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[MusicHawk]

I don't think this is possible, if it is, I'd appreciate a clue where to find it.

I am working through digitizing a massive stack of VHS, Hi8 and DV tapes of ancient family activities, to manage in MC. Playback VCR/camcorder connects to PC via USB using WDM, then I use a separate program to Capture (record) to digital file. But all the Capture programs I've found (dozens) are flaky and/or peculiar (and often from Russia). Some of the major big name video editors refuse to work, unable to use WDM, or even declaring that my dad's old home videos, original tapes, are copy-protected copyrighted content, therefore won't be captured, huh?

After Capture I end up with a video file (lossless AVI typically for best quality, sometimes MP4), but not without issues ranging from audio lag to no audio to peculiar video dimensions, to limited or massive range of file container and codec choices and resulting file sizes (100 to 1 in some cases). THEN I Import the file into MC to view (to discover what went wrong, MC can play files VLC can't). If a file is OK I use MC to catalog and tag it, which works great (though tags are external XML, of course).

But what if MC could do the first step, capture video+audio in a range of source image sizes/shapes, via WDM, into a few suitable modern formats, recording a very long "stream" without interruption (old analog tapes can run up to about 3 hours). Would this be a feature that would expand MC's appeal? (Or am I crazy and it's already there?)

After video I'll work through digitizing a massive stack of audio on magnetic tape (reel-to-reel and cassette), same need to capture/record it to digital file. Can MC record incoming audio from the PC's sound card? (Just wondering, not a huge MC requirement, Audacity is fine, but it's one more step...)

[DJLegba]

This isn't a direct answer to your question, so I apologize in advance. When I went through this process I played the analogue sources into a DVD player/recorder (using either RCA or SVHS cables), and burned DVDs. I then used MakeMKV to rip these to MKV files, which imported nicely into JRiver. Rather than using software to chop up the files I kept an eye on the playback and used the stop button on the DVD recorder.

[Yaobing]

MC still supports WDM capture devices.  Since we introduced time-shifting, many years ago, recording can only be done using JTV format (not AVI anymore) unless the capture device has hardware compression that can compress video into MPEG-2 transport stream, in which case the recording can be done in TS format.  Hauppauge makes such devices.

[RD James]

I really have no idea if it would work with your hardware, but have you tried using OBS Studio?

https://obsproject.com/

Note: While the software is generally stable, you should record to .ts files, as they are the most recoverable in the event that it does crash.