newbie stuff, sorry

234 views
Skip to first unread message

Tom Payne

unread,
Dec 3, 2015, 12:23:37 PM12/3/15
to easycap-somagic-linux
I bought this thing in hopes of converting a bunch of kid VHS tapes to DVD.  I'm a Linux person and, as everyone knows, this stuff comes with Windows drivers and software.  I took a laptop I had and loaded XP Pro on it.  It's a 2.2ghz machine so I thought that'd do it.  Nope, the video just freezes on it.  So, here I am!!  I ran somagic-capture and it worked great!!  I love it!!  I can create a raw image and convert that to mp4 and I'm in business.  Except for one thing...  No audio!!  I downloaded the source from GIT and looked at it.  I'm a very experienced C developer, by the way.  I tried to run the script to build but it appears that this method isn't maintained??  I mean, the version numbers don't match for different pieces.  I also note that we don't use the kernel code anymore.  That it's just an application that's run.  Another note is that the audio module appears to be in the kernel code, not in the application code??  I built the application just fine and I'm up to modifying it any way I need to.  I don't want to dive into the middle of this without a little bit of direction.  I'm hoping someone here can sort of point me correctly.  I really wanted to do some of these for Christmas so I don't want to waste a whole lot of time researching stuff.  Maybe I'm just missing something simple, because I've seen posts concerning audio along with video.  

I apologize for dumping like this but I really am crunched for time....  I truly appreciate anything you folks can tell me.  Thanks!!!

Jeffry Johnston

unread,
Dec 3, 2015, 1:22:05 PM12/3/15
to easycap-somagic-linux
Tom,

No need to apologize. I'm afraid I've really dropped the ball on maintaining this project. Google Code is in the later stages of disappearing and it's way past time for me to get all the code moved over to GitHub before we lose the repo! I will do my best to get this taken care of over my Christmas break.

I do seem to remember playing with the audio capture, and I've never used the kernel module. My years-ago recollection is that the client side audio and video capture code had not yet been integrated. However, this was a long time ago and my memories are foggy. See if there is an audio capture c file in the client side code (from Git). It might not be part of the Makefile, so you might have to build it manually, I'm afraid I don't remember.

One thing I seem to remember with the audio capture is that it had a hum or buzz to it (although that might have been earlier versions and it got cleared up later). Anyways, you might get audio capture working and find out you'll still have to do a separate capture to have acceptable audio quality, so watch out for that. I'm pretty sure audio capture doesn't even work on the Windows version.

I definitely remember trying to tie in the video with a simultaneous audio capture from my laptop line in... there were some scripts I was playing around with, I'll try to dig them up. I had toyed with the idea of combining video and audio in an ogg or mkv container but did not make any progress.

Jeff


On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 10:23 AM, Tom Payne <sthoma...@gmail.com> wrote:
I bought this thing in hopes of converting a bunch of kid VHS tapes to DVD.  I'm a Linux person and, as everyone knows, this stuff comes with Windows drivers and software.  I took a laptop I had and loaded XP Pro on it.  It's a 2.2ghz machine so I thought that'd do it.  Nope, the video just freezes on it.  So, here I am!!  I ran somagic-capture and it worked great!!  I love it!!  I can create a raw image and convert that to mp4 and I'm in business.  Except for one thing...  No audio!!  I downloaded the source from GIT and looked at it.  I'm a very experienced C developer, by the way.  I tried to run the script to build but it appears that this method isn't maintained??  I mean, the version numbers don't match for different pieces.  I also note that we don't use the kernel code anymore.  That it's just an application that's run.  Another note is that the audio module appears to be in the kernel code, not in the application code??  I built the application just fine and I'm up to modifying it any way I need to.  I don't want to dive into the middle of this without a little bit of direction.  I'm hoping someone here can sort of point me correctly.  I really wanted to do some of these for Christmas so I don't want to waste a whole lot of time researching stuff.  Maybe I'm just missing something simple, because I've seen posts concerning audio along with video.  

I apologize for dumping like this but I really am crunched for time....  I truly appreciate anything you folks can tell me.  Thanks!!!

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "easycap-somagic-linux" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to easycap-somagic-...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Tom Payne

unread,
Dec 3, 2015, 2:02:29 PM12/3/15
to easycap-so...@googlegroups.com
Jeff,

OK, thanks!  Anything you can give me to help, I'd appreciate.  I'll dig into it and see what I find.  One of the posts did say that doing both at the same time caused lag.  He intimated that it was due to writing to two files and swapping between them.  I don't even remember where I read that now, may have been somewhere else...  If I had to split it completely out, I could just read it from the computer's audio port and skip this altogether.  The problem with that would be syncing the video with the audio.  Anyway, thanks!  Any help will be much appreciated!  

You know, I have a WinTV PCI card here somewhere I messed with years ago.....  nahhhh, this is almost working!!!

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "easycap-somagic-linux" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/easycap-somagic-linux/nN4D9Hv01CY/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to easycap-somagic-...@googlegroups.com.

Pedro Martos

unread,
Dec 3, 2015, 2:15:32 PM12/3/15
to easycap-so...@googlegroups.com
Hi,
I was of not so much help in the project. But I tried to clone the repository + issues to github. The new repository is in https://github.com/pimartos/easycap-somagic-linux.git
I think that it has all the files, but please check.

regards,
Pedro

Tom Payne

unread,
Dec 3, 2015, 3:02:38 PM12/3/15
to easycap-somagic-linux, je...@kidsquid.com
Thanks!  I replied to the email....  Anything you have that might help will be appreciated, of course!  I can do the audio separately but then I have to get the two synced back up!!  I read something, somewhere, that someone had tried it and writing to the two files slowed it down too much.  I'm not sure it would on this computer so might try it.  I really don't want to have to learn a bunch of stuff to do this.  And thanks, Pedro!!  I think I have everything but I downloaded it just in case.    
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to easycap-somagic-linux+unsub...@googlegroups.com.

Tom Payne

unread,
Dec 4, 2015, 4:14:17 PM12/4/15
to easycap-somagic-linux
OK, guys.  I can capture audio now.  The next step is to combine the video and audio into one mp4 file....  I've never done any of this sort of thing before.  We'll see how it goes.  I'll let you know.

Jon Arne Jørgensen

unread,
Dec 5, 2015, 8:16:42 AM12/5/15
to easycap-so...@googlegroups.com
If you are interested in the kernel module, there is a somewhat active
community here:
https://github.com/Manouchehri/smi2021

This is an improved clone of the kernel module I wrote in the Google
Code repository.
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "easycap-somagic-linux" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to easycap-somagic-...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.



--
Jonarne
http://jonarne.no
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages