[Wish] Kill Switch for Recording Duration

[metacynicv2]

As a human, I err, and sometimes forget to change the record duration before capture, or set it incorrectly. Would vrecord benefit from a hotkey that resets the timed duration during capture?

Something like: 'ctrl + nm' with a cowsay that says "your capture is no longer timed, don't forget to turn off your capture" or some such. 😇

[privatezero]

Not sure this would be possible as once the record command is kicked off via FFmpeg the timed duration value is an integrated part of that command and could only be changed by kicking off an entirely new FFmpeg command. Once record mode kicks off, you are pretty much strapped in to your destiny.

It would be possible to have it scream at you for confirmation every time you try to start a capture with a record duration set, but that might be kinda annoying in its own way. Thoughts?

[dericed]

Ya, we'd have to switch from using -t $DURATION to running another process that sleeps for that long, then kills the ffmpeg process. It would lose accuracy but there would be a way to be if the DURATION is up and the user didn't activate the nm option.

[metacynicv2]

Interesting. If there isn't wide user support for such a feature, I do think it would help to have a screamer for confirmation. To avoid annoying some users, perhaps the screamer could be a setting that could be turned off or on?

[iamdamosuzuki]

I use vrecord almost every day and rarely ever use this feature. It's mostly helpful for testing purposes, but is rarely useful in my digitization workflow.

[dericed]

@iamdamosuzuki, how do you know when to end the capture? Is it a judgement call each time or anything that some analysis could decipher?

[iamdamosuzuki]

@dericed It really depends on the tape and the format. It's a huge pain for us to stitch together a transfer that ends early, and very simply for us to trim a capture that's too long. So we usually just let a tape run for a whlie once it cuts to static or black if it does so early. maybe like 30 seconds of static or black would be a good auto-stopping point. If the formats are heartier (like VHS and Beta) I'll shuttle the tapes to see when the content ends (or ff in our cleaners, eject, test for content at the tail, then rw in the cleaner).

I don't set the timer because even if I know how long the content on a tape is there's always a chance that I'll have a head clog or some sort of error that necessitates me rewinding and recapturing a bit, in which the time would stop my transfer early. sigh.

I can imagine situations in which the timer would be useful but it's really not in our case.