[pvrusb2] Q: Timed recording without MythTV

[Mark Brand]

G Mc.Pherson wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> I recently picked up a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2 (model 29032, rev D2A3)
> and after a quick read over Mike's web page, I'm happy to say that
> installation was painless and seems to be working relatively well.
>
> Great job on the driver, Mike!
>
> After browsing over the mailing list, I didn't see anyway to time a
> recording. "cat /dev/video > filename.mpg" doesn't really lend itself to
> recording for a specific period of time. I'm aware MythTV offers that
> functionality but it's overkill for my purpose (and I've never had any
> luck configuring it).
>
> Is there anyone out there with a simple script or program that will
> record for a specified time that could be called from a cron job?
>
> Also a 30 minute show is consuming 1.4 Gbytes, is there anyway to reduce
> this. Some of the shows I'll be recording can last upto 3 hours (8.4
> GBytes!!)
>
>   
I use the following bash script. The number of seconds to record is the
parameter for sleep.

mkdir dvd
mencoder -demuxer 2  -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd -oac copy -ovc copy
-o dvd.mpg /dev/video &
CATPID=$!
sleep 3785
kill $CATPID

I use "mencoder" instead of simple "cat" because the raw mpeg that comes
out of /dev/video seems to make dvdauthor choke, whereas the output here
to dvd.mpg works just fine.

Mark