Question / Help OBS to Archive old VHS tapes

[TomD]

I would like to use OBS to archive old VHS video tapes. What I have at my disposal is a USB capture device (EM2860) which accepts composite video from the VCR. This device is V4L2 compatible and provides a 720x576 stream. I have successfully used OBS to preview and record to an mp4 file. There are two things that I am struggling with..

First, I would like to be able to use an mpeg2 format in order to better facilitate some simple editing. All of the "standard" recording output formats seem to be h264. If I select the "Custom Output (FFmpeg)" there are lots of formats available (including mpeg2video), but OBS simply crashes when I start recording, unless I happen to chose one of the h264 formats. Is there something special I need to do in order to get the other FFmpeg output formats to work?

Second, I would like to be ale to monitor the audio while previewing the video prior to and during recording. The audio comes in as Mic/Aux, and it gets recorded to the mp4 files just fine along with the video. It's just that I have no audio to listen to during operation. Perhaps this involves a system sound setting rather than something within OBS, but I have been unable to find the magic setting.

For reference, here is a log file with a successful mp4 recording operation:
https://gist.github.com/f9335ebef64ab1820174

Thanks for all the hard work on this excellent tool !

 

[Ranko Kohime]

As for sound playback, that's outside of OBS's purview, technically. Since many uses of OBS involve capturing your listening device, having a listen feature can have ear-splitting consequences.

Assuming you're using PulseAudio (most likely), load a loopback, then in Pavucontrol set it on the record tab to your capture device, and on the playback tab to your audio output device. If you have only a few audio devices the loopback might connect to the correct interfaces automatically, but most likely you'll have to move it.

pactl load-module module-loopback

There is also some config options for the loopback module if you want to load it automatically on login, and you never unplug the capture device.

As for the first problem, post a log from a crash, and perhaps one of the developers will be able to figure out what's going on.

 

[TomD]

Ranko:

Thanks for the guidance on the audio. You were exactly right !

With respect to crashing with the FFmpeg formats other than h264, I am having trouble finding crash logs. When I get a crash by initiating a recording with a custom output format (in particular, mpeg2video) the standard log simply terminates immediately at the record command. Here is an example:
https://gist.github.com/anonymous/cdc6d8fa9c68d7385990

Maybe the crash is severe enough such that no crash file gets created? If there is likely a crash file, can someone guide me as to where to look?

Thanks
Tom

I just noticed that an output video file is created (but it is empty).
In this case, the file is: 2016-02-22 10-36-41.m2v