Linux driver for EasyCap USB2.0 Video Adapter DC60

[SteveDee]

Hi I have an Easycap DC+ (the one with the Empia 2861 chip)....

Take a look at this thread which is about the same device: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...highlight=dc60

I may be able to do some tests for you, but I'm not running the same OS.

[ianmillington]

Hi Steve

Thanks for your reply. I did in fact read that thread (and this one)some time back and I attempted some of the things suggested a little while back to no effect.

Assuming VLC for video capture, the solution to the video turned out to be very straightforward - tell the system whether the input is composite or s-video. If it's composite you could either evoke a one-line command
"v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 -i 0"

or more elegantly select video option 1 in the "open capture device" advanced settings. Recently I tried S-video and found that to be the default i.e no config required.

Audio - At the early stages I gave up on that as from the output generated from a command (which I'll post if you need) it was clear that the audio driver did not load (the error message "AC97 device not recognised"). Rather than faff about with it I simply bypassed the card and plugged a 3.5mm jack into the mic socket card and the audio worked perfectly.

So my question now is not about the hardware per se but rather the limitations of the applications available to me which are:

At this point I was going to go on a rant about
VLCs huge files that break
Kdenlive's ability to view the footage but it cannot record it due, I suspect, to an issue with mlt
Guvcview crashing every time I hit the record button.

However, I have installed cheese and although I don't have a video source available it

a) doesn't crash when I hit record
b) saves the files as OGV which can be played in dragon player etc and imported to kdenlive
c) The files seem to be a tiny fraction of those generated by VLC.

When I get home tonight I will know if I have found the answer - I hope so, and will post back.

Regards

ian

[ianmillington]

Success!

Here is what you do if you have this card.

Forget about audio via the card, it will not work properly, if at all. Establish a direct link between the source and your sound card - quality should be fine.

Video - this should be all you use the card for. It will be installed as soon as you plug it in. If you have a powerful computer and loads of hard drive space you can probably use VLC, If like me you are at the lower end of the scale, Cheese will do the job.

If you are planning to use RCB/Composite (i.e the yellow plug) for your video then you will need the system to accept it. If using cheese launch a terminal and issue the command referred to in my post above. If using VLC you need video mode 1 in the advanced settings of the open capture device section.

If you are using an S Video source, I can confirm that no config is required in either VLC or Cheese. It just works.

I think the biggest problem with VLC is that the default resolution appears to be 768x576 with uncompressed avi with no obvious way to change them. With Cheese you can in preferences, and it saves as an ogv file. As a result, the footage that was between 23 and 30Gb with VLC is 560mb with Cheese, It's probably lower quality but as the source was a VHS tape I wonder how important that is. A more powerful machine could work on a higher resolution I'm sure.

Hope this helps someone

[lkraemer]

rmt1947,
I purchases a Sabrent USB Video Capture Adapter from Newegg. The Item Number is USB-AVCPT and "lsusb" shows the device as:

Bus 002 Device 006: ID 05e1:0408 Syntek Semiconductor Co., Ltd STK1160 Video Capture Device

I have downloaded your easycap_dc60.tar.gz from my gmail account.

I've extracted the source and compiled the code without errors.
I have installed mplayer, and I want to use VLC when I am finished.
When I try the test scripts everything works now.

   ./testNTSC.sh 1         for NTSC and a "CVBS+S-VIDEO" EasyCAP

and

   ./vlcNTSC.sh            for NTSC and either EasyCAP (input 0 or 1)

as per the README file. Also, the generated testeasycap1.log file
gives the user lots of good information........to apply to
mencoder & vlc.


I'm running Debian 6.0 "SQUEEZE" and my Sabrent Dongle is at:

larry@debian:~/easycap/easycap_dc60.0.9$ ls -alt /dev/video*
crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81, 1 Jan 4 14:20 /dev/video1

The two links exist at:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Jan 4 14:20 /dev/easycap1 -> video1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 5 Jan 4 14:21 /proc/asound/EasyALSA1 -> card1

I would also like to use S-Video when I get the device working.
What input will I use for S-Video? input=5 = S-Video

I have enclosed a Photo of the settings I used in VLC to get Video
and Audio. Why don't I have a /dev/easy??? for sound? How do I address
plughw:1,0 if I use mencoder from a Terminal? plughw.1,0


THANKS for ALL your Driver work!

Larry

[purdobol]

Hello
I am using 05e1:0408 dc60 to play Gamecube games on my monitor ( broken tv ).
Im using this command to play some US and Japan games (PAL gamecube)

mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:norm=PAL_60:width=720:height=576:outfmt=rgb24:device=/dev/video0:input=0:fps=30:buffersize=16

Everything is fine except weird black dots running diagonally across the screen. Anybody know what could cause that problem ?

Edit: It appears to be a mplayer bug. On VLC picture is normal and has better colors.
On the other hand VLC has 0.5 s lag...

[ubf2012]

Hi, I am new here and i also have a major issue with my unit.
lsusb lists it as "05e1:0408 Syntek Semiconductor Co., Ltd STK1160 Video Capture Device". and it has 4 video inputs and 1 audio.
The video is decent but my main problem is that all four channels only show what is input into channel 1 ( input 1) and seem to ignore anything into inputs 2, 3 & 4.
I would like to use it with zoneminder.
Is there a fix for this?

Thanks .

[SteveDee]

...my main problem is that all four channels only show what is input into channel 1....

You haven't given us much information, but I should imagine that this device produces 4 video streams. So these may correspond to 4 devices like this:-
/dev/video0
/dev/video1
/dev/video2
/dev/video3
...does this help?

[ubf2012]

Only /dev/easycap0 & /dev/easyoss0

[SteveDee]

Only /dev/easycap0 & /dev/easyoss0

OK, so it looks like input selection should be via the "input" parameter (e.g. input=1, input=2 & so on) which seems to be backed up by comments here (http://easycap.blogspot.co.uk/p/recording.html#mtvcgui) but you indicate you have already tried this. So I don't have any more suggestions.

[ubf2012]

Thank you for. I appreciate your attempt.