I bought a HDMI-to-USB adapter, to use to capture video TV content from my TV's set-top box. (Xfinity, if it matters. My two settop boxes are: "XiD X1"...I have both the Pace and the Cisco models available.)
Specifically, here's the adapter I bought,from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09FLN63B3
I'm fluent in both Windows (Win-11) and Linux (Debian 'Bullseye', on a chromebook).
This HDMI-adapter does not come with any recommendations for what software/drivers to (try to) use, but I was prepared for that. After some google searches, I decided to first try using the cmd-line 'ffmpeg' program, because I'm quite familiar with that (excellent!) piece of open-source software.
So, after a day or two of (some) success recordings under Win-11, using ffmpeg's Microsoft-based 'dshow' (aka 'DirectShow'), I decided to attempt to get up to the same level of accomplishment on my Chromebook, under Linux, also using 'ffmpeg'.
[Ok...a very brief explanation of '(some) success. Numerous trials so far result in serious/fatal glitches, and are using the 'dshow' format on Windows. Essentially, when I try to record either live-content or DVR-content from a set-top box to a MP4 file, I get 2 scenarios of glitch: #1: Suddenly, dropped packets surges up, and I get "1000 dropped" yellow msg #2: On other trials, I get "...contains no image...". Errors seem to be a function of the duration of the content...i.e. content lasting only a few minutes is almost always without error, but content lasting 30 minutes or 6o minutes almost always encounters one of these fatal errors. So, I decided I should first give a Linux-based approach a try, before spending any more effort trying to resolve these fatal glitches on Windows.]
Here's the ffmpeg cmd I use in my trials, under Windows-OS:
ffmpeg -f dshow -t 3600 -loglevel warning -framerate 30 -rtbufsize 800M -i video="USB Video":audio="Digital Audio Interface (2- USB Digital Audio)" -b:v 800K -s 1280x720 -vf "setdar=dar=0,setsar=sar=0,mpdecimate" -vcodec libx264 -acodec aac video-out.mp4
My first snag, was learning that 'dshow' seems to be specific to 'Windows', and thus ffmpeg got 'unknown' for my reference to 'dshow'. After more hours of 'guessing', I've finally learned/concluded that there are other things (something call "DeckLink" is one such alternative?) for Linux, but I'm unclear what extra Linux packages might exist for ffmpeg support, or whether I will need to built a more complete 'ffmpeg' (e.g. from source code), to get things going under Linux?
Is my device able to be accessed from some tools other than 'ffmpeg'? (e.g. VLC or Handbrake or whatever?) more easily, on either the Linux or Windows platform?
