Experiences with the easycap DC60 audio and video capture adapter on Linux

This Blog is dedicated to all owners of the STK1160 chip based EasyCAP (or identical) devices, who want to use it under Linux.

Activating audio for the STK1160 device: read the this post

German speaking users: read my article on ubuntuusers.de

The EasyCAP DC60 and its clones are cheap little USB analogue capturing devices which can be used for viewing and recording video under Linux from different sources like VHS tape recorders, satellitereceivers, camcorders ...

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Mtvcgui updated

Santiago Bruno, the developer of mtvcgui, informed me about the new version (1.0.2) of his great program he has released some days ago.

"One of the new features in this release is that it queries mplayer to get the list of supported norms, so it should report the correct values," he reports.

The other great new feature is, that he provides booth a .deb and .rpm package, which installs (and adds a launcher to the menu), and runs (I've tested the .deb package with Ubuntu 12.04) without any problem.

If you want to preview or capture video, now mtvcgui and the EasyCAP DC60 work together without any adaptations,
but if you want to capture audio as well as video with the EasyCAP, you need to do the following:

On the second tab, check the "Capture audio using ALSA" checkbox,
then type in "hw.1" as ALSA device (if the EasyCAP is the second soundcard on your system).
Into the "Extra tv parameters" field type in:
amode=1:forceaudio:immediatemode=0
else the audio stream won't be captured (and you won't hear audio if you press the "Preview channel with mplayer" button on the first tab.

When I've done some more tests I will update the description concerning the usage of mtvcgui with the EasyCAP on the Recording page of this blog.

Andrew

1 comment:

  1. Thank you very much for your explanation, mr Andrew Schalk.

    Your post dates from 2012, but still is useful in 2017.

    I own a EasyCap-stick of type:

    ID 1b71:3002 Fushicai USBTV007 Video Grabber [EasyCAP]

    and I use it to record old video tapes from scart over composite to usb. TV-system: PAL-Europe.

    I am getting very nice results with mtvcgui (v1.2) on my Ubuntu 16/64bits system, after having tried these:

    - VLC: have to remap the h264/aac-stream with ffmpeg each time in order to be able to work with it afterwards in avidemux e.g. Also, sometimes sudden black images. Not too practical as you have to go though all the settings for every saved video in the gui form of the program.
    - Cheese: very limited choices. Almost never any sound. Disrupted image sometimes.
    - ffmpeg: pff, hard to get the specific codeline with all aspects in it to record/save in e.g. h264/aac/mp4(mkv) or xvid/mp3/avi.
    - Other stuff that didn't work or didn't work well enough.

    The mencoder codes aren't easy either and therefore mtvcgui comes in very handy.

    Setting/getting the sound isn't easy indeed. But once you find it, it always works well.

    This is the result on my system of aplay -l:

    kaart 0: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], apparaat 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
    Sub-apparaten: 1/1
    Sub-apparaat #0: subdevice #0
    kaart 1: Generic_1 [HD-Audio Generic], apparaat 0: CX20588 Analog [CX20588 Analog]
    Sub-apparaten: 0/1
    Sub-apparaat #0: subdevice #0

    (in Dutch, as it is my mothertongue)

    These are the settings to get the 'CX20588' to work:

    Extra TV Parameters - Capture audio using ALSA:

    hw.2 ALSA device (e.g. hw.0)

    Extra tv parameters (delimited by:)
    amode=2:forceaudio:immediatemode=0

    Some other settings in mtvcgui for PAL-tv-recording (in this case to xvid/avi):

    Main Parameters:

    Channel=0, Driver=v4l2, Device=/dev/video0, Norm=PAL, Input=Composite, Channels list=europe-west, Audio Codec=mp3lame, Video Codec=xvid, bitrate=1500 CBR.

    Extra TV Parameters:

    Width=720, Height=576, Audo Rate=44100

    Extra Mencoder Parameters

    Width=720, Height=576, FPS=25, quiet=off.

    All of this just to give an idea of what work for me in case of the Easycap-stick combined with mencoder/mtvcgui.
    Inspired by your advice.

    ReplyDelete

Please be patient, your comment will be published as soon as I'm checking my mailbox next time.
So, I will notice your comment for sure. Andrew