I find it odd that there are not many free FM Radio tuner software for the Windows platform. FM Tuners for Linux, yes - and with the source code too. But for Windows there is none. The best that I could find is just a plug-in for Winamp called Winamp TV version 1.9Beta8 - the page on this link says version 1.9lite10 but upon installation the Winamp TV documentation says version 1.9Beta8.
I do not really need a user login account for my Pentium Dual Core computer that I use for TV captures. Security is not a concern as I am practically the only user on this PC. But I have a need to use V2CRS for scheduling my VirtualDub TV recordings. And one of the requirements of V2CRS is that it needs a user login account with a password.
 |
| Windows Scheduled Tasks |
In the documentation of V2CRS, there is no mention of what the user login account should be. So I just create an account called "user" (with administrative privileges) that requires a password to login. Since I can use V2CRS to schedule and record without any problems, I did not give much thought to this after that. I thought everything was alright. That is until when I did a "Restore my computer to an earlier time" via the Windows System Restore. Some, but not all, of my scheduled V2CRS task will not launch. A look into the Windows Scheduled Tasks window, which V2CRS actually uses to schedule the task, shows a status of "Could Not Start" next to the task.
One Touch Recording or OTR. A function on my old VCR that enables me to record a TV program immediately without delay. And with the ability to set a countdown timer, the VCR will shut off once the countdown reaches zero.
I wanted something similar to OTR on my PC for my TV recordings with VirtualDub. There are times when I wanted to start recording a TV program immediately without scheduling a task in V2CRS. Task scheduling is easy with V2CRS but it takes time keying in the parameters. Consequently, there is an undesirable delay when I want to start recording immediately.
The easiest method that I could think of in creating an OTR like function on my PC is to use Windows batch files, that will in turn call the V2CRS program "Scheduler.exe". VirtualDub capturing will start almost immediately plus I will get a countdown timer, courtesy of V2CRS.
A command for immediately capturing TV1 (channel 6 in my case) into the file name "TV1" in the directory "F:\RecordedTVPrograms" for a length of 30 minutes will look like this:
I have a need to use VirtualDub filters when scheduling TV captures with V2CRS. I always find that with the Sharpen filter enabled at level 17, my playbacks always look better. I also have a need to enable the Denoise filter as for one particular channel where I live, the reception is not that good. But unfortunately, there is no option for enabling VirtualDub filters in V2CRS.
By luck I suppose, instead of selecting with the mouse, I happened to hit the keyboard and realised that I could key in into the field "Path:" when defining the file to execute for launching VirtualDub (under Preferences -> Capture application) from V2CRS. A thought then came to me - instead of using a .EXE executable file, using a Windows batch file ("VD.BAT" in this case) to launch VirtualDub will give me the ability to use VirtualDub scripts (and hence VirtualDub filters) via the VirtualDub command-line options.
A VCR has a timer that enables the user to set a trigger for recording at a specific date and time. Unfortunately, VirtualDub has none.
Theoretically, we could use the Windows Task Scheduler to schedule a recording. The command to run under Windows Task Scheduler looks something like this:
C:\VirtualDub-1.9.11>C:\VirtualDub-1.9.11\VirtualDub.exe /capture /capchannel 30 /capfile "F:\RecordedTVPrograms\CapFile.avi" /capstart 3600s /x
A bit lengthy, and if we start inserting, deleting and modifying existing scheduled task, pretty soon Murphy's Law will set in and we will miss recording our favourite TV program. Much like writing a computer program, we need to debug our 'code'. Not a very good idea. Definitely not user friendly.
