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-De... Quick start guide to uprading to Devuan and configuring minimalism https://www.mail-archive.com/dng@lists.dyne.org/msg05814.html