How I digitized DMITRY SKLYAROV's AUGUST 29, 2001 speech on a free box using free software for less than 700 dollars.

(dmcasucks.org - link to Ed Hintz's site... he was kind enough to post)

by aicra

Hardware:

sharp hi 8 camcorder VLE600
Audio/video output jack in the back already.

wintv card (not firewire or USB)- Used drivers for the main chip which supports many cards - GPL'd
BT848 driver supports a lot of cards

wintv card comes with s-vhs to composite converter
For better audio, ensonic pci audio using the es1371 driver which is also GPL'd.

Since the camcorder is mono, and the sound card doesn't have rca jacks got two converters - one y adapter to monoaudio from camera and an rca to 1/8 inch phono for stereo input to have identical channels.from radio shack.

Debian unstable -sid kernel 2.4.9
AMD Duron 750, 128 MB ram which is probably more than the minimum you need.

Case + mboard = $149
Duron = $59.99
Ram = $24.00
TV card (NOT usb nor firewire)= $99
Sound card = $39.99
20 gig drive = $49.99

Camcorder = $239
Radio Shack adapters = $6

So if you have nothing at all, you can do it for about $700 dollars.

These are more than the minimum requirements for getting the job done, so you could probably do it for less.

Software:
compiled ffmpeg - standard compilation
3 steps (standard) ./configure
make
make install

Used xawtv (GPL)for the settings...controlling the tv card
changed television to composite 1
CLOSE xawtv before running ffmpeg

open an xterm and type the settings for ffmpeg to capture directly to mpeg.

i.e. ffmpeg -r 12 -b 1024 -ar 44100 -ab 192 -s 384x288 out.mpg

12 = frames per second
1024 = quality of frames
44100 = samples per second
192 = quality of samples
384x288 = size
out.mpg = filename