A penguin, an USB device and a video game console walk into a bar.

Some months ago I bought a cheap usb video capture device (dx.com). Using it with vlc under Windows is pretty straightforward. What about Linux?
First things first, if you are running a Debian Wheezy with a 3.2.x kernel you have nothing to do. The em28xx module is already here. You can use vlc or mplayer. Unfortunatly I didn’t managed to configure vlc properly. After some tweeking and intense internet browsing, I get the following parameters for mplayer:

mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:width=720:height=480:outfmt=uyvy:norm=NTSC-M:device=/dev/video1:input=1:fps=30:alsa:amode=1:forcechan=2:audiorate=48800:adevice=plughw.2,0:forceaudio:immediatemode=0 -ao sdl -vo sdl

The input lag is rather small but it can be troublesome if you intend to record longplays. On the other hand, it’s a must-have if you are a coder. No need for an extra screen! This gadget saved my life at Datastorm 2014. Our intro was nearly done and I borrowed Flubba’s usb EasyCap device to test it on the PC Engine hardware. It was running like a charm under Mednafen but it failed miserably on the hardware (blame crappy bank management code). Hopefully it was all fixed before the deadline. This little usb gizmo was also very helpful when I was working on the Everdrive SD card driver or on the Memory Base 128.

Fire Pro Wrestling 3 title screen   Monster Puroresu title screen

Violent Soldier title screen   In game capture.

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