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The Kvdr Homepage -
or how to use your PC as Video Recorder

Author: Guido Fiala gfiala (at) s (dot) netic (dot) de

Kvdr - the GUI for your virtual Video Recorder:

download version (0.64), KDE3, source code

key "t" toggles the new mode: "tiny+sticky+always on top" (on all desktops but its home it is visible tiny on top)
bugfixes with overlay-handling and window geometry/positioning
kvdr reconnects now seamless to vdr if it has closed connection (allows "parallel" operation with other SVDRP-tools)
i'am thinking about including the "linear" filter from tvtime to improve quality, as Xv-upscaling is not as good as it should
kvdr now makes use of a 768x576 modeline to display fullscreen without black borders in Overlay-Mode
You need a modeline in your /etc/X11/XF86Config about as following:
Modeline "768x576" 58.18 768 792 936 960 576 578 581 606 # 58 MHz, 60.6 kHz, 100Hz
current commandline options: -u #        "unmutes" vdr (unfortunately only works if vdr is muted before, as vdr has no unmute-command, just a toogle-mute command)
-b #       X-Server color depth [15|16|24|32]
-x         force xv-mode on startup and disable overlay-mode
-i #       initial de-interlacing-method:0=none 1=50Hz 2=field1
-d         dont switch modeline during xv
-f         start up with fullscreen active
-a         use dvb-audio-control instead of soundcard
-s #       initial number of videoadaptor for PiP [0|1|2|3]
-n         deactivate DPMS+screensaver on startup (else only in fullscreen-mode)
now you can have multiple videos at once in Xv-Mode as well (assuming you have at least 2 v4l-devices)
implemented "picture-in-picture" functionality for overlaymode & Xv-Mode! -activate it by pressing "i" after activating multimode with "x")
-pressing "i" again and again moves the PiP around and deactivates it
-pressing "e" exchanges the small and the large picture
-pressing "z" would zap the device-source of the large as usual (assuming you have at least 3 cards)
-pressing "s" does the same for the small picture
-channel switching und volume control is currently limited to the Primary-Device of vdr,
unless Klaus takes a deep breath and says yes to this extension ;-)
changed mixerhandling to direct use of /dev/mixer, amixer no longer required
grabbing during Xv with reduced flicker (i capture YUV2 directly and convert it to RGB24)
kde-screensaver is corretly switched of
+lot's of minor bugfixes

Here you find a description and some images of my C137 based vdr barebone system.

Requirements:

- some dvb-card supported by these drivers.
- Klaus Schmidingers excellent Video Disk Recorder package (here you can read more details)
-You will need a recent XFree4.x and libXv to make it compile.
-v4lconf has to be installed to configure video4linux (included in xawtv-package)
- Kde and Qt libraries
- appropriate hardware with enough free GBytes disk space
- and of course Linux ;-)
- libXv for XVideo-support

Screenshots - the faces of kvdr:

The kvdr main window - no taskbar or menu - just what you really need: