if you read the longer story further below, not
far beneath my signature (but it's not necessary if you don't have time)
[****], among other hardships, this is finally my first-again successful
attempt, after the switch to no-dbus no-systemd, in my Gentoo FOSS Linux...

(after the switch to what, in Devuan --which I will also hopefully be using--,
is called a minimalist install (which in effect means, again: no-dbus,
no-systemd).)  [*****]

So [this is my first-again successful attempt] to get the DVB-T channels
scanned, and to figure out that they are recordable and, when saved, playable,
with my old HVR3000/4000 card(s). --Well, it's because I have been able, in all
this time, to find only a few days or maybe a week, every few months or so, to
work on this issue...

And here goes what I need cleverer people than me to enlighten me about.

I hope you remember as I started in the top how these:

$ tzap -f1 -d1 -r "<some-local-DVB-T-channel>"
$ cat /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr1 > testvideo.mpg &
$ mplayer testvideo.mpg

worked fine. So my HVR3000's DVB-T has its drivers installed and working, and
the streams are recordable.

Just, how to record them with Mencoder?

In other words, is there a way to specify the right devices? From among these:

# ls -l /dev/dvb/adapter0/
total 0
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212,  4 2016-01-01 11:45 demux0
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212, 20 2016-01-01 11:45 demux1
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212,  5 2016-01-01 11:45 dvr0
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212, 21 2016-01-01 11:45 dvr1
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212,  3 2016-01-01 11:45 frontend0
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212, 19 2016-01-01 11:45 frontend1
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212,  7 2016-01-01 11:45 net0
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212, 23 2016-01-01 11:45 net1
#

(just the net0 and net1 are going away in my next recompile of the kernel; a
possible venue for exploits, and anyway: these old cards don't get new drivers
from the manufacturers: they are not officially supported in the least, so why
have the DVB open to internet?)

So, is there a way to specify to Mencoder that which I used to tune to a
terrestrial channel with tzap, the -f1 and -d1, that is the:

/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend1

and the:

/dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr1

?

I studied man mplayer, but I didn't find such options. In other words, is the
only DVB source that Mencoder can record from, just 

/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0
/dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0

which seems to be the default? (I have only been able to ever record from
HVR3000/4000 the DVB-S and not DVB-T with Mencoder so far, i.e from frontend0
and dvr0.)

Sincere regards! And (belatedly) Happy Christmas! And a Happy 2016 to
everybody!

-- 
Miroslav Rovis
Zagreb, Croatia
http://www.CroatiaFidelis.hr

--
[*] This is my Mplayer installation:
$ mplayer -v
MPlayer 1.2-4.9.3 (C) 2000-2015 MPlayer Team
CPU vendor name: AuthenticAMD  max cpuid level: 5
CPU: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 965 Processor (Family: 16, Model: 4, Stepping: 3)
extended cpuid-level: 27
extended cache-info: 33587520
Detected cache-line size is 64 bytes
3DNow supported but disabled
3DNowExt supported but disabled
CPUflags:  MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNowExt: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1 SSE3: 1 SSSE3: 0
SSE4: 0 SSE4.2: 0 AVX: 0
Compiled for x86 CPU with extensions: MMX MMX2 SSE SSE2 SSE3 CMOV
get_path('codecs.conf') -> '/home/miro/.mplayer/codecs.conf'
Reading optional codecs config file /home/miro/.mplayer/codecs.conf: No such
file or directory
Reading optional codecs config file /etc/mplayer/codecs.conf: No such file or
directory
Using built-in default codecs.conf.
init_freetype
Using MMX (with tiny bit MMX2) Optimized OnScreenDisplay
get_path('fonts') -> '/home/miro/.mplayer/fonts'

[**] e.g.: Digitizing VHS tapes with mencoder
http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/mplayer-users/2010-April/079686.html
(BTW, for nostalgics of old times: that was the time when you couldn't record
from VHS via composite source without really bad sync that made your new
digitized files from VHS unuseable... Not without that hack there! I see
Mplayer/Mencoder have greatly improved in 2014 and 2015. Am happy!)

[***] Only pure Alsa do I use. (Pulseaudio is, at least potentially, a really
typical spyware-accomodating program, IMO; think Snowden, surveillance etc.
and read the other notes below, it's an associate of those non-true-FOSS IMO.)

[****] I had previously had the HVR3000 (and/or HVR4000) working fine on KDE,
with Kaffeine. But that was before I got rid of systemd and dbus. First I
slowly started suspecting about those, then I searched, read, and concluded
that dbus was systemd's best friend, and that I didn't want any of systemd and
its associates, but, as best possible: only what I too, among many others,
regard to be still true FOSS programs, in my machines... (and which true FOSS
the above poetterware, is not; called so after the main developer Pöttering --
Poettering in ascii--; nothing personal, just truth: the main tool he was
judged by others:

Open letter to the Linux World
https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/8/12/459

).

(Otherwise, I liked KDE, and Kaffeine. But the disgust with what they need as
dependencies, all the systemd and associates, the disgust with those, when I
learned what those programmers have done and keep doing to *nix, and out
of *nix, was too much to bear.)

That is my choice, kind reader. Yours may well be different. And you may not
agree with my opinion in the least. Fine! Just try and let the thinking *nix
users be informed and judge and decide for themselves...

I hope FFmpeg and MPlayer/Mencoder (the teams of both keep together, many
members being in both, IIUC, and I have been their greatful user for longer
than a decade or decade and a half now), [I hope they] will keep my no-systemd
no-dbus choice (which is also many other people's choice) feasible (without
becoming programmers ourselves ;-) which many of us may not be able to
become). Feasible as far as MPlayer/Mencoder and FFmpeg that we use.

But that choice of mine was, and still is, somewhat costly. Now you can go for
the particular support that I need in Mencoder in the main trunk of this
email (the first part, the top part).

[*****] Upgrade to Devuan and minimalism 
https://git.devuan.org/dev1fanboy/Upgrade-Install-Devuan/wikis/Upgrade-to-Devuan-and-minimalism
Quick start guide to uprading to Devuan and configuring minimalism
https://www.mail-archive.com/dng@lists.dyne.org/msg05814.html

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 819 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/mencoder-users/attachments/20160101/50f409fa/attachment.sig>