Record From Cable To Computer Using OBS Studio

This report involves using an “EasyCAP Composite / S-Video and Audio USB Capture Device” to copy movies recorded on a cable box DVR to my computer. I’ll be using "OBS Studio" to capture the video from my cable box to my hard drive.

I decided to update my cable system to help bring the cable bill down. One of the reasons my bill is high I’m told is because I have an older setup. So out with the old and in with the new. But I have a few movies recorded that I like to save. That’s why I dug out this relic and will be attempting to rescue my recordings.

Right out of the gate I had a driver issue. I hooked EasyCAP up to my CyberPowerPC and it wouldn’t accept the drivers. I received this error message:

“The software for this device has been blocked from starting because it is known to have problems with Windows. Contact the hardware vendor for a new driver. (Code 48)”.

I found some updated drivers online. I’ve uploaded a copy if you need them. Uninstall the non-working ones first.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cEkJIhsUI6wNHl8TgwVer4erRK5mdNBo/view?usp=sharing

Download, unzip, right-click on the “SmiUsbGrabber3C.inf” file, and click on “Install”.

It displays in the “Sound, video and game controllers” as “SMI Grabber Device” in “Device Manager”.

If you get this “Security Warning” click on “Open” and allow any other prompts. Then restart your system.

Once you have the drivers installed. If you haven’t done it already, plug in EasyCAP to your computer. Plug in the wires from your cable box to EasyCAP. The Red, White (audio) and Yellow (video) ones in my case. I’m going to invest in a newer model.

The software this time will be “OBS Studio”.

Download OBS Studio from https://obsproject.com/

To set up OBS.

Click on the “Add Source” button ...

... and then click on “Video Capture Device”.

In the “Create New” field I typed “EasyCAP”. Then I clicked OK.

This opened another window with EasyCAP already listed in the “device” field as “SMI Grabber Device”. If you are more familiar with the software you can play around with the settings. I just accepted the defaults and clicked OK.

I can now click on the edges of the video and drag to resize it to fill out the black video area.

By right clicking on the video and clicking on “Windowed Projector (Preview)” I can get a smaller preview window to open.

Right click on the preview window and click “Always On Top”.

Keep in mind I don’t have a clue what I’m doing here. A first time for everything. :-)

Down in the “Audio Mixer” box you might want to mute any unwanted audio like from your Mic or Desktop sounds. The bells and whistles of Windows.

Now click on the “Start Recording” button. It also becomes the “Stop Recording” when you do. Click “Stop Recording” when finished.

When you stop the recording it automatically saves the file in your User/Video folder. If you haven’t changed the video format in the settings it saves in the .MKV format.

My 2 minute test run video was only 47MB in size. My same 2 minute video through VLC was over 700MB.

Anyway that’s the basics with EasyCAP and OBS. I will be investing in a better video capture device in the future but for now.