Hi, I was wondering if anyone has had experience capturing video from a AVerMedia DVD EZMaker card on a Arch Linux system. I can see the pictures in Cheese Webcam at /dev/video0, yet using "-f alsa -i plughw:0 -acodec mp2 -f video4linux2 -s 720x578 -r 15 -i /dev/video0 -vcodec mpeg4" says I am not connected. Any ideas please?

I have tried using VLC. It just cannot do analog capture. It sort of works but it doesn't allow you to set options like record resolution etc, and it has very little in the way of on-board testing or auto detecting of hardware parameters or paths etc. It doesn't even seem to have a VU meter for recorded sound.The documentation useless. In short the program is probably OK for many uses (I always use it as my main viewer) but the analog capture is only at a software breadboard stage. Kdenlive also suffers from many of these faults (eg making you write in a path, without giving you hints, clues or suggestions) or effective ways of testing where a problem exists. Writing an error message like " Not connected" is so lame the particular programmer responsible should be removed from the team. This sort of message is as bad as MS and turns new users to look for closed source programs that work. Unfortunately many software designers only consider the case where everything works ok (on their machine that they wrote it on) and leave you to fend for yourself if it doesn't work. As a designer (I design hardware and software for medical equipment used in operating theaters) I know that only 20% of the effort is in getting the thing to work. The other 80% is in writing test modules and documentation to sort out what to do when it doesn't work. Actually suggesting to use VLC instead of kdenlive really asking me to exchange one bunch of problems for another. I would really like an answer or some clues, or a methodology to trace this problem if anyone has one please

"Writing an error message like "Not connected" is so lame the particular programmer responsible should be removed from the team."
Wow. And you expect help for a free product built by volunteers after saying something like that?

Actually, and somewhat surprisingly I do. The truth sometimes is not pleasant, and as I designer I have had to face that many times. The fact is if you want people to take this product seriously, and achieve the critical mass that is needed to take open source main stream, then it needs to be approached as seriously as any commercial product. The error message I refer to is the type of thing that turns off people who are trying open source as an alternative. While I appreciate the volunteers give of their time and effort to improve the world of open source, its a bit like getting your friends to volunteer to build your house. Their labor may be free and incredibility well meant, but if they don't put it together properly, nobody might want to live in the house. I know that a huge amount of really hard and inspired work has gone on under the bonnet, but I have been in situations where I designed brilliant electronics and all the client could see is they didn't like the style of knobs I used. Often I have found the effort in addressing the most negative comments have payed rewards because I have had to sort out a whole bunch of things that were peripheral during the coding and getting it going stage, but really important in the getting it into the real world stage.