dvr - Digital Video Recorder

dvr-qtgui

This manual page documents briefly the dvr-qtgui command. This manual page was written for the Debian/GNU Linux distribution because the original program does not have a manual page.

dvr is is a tool to record movies on a computer equipped with a Video4Linux-compatible video capture card. It can record and compress data at up to 25 fps in real time, using recent codecs like DivX, Indeo 5, MPEG4, and others.

Features include:

Support for writing data in segmented files (to avoid 2GB file size limitations)

Support for recording audio in MP3 or PCM, with configurable frequency, mono/stereo, etc.

On-the-fly capture and compression (requires a fast processor)

Horizontal margin removal during capture (saves disk space and processor ressources when recording movies that have black top/bottom margins, such as 16/9)

Detailed monitoring during recording (free space left, frames lost, CPU usage, etc.)

Configurable record start time and duration

Large number of configurable parameters (size, image depth, codec attributes, TV parameters, etc.)

Session management (saving parameters on exit and reloading them on launch)

Simultaneous preview and capture

Fullscreen preview

Support for multi-processor machines

Session management

Graphical user interface

There are no command line options.

The GUI is splited in several parts :

General : configuration of the format of the input video (width, height, bits per pixel, ...), length in time, and others.

Video codec : configuration of the video codec used

Audio codec : configuration of the audio codec used

Video : configuration of the video interface used : norm (PAL, SECAM, ...), input, channels, ...

Monitoring : show statistics about the current recording

The button at the bottom-left of the window is used to start recording, while the button at the bottom right is used to stop it. These buttons are always visible.

In order to configure the channel list ("Video" section) you need to select a channel with your favorite TV program, then launch DVR and save the tuned channel. Repeat the operation for each channel you want to configure.

You need to launch your favorite TV program once and close it, before the first execution of DVR since the last reboot of your computer.

This manual page was written by Mark Purcell <msp@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others).

X(7), v4l-conf(8), xawtv(1).