Plextor ConvertX PX-M402U

Plextor ConvertX PX-M402U USB 2.0 Real-Time Digital Video Converter. Converts to DivX®, MPEG-4, MPEG-1 and 2.

• Real-time hardware and MPEG-1/2/4 digital video converter
• Fast digital video conversion and lower CPU usage with hardware encoder
• Easy-to-use personal or VCD video creation software
• Official DivX Certified product
• Save hard disk space with DivX and MPEG-4

The ConvertX PX-M402U is an external USB 2.0 capture device that can encode external analog inputs to MPEG2/DivX in realtime. It has a full Linux SDK which has an open license. While the firmware is included with the SDK, this firmware does not have an open license.

There is a similar model, the Plextor ConvertX PVR PX-TV402U, that includes a tv tuner.

Not at this time.

driver and system recognition

The device was recognized in Mythubuntu immediately upon connection. The output of lsusb shows the device as:

Plextor Corp. ConvertX M402U A/V Capture

testing video input

Any video player shows video from a connected source by simply opening the file

/dev/video0

If your device is on video0, it may be on video1 or another if you have other capture devices.

testing audio input

The audio device is going to have a name like: "hw:3,0" It will likely be a second audio device since the first is the system soundcard.

• hw:0,0 - The system sound device / ALSA device
• hw:3,0 - Audio from Plextor ConvertX

Finding the ConvertX, type:

cat /proc/asound/cards

Output Example:

0 [SB             ]: HDA-Intel - HDA ATI SB
                     HDA ATI SB at 0xfe5f4000 irq 16
1 [HDMI           ]: HDA-Intel - HDA ATI HDMI
                     HDA ATI HDMI at 0xfe7e8000 irq 19
2 [pcsp           ]: PC-Speaker - pcsp
                     Internal PC-Speaker at port 0x61
3 [PXM402         ]: go7007 - Plextor PX-M402
                     Plextor PX-M402

ref: http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Asoundrc

Testing with VLC (Video LAN Player)

Verified working audio and video using VLC Player 2.1.4

Assuming your capture device is /dev/video0 and ALSA ID is hw:3,0 then do the following:

1. Open VLC
2. On the menubar: Media -> Open Capture Device (or press CNTL-C)
3. In this Open Media dialog click the "Capture Device" tab.
4. Use these settings:
   1. Capture mode: Video Camera
   2. Device Selection
      1. Video device name: /dev/video0
      2. Audio device name: hw:3,0
5. Click the Play button at the bottom of the dialog

This is creating the playlist v4l2:///dev/video0

v4l2 is Video4Linux version 2 video capture framework for linux. Video4Linux2 drivers have to setup supporting ICs to do audio/video muxing/encoding/decoding.

To open the capture device with video and audio from the command line:

vlc v4l2:///dev/video0 :input-slave="alsa://hw:3,0" 

Test with VLC playing video from a connected composite DVD player. VLC reports the following:

Video

• Codec: MPEG-4 Video (mp4v)
• Resolution: 720x480
• Frames: 29.97
• Decode: Planar 4:2:0 YUV

Audio

• Codec: PCM S16 LE(s16l)
• Channels: Stereo
• Sample rate: 48000 Hz 16 bit

Sometimes the USB port goes KaBlam

While testing you might find the USB port stops. If you do this:

cat /dev/video0

and you get nothing, knowing that your video source is connected and active, you might need to unplug the USB cable and plug it back in again after a few seconds to reset the port.

If reaching behind the computer to unplug the USB cable is bothersome you can try this snazzy little C program to reset the USB port:

• usbreset.c - specify the BUS and DEVICE number to reset the USB port.

Note: as an alternative to /dev/video0 (which you don't want to try from a remote shell) you can strip the non-ascii characters for a safer test of the device.

tr -cd '\11\12\15\40-\176' < /dev/video0

Adding to MythTV back-end configuration

• Hauppauge USB Live-2
• Plextor ConvertX PX-M402U
• Hauppauge 1196 WinTV-HVR-1250
• Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2255 Dual Tuner