Ubuntu 11.10 and Hauppauge PVR 150

In this example, the composite video signal from an internal Hauppauge PVR 150 video adapter from Hauppauge will be viewed and recorded on a computer with the Ubuntu 11.10 operating system.

Install the video adapter and boot up the computer.

Read the boot log and confirm, that the Hauppauge PVR 150 video adapter are recognized by the IVTV driver.

dmesg | grep PVR
ivtv0: Autodetected Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150
ivtv0: Initialized card: Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150

Read the boot log and note the MPEG encoder stream device.

dmesg | grep video | grep MPG
ivtv0: Registered device video1 for encoder MPG (4096 kB)


Read the list of available video input.

v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video1 -n
Input: 2
Name: Composite 1

Switch to the composite video input.

v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video1 -i 2
Video input set to 2 (Composite 1)

View video from the composite video input. In this example, the composite video input is viewed with the VLC player. VLC can also be used to take snapshots.

vlc pvr:///dev/video1

Record pictures or video from the composite video input using one of the following examples.

In the following example, a picture of a frame of the MPEG encoded video input is recorded in JPEG using FFmpeg. FFmpeg is a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video.

ffmpeg -i /dev/video1 -y ~/test.jpg

In the following example, the MPEG encoded video input is recorded using FFmpeg. An existing output file will be overwritten (-y). Audio will be disabled (-an). The duration of the video will be 10 s. The file size will be limited to 500 kb. The output will be filed as ~/test.mpg. The video will have a resolution of 720×576 pixels. The video will have a framerate of 25 fps.

ffmpeg -i /dev/video1 -y -an -t 10 -fs 500K ~/test.mpg

Hauppauge PVR 150 variables and controls can be listed and set using the IVTV commands. Check these examples.

v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video1 --log-status
v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video1 --info
v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video1 --list-ctrls

The videos can be viewed with MX Video Player from Android Market for Android mobile phones. MX Video Player is the first Android video player that performs multi-core decoding.

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