Probably the hardest way to do this but I am trying to convert some VHS to Digital files. I am running LibreElec 8.0.2. I just installed a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1250, TVHeadend 4.2 and client. I was able to scan and add all the OTA broadcast channels. So pretty happy there. Is there a way to manually add channel 3 to capture input from a VCR? Unfortunately the VCR only has Coax and RCA Composite outputs so using S-Video or Component is probably out of the question. Open to suggestions.
Unfortunately tvheadend does not support the old NTSC system. Assuming you have access to a PC I would just use something like this:
USB 2.0 Video Audio Capture Card Adapter VHS VCR TV to DVD Converter (google it)
That card already has a tuner so I think you can try the ffmpeg / pipe option. Add network of type IPTV then add a mux with the following as the IP
pipe:///usr/bin/ffmpeg -i /dev/video0 -c:v libx264 -c:a ac3 -f mpegts -tune zerolatency pipe:1
The hard part will be getting the correct input parameters for ffmpeg to point to channel 3 (which may or may not be /dev/video0 in my sample and could require additional parameters) The precise way of specifying it will be dependent upon the card and then looking at the ffmpeg documentation. Once you get ffplay / ffmpeg to properly play it, then you specify that as the input for tvheadend.
This is a bad idea. You will be encoding to a channel then decoding again. Quality will suffer. Better to use a composite in card and the composite out from the VCR.
So I was able to connect the VCR up to the card using the composite. I booted off a Linux Mint live USB. I was able to input it into VLC and can record that way. Would there be something similar in tvheadend? Would it be a pipe still?