How to record webcam with Pavrecord in Macbook Air?

[Zedward]

I have Macbook Air A1466 with Puppy Linux JammyPup32 installed on it. All goes OK except webcam.
When I try to use Pavrecord, I see preview. When I start record, preview window disappears, light on webcam flashes off, and no video is recorded, only audio.
When I try to record from console, I get a message "Invalid data found when processing input. stdout: Broken pipe"
When I record from console with command
"ffmpeg -y -f video4linux2 -s 320x240 -i /dev/video0 -r 30 -vcodec mpeg4 -vtag xvid -f avi try.avi" all is OK (but no sound, of course).
I tried to capture webcam with VideoView, but can't get normal quality of audio and this program is inconvenient for me.
What I should check or repair to make Pavrecord workable? Thank you!

[Clarity]

Does this occur in the 64bit version of JammyPUP64. I cannot replicate.

[rockedge]

Does Guvcview work with the web cam?

[Zedward]

Guvcview works fine with no errors. Thank you!
By the way, I need to change Latency in Audio Settings in Guvcview from 0.021 to 0.032 every time I want to record video to prevent sound glitches. Can I automatize it or change some system files to increase latency parameter?
Anyway i would like to know what is the problem with Pavrecord...

[mikewalsh]

@Zedward :-

TBH, if you want to find out about, or ask any questions about the operation & behaviour of Pavrecord, then you need to talk to its author.....@wiak .

He's the only one who will thoroughly understand its operation. I'm betting that the problem is that it was written to work with a far older version of ffmpeg, but he's the only one who can answer that question.

Mike.

[wiak]

I'm betting that the problem is that it was written to work with a far older version of ffmpeg

Yes, Pavrecord is very old now and I don't maintain it. Haven't looked at it for years. Precord still going strong as is wex, but don't have time to look back at Pavrecord internals anymore - the underlying ffmpeg commands are no doubt dated. Doubt I'll ever look at it because so many other screen capture apps about now and time is already proving too short and need to prioritize sorry. Someone could fix it up I'm sure though - just a matter of analysing the ffmpeg commands inside and fixing them all to work with newer ffmpeg releases.

[mikewalsh]

@Zedward :-

Thr trouble with both Pavrecord AND VideoView is that they're very old pieces of software.......and you're attempting to use them with a bang up-to-date OS. And you want to do all this on a Mac? It's a recipe for problems.

If - as wiak says - you want to capture the desktop, there are indeed a lot of apps about. If, however, it's the webcam itself that you want to capture, your choices ARE more limited; Linux doesn't have so many apps that concentrate on just the webcam and nothing else.

Essentially, you've got:-

• Guvcview

• Luvcview

• VideoView

• Webcamoid

• Cheese

You're running 32-bit, so you can forget Webcamoid; that's 64-bit ONLY. Luvcview and VideoView are both pretty old, so not really suitable for Jammy. That leaves you either Guvcview OR Cheese. The latter will be available through the PPM.

Wiak's WeX is worth taking a look at; this one records the desktop, but will also let you add a small webcam monitor at the same time. Actually, so will vokoscreen, but I don't know if that's available as 32-bit (you'll HAVE to install that from the repos; it doesn't have a web-site of its own. If it's not available, then you're out of luck; AFAIK, we don't have any Puppy packages for this one.)

Mike.

[rockedge]

I would go with WeX. We have included it in KLV-Airedale and it functions well as a desktop recorder. There is always SimpleScreenRecorder.

[fredx181]

I would go with WeX. We have included it in KLV-Airedale and it functions well as a desktop recorder. There is always SimpleScreenRecorder.

+1, WeX works very well and has lots of options.