Reccoding video for security application

[Steve O'Hara-Smith]

On Mon, 18 Feb 2008 15:19:15 +0700 (ICT)
Olivier Nicole <on at cs.ait.ac.th> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> > > > > I have a bktr848 video capture card in the machine and I would
> > > > > like to reccord video and save it in a decent format (something
> > > > > that could easily be played on most movie player on Windows and
> > > > > X, xvid, mpeg, etc.) in the full 640x480 resolution.
> > > > > 
> > > > > I have been playing around with fxtv and dtv and transcode and...
> > > > 
> > > > 	Try ffmpeg - I used it as a VCR for a long time, mencoder
> > > > should also work well and provides the very low CPU option of using
> > > > nuv (Nuppelvideo) format recording.
> > > Mencode has so many options, I don't know how to run it.
> > 
> > 	Most of them have to do with specifying the output format and
> > encodings (it does support rather a lot of them).
> > 
> > 	Start with something like this
> > 
> > 	mencoder tv:// -tv driver=bsdbt848:norm=PAL:input=0 -ovc lavc
> > -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=2400 -oac 'mp3lame' -lameopts br=128
> > out.avi
> 
> I make it work with:
> 
> mencoder tv:// -tv driver=bsdbt848:noaudio:norm=NTSC:input=1 -nosound
> -o toto.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=400
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Now next question, is there a way to have the date and time added to
> the image?

	Tricky - you can probably do something with the bmovl (bitmap
overlay) filter (-vf bmovl) but it looks to be complicated to use[1]. It is
of course easy enough to put a timestamp in the filename.

	There's always the low tech approach - put a calendar clock in the
field of view of the camera.

[1] Cue for someone who has used this thing to step forward and explain
it :)

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