Can npvr do some very basic functions?

[scott1256ca]

I want to try to convert some video tape to dvd on my mothers computer.
Therefore, I'm not tuning channels and don't care about the program listing.
What I'd LIKE to do is start a recording, and enter a duration, at which point npvr would stop. Can NPVR do this? I sure can't find a way.
Do I have to set up some kind of xml channel info for this? I'd rather avoid it, if possible.
Some of the tapes are probably the 6 hr duration, and I'd rather just assume this and edit out the junk later, rather than just record for the show plus 89min post capture (which is the limit, I think) and then start again.
When channels are listed with no details it doesn't seem to want to record at all.


Notes:
I can use it to watch (or pause) live tv from the svideo input.
Therefore I know it can capture the mpegII stream from the card which is a diamond xtreme pvr 550. That has onboard mpegII encoder. The card came with beyondtv, which I can't stand, mostly because it doesn't work very well. So I decided to try npvr.
While I could hack an xmltv listing, I was hoping the process would be simple enough for my mother to handle, and that is beyond her, and I'm not going to visit her every day just to record a tape.
While I can do what I mention above with beyondtv, it WILL NOT show live tv. I don't know why. Probably a directshow issue. That makes it very difficult to queue up a recording to the correct spot. Plus beyondtv limits live recordings to 60 minutes unless you use the web interface ... did I mention I wanted simple?

Other things which people often want to know:
NPVR 2.0.3
XP SP3 up to date.
nvidia graphics card (6600 I think, not there right now).

Thanks in advance.

[Sheik Yerbouti]

Welcome to the forum scott1256ca! You could do a manual recording. Go to the recordings screen and move your mouse to the hidden buttons on top op the screen. You'll find the Man-Rec button. No need for xml channel info, but of course you'll need to set up the channels you want to record. I hope this helps you out.

Chris

[Reddwarf]

Welcome to the forum scott1256ca! You could do a manual recording. Go to the recordings screen and move your mouse to the hidden buttons on top op the screen. You'll find the Man-Rec button. No need for xml channel info, but of course you'll need to set up the channels you want to record. I hope this helps you out.

Chris

I'v been thinking a bit about this, the trick would be to start the VHS-playback just after npvr starts recording, and make sure the recording duration is slightly more that the tape duration.

[scott1256ca]

Thanks, I think that will do what I want