Sorry for the long wait, but I tried all of your suggestions as well as ones from other forums and unfortunately I've concluded that this EasyCap was a dud. I had already spend so much time on this one I'm embarrassed to admit that I bought a "UCEC" capture card that looks nearly identical (with a number of Linux users who gave good reviews) and it works like a charm. It even uses the same module (uvcvideo) too.

ffmpegthumbnailer is what I have installed and get thumbnails in Caja.

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

For some reason the capture image format and image size can't be changed in QV4L2, when I select another option for the first time it changes to the default and won't let the option be picked again. For the format it is MJPG and the image size is 640x480 like v4l2-ctl shows. I've went on and tried as many options as I could as both root and regular user but still get a black screen. This is unfortunate.

I already told you that the error was the same input/output message that I get from ffmpeg by itself. I also said options like AUDIO_DEVICE did not work. Here's an example of what I had originally tried:

hunter@ryzen-rig:~$ encode_stream OUTPUT_NAME=test VIDEO_DEVICE=/dev/video0 AUDIO_DEVICE=hw:2,0 REGION=NTSC
-vsync is deprecated. Use -fps_mode
Passing a number to -vsync is deprecated, use a string argument as described in the manual.
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x56175e071200] Cannot open video device AUDIO_DEVICE=hw:2,0: No such file or directory
AUDIO_DEVICE=hw:2,0: No such file or directory

When I try to do it with just the OUTPUT_NAME and REGION since all the defaults are correct except for the region:

hunter@ryzen-rig:~$ encode_stream OUTPUT_NAME=test REGION=NTSC
-vsync is deprecated. Use -fps_mode
Passing a number to -vsync is deprecated, use a string argument as described in the manual.
/dev/video0: Input/output error

An input/output error seems to be the biggest one I get across the board. What would cause it?

And there was no I/O error?

I got v4l2-utils to list the devices as well but I haven't gotten the uvccapture package. I tried ffmpeg directly but got the same input/output error.

This leads to a 404.

Thanks. I tried your script but some of the options like AUDIO_DEVICE and REGION did not work, and I got an input/output error when given just the device and output file.

EDIT: Also tried uvccapture, but it doesn't work either. I looked at the man page and it only creates jpeg's.
EDIT #2: For those curious, trying to play /dev/video1 gives "Inappropriate ioctl for device". I cannot seem to select /dev/video1 in a program like OBS.

libpam-ck-connector is for Consolekit2 to communicate with PAM. Consolekit2 is a more Unix respecting alternative to elogind and seatd is used alongside it to cover Wayland sessions.

Hi again Iggy64. I know more about PCLOS than AntiX, though I've tried both because they make this list. They are both great fully systemd-free options, though I will say PCLOS is definitely not server oriented (also has a problem with dependency hell) and both add quite a lot of "bling" when I enjoy having most things shipped plain and vanilla. This is the main reason I've stuck with Devuan despite elogind being needed still if you want some convenience (things like automount or a trash can) like me.

Agreed. PCLOS uses consolekit2 in place of elogind so that KDE, MATE, and Xfce work as intended but it sometimes requires heavy patches. For operating systems like FreeBSD, this is their only option when seat management is needed, but FBSD has far more port maintainers willing to make it happen. I can't blame the Devuan maintainers for not going any further than they have already, it takes baby steps with the kind of manpower they have. I unfortunately have no clue how to do Debian packaging, despite using Debian-based distros almost my entire time on Linux, or I would investigate making drop-in packages for elogind-dependent ones. :-)

Alternatively things like turnstile might make patching unnecessary in the future.

I have the same issue with the offline *desktop* iso, since I have to set up without any way to connect to the internet at first.

Agreed. We need better support for consolekit2 which is in fact still maintained and works well so long as other packages are built with it in mind. We don't have a lot of packages that sit well with it as of now (thinking udisks2/gvfs in particular)..

I also have the same questions so sorry for the little to no help.

- Are there any adverse side effects that might result from this process?
You will not be able to use all of the conventional features in most file managers today because udisks2 isn't without elogind and this leads to gvfs not being installable. Additionally, Network Manager can't be used but most Devuan users are probably just using ifupdown or connman.