Have you tried Ralph's advice?

(in a terminal):

• Switch to the root user (which means su -; enter the root password, not sudo)

• lsusb will show all connected usb devices

• enable write access for the other user on the EasyCap device: chmod o+w /dev/bus/usb/001/015

• Without rebooting, try qv4l2 & see if now it will allow you to see your vhs screen in the window.

I very much want to work with you to get my script to work with other devices (such as yours) & get a good result to allow folks to stream it to disc.

In this case root is the user and root is the group, with read and write access, while all other users or groups only have read acccess. In other words, you only have read access (unless you are running this as root or your user is in root group)

Quite possibly the lack of write access to the USB device has been the cause here.

You change that, but only as root, and in this case you could use the command

# chmod o+w /dev/bus/usb/001/015

to add write access to other.

That is a root.root user.group & you will need to use sudo if you wish it to be changed.

@hunter0one, did you verify read-write access to the USB device node concerned?

Yes, I'm sorry I didn't mention I tried that after the first time you asked:

crw-rw-r-- 1 root root 189, 14 Sep 12 19:40 /dev/bus/usb/001/015

I still don't understand how to tell what the sequence of "bits" means what in *nix (besides r is read and w is write) but it seems read-write access is allowed.

To be on the safe side I ran chmod +rw /dev/bus/usb/001/015 and it results in the same sequence:

crw-rw-r-- 1 root root 189, 14 Sep 12 19:40 /dev/bus/usb/001/015

Obviously you have read access but you do need write access right as well. Use e.g. lsusb to figure out which "bus id" it has, en then chech that /dev/bus/usb/xxx/yyy.

Check your ID is in the video group. id should tell you. Post output from it if not sure.

uid=1000(hunter) gid=1000(hunter) groups=1000(hunter),24(cdrom),25(floppy),27(sudo),29(audio),30(dip),44(video),46(plugdev),105(netdev),113(lpadmin),121(scanner)

It does appear that I am.

I have tried every combination that qv4l2 would let me to no avail. The wires don't appear broken. This adapter never really got used before so its almost like brand new, because about a year ago is when I first received it and gave it a try and it wouldn't even appear as a device in Linux. I never got around to checking out why but most likely I was missing the module. Now that I have the time to try it again, it appears in dmesg and generates video devices but unfortunately it seems to be a paperweight.

hunter@ryzen-rig:~$ ls -l /dev/video*
crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81, 0 Sep 12 08:34 /dev/video0
crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81, 1 Sep 12 08:34 /dev/video1

Check your ID is in the video group. id should tell you. Post output from it if not sure.

For some reason the capture image format and image size can't be changed in QV4L2

That is academic. ffmpeg is near miraculous; it will change a video from any format to any other format. My script has the wrong fps AND pixel dimensions for your supply (the script is using "-s 720x576 -r 25" which was correct for my VHS signal, but not yours) but ffmpeg would happily make that change.

The issue for you is hardware & region (as best as I can tell).

v4l2-ctl --all is giving a full, error-free readout of the input video device.
arecord -l is accurately recording the audio hardware as 'hw:2,0' ("card: 2, subdevice: 0")

Only region remains (for me, the picture only appeared in the V4L2 screen when I changed the region from the default NTSC to PAL; ymmv).

If you cannot find a combo that works then the answer may be that zero signal is arriving at the input. Do you have a broken wire?

Try all the various options with the V4L2 utility. It took me a while to find the correct mix before I got the video to appear. However, if you cannot get it to appear then throw the hardware in the bin & try something else.

Good luck.

PS
From the v4l2-ctl --all output, the fps in the script should be switched from 25 to 30. However, do not touch anything until you get V4L2 to work. Only if it will work there will the script work (using the same setup options).

13 Sep update: made clear re: fps I was referring to the script, not V4L2.

What are the results of v4l2-ctl --all + arecord -l or arecord -L or cat /proc/asound/cards?

This is v4l2-ctl --all:

Driver Info:
	Driver name      : uvcvideo
	Card type        : AV TO USB2.0
	Bus info         : usb-0000:01:00.0-6
	Driver version   : 6.5.2
	Capabilities     : 0x84a00001
		Video Capture
		Metadata Capture
		Streaming
		Extended Pix Format
		Device Capabilities
	Device Caps      : 0x04200001
		Video Capture
		Streaming
		Extended Pix Format
Media Driver Info:
	Driver name      : uvcvideo
	Model            : AV TO USB2.0
	Serial           : 20150130
	Bus info         : usb-0000:01:00.0-6
	Media version    : 6.5.2
	Hardware revision: 0x00000121 (289)
	Driver version   : 6.5.2
Interface Info:
	ID               : 0x03000002
	Type             : V4L Video
Entity Info:
	ID               : 0x00000001 (1)
	Name             : AV TO USB2.0
	Function         : V4L2 I/O
	Flags            : default
	Pad 0x01000007   : 0: Sink
	  Link 0x0200000d: from remote pad 0x100000a of entity 'Processing 2' (Video Pixel Formatter): Data, Enabled, Immutable
Priority: 2
Video input : 0 (Camera 1: ok)
Format Video Capture:
	Width/Height      : 640/480
	Pixel Format      : 'MJPG' (Motion-JPEG)
	Field             : None
	Bytes per Line    : 0
	Size Image        : 614400
	Colorspace        : sRGB
	Transfer Function : Rec. 709
	YCbCr/HSV Encoding: ITU-R 601
	Quantization      : Default (maps to Full Range)
	Flags             : 
Crop Capability Video Capture:
	Bounds      : Left 0, Top 0, Width 640, Height 480
	Default     : Left 0, Top 0, Width 640, Height 480
	Pixel Aspect: 1/1
Selection Video Capture: crop_default, Left 0, Top 0, Width 640, Height 480, Flags: 
Selection Video Capture: crop_bounds, Left 0, Top 0, Width 640, Height 480, Flags: 
Streaming Parameters Video Capture:
	Capabilities     : timeperframe
	Frames per second: 30.000 (30/1)
	Read buffers     : 0

And arecord -l:

**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 1: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 0: ALC887-VD Analog [ALC887-VD Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 2: ALC887-VD Alt Analog [ALC887-VD Alt Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: MS210x [MS210x], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

I tried to run ffmpeg with sudo but get the same exact /dev/video0: Input/output error. When I try /dev/video1 it results in not a video capture device

After issuing chmod a+r to video0 & video1 they both still give the same respective errors.

I used your revised script but it still gives the same output for both video0 and video1, albeit with the deprecated warning gone.