On Sun, 17 Feb 2013 15:37:01 +0000
John Legon wrote:

Jim Lesurf wrote:

I don't have an EZCap. So can't do any tests. Davey reports the
EZCap as giving alsa device ID numbers and strings. But then says
he gets 'empty' streams (0 values) when using these with arecord.
Which indicates something somewhere isn't set up correctly by him.
But I can't tell what the problem may be from here. :-)

If things are not correctly set then it's certainly possible for the
device to initialize OK but to give a completely blank recording...

Jim and John and Andy,

Ok, back after yesterday's alcoholic birthday party (not mine).
I've also had some time to do some thinking:

Thought 1. Since this laptop, for whatever reason, doesn't want to run
Audacity, which is the one editing programme I am familiar with, and it
is having all these problems getting audio using either the EZCap or
the Hauppauge, I think I will abandon this approach. I have other
things to fix, such as no audio when playing a video clip in Firefox, so
this one I will lay aside.

Thought 2. The old Desktop, which is now used for Zoneminder in a
different room, used to run Audacity, AND it has a real soundcard.
Using it would mean moving the (quite large) cassette player down
there, and finding somewhere to put it, but it is likely to work. I
will be loading Audacity back onto it later this morning.

Thought 3. I have an old HP/Compaq laptop, which just sits keeping cardboard boxes anchored to the floor, so I might just try that in the same
way that I was trying to get this laptop to work, with the dongles.
Since it has no other duties, I can do whatever I like with it, without
worrying about messing anything up.

I appreciate all the help so far, and have learned a lot, but I am
making little useful progress towards my original goal, and it might
be an impossible task anyway.

I will report progress.
--
Davey.