ALEVT-CAP(1)

📦
version 1.8.3 · 5 versions
, in ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

✨ ALEVT-CAP(1) — Teletext capture 📺✨

💖 NAME

alevt-cap — simple capture of teletext pages 🌸

🎀 SYNOPSIS

alevt-cap [options] ppp[.ss] ...

🦋 DESCRIPTION

okay so alevt-cap is a simple little program that captures teletext pages and saves them to disk 💾 you just hand it a list of pages to grab and it saves them for you 🫶 nothing fancy like time-outs, page ranges, or channel name detection is supported, bestie 💅 but it does support different file formats, which is giving variety ✨ at the moment that's ascii, ansi (ascii with color escape sequences), html, png, and ppm 🌈

👑 OPTIONS

ngl here's a summary of all the options 🍓

  • -name filename — tells it the filename the pages should be saved under 🎀 it can have a couple of %-sequences (see below) (default: ttext-%s.%e)
  • -format format-specifier — sets the file format used to save pages (see below) (default: ascii) 💜
  • -format list|help — lists every known file format and their options 📜
  • -vbi device — uses the device name you give it 🔥 default: /dev/vbi, /dev/vbi0, /dev/video0, /dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0 get tried in this order 🧚
  • -finetune -4..4|auto — sets the fine tuning for the decoder ✨ for the right value, play with alevt 🙈 (default: 1)
  • -timeout seconds — if the pages can't be captured in seconds, the program terminates with exit status 1 after saving the pages it already got 💀 the default is to wait forever 🥹
  • -charset latin-1|latin-2|koi8-r|iso8859-7 — picks the character set to use 🌷 characters that aren't in the selected set get swapped for similar looking symbols (default: latin-1)
  • -progname name — specifies the program name when using the DVB interface 📡
  • -pid pid — specifies the teletext PID when using the DVB interface 🛰️
  • --help — shows a summary of options 🫧
  • --version — shows the version of the program 🏷️

every non-option argument is taken as a page number 🎯 you can give subpages in the form ppp.ss, where ppp is the page number and ss is the subpage number 💖 if you don't specify a subpage, you get the first transmitted subpage of that page 🥰 the page gets saved with the format and name you gave before 💅

🌸 Filenames

the filename can have %-sequences, and these are the ones that exist:

  • %% — a single % sign 💅
  • %e — the default extension of the selected output format 🎀
  • %p — the page number and an optional subpage number 🦋
  • %P — the page number 🌈
  • %S — the subpage number ✨
  • %s — the page number as you typed it on the command line 🫶

between the % sign and the letter you can add a field width, and the replacement string gets padded to that width 💖

💜 Format specifiers

the output format and its options come from the format specifier 🧚 it's made up of one or more comma-separated words 🌷 the first word picks the output format and the rest are options for that format 🎀 there are common options that work for every output format, and format-specific (private) ones too 🦋 some options look like assignments 💅 the order of options is totally free, but the format name has to be the very first word 👑 an example:

ansi,reveal,bg=none

here ansi is the format, and reveal and bg=none are options 🍓

right now there are only two common options: reveal and hide 🫧 they control whether the hidden characters on a page get shown in the output or not 🙈 the default is hide 💀

the special format string list (or help) gives you a list of all supported output formats and their options 📜

(the ansi format is an alias for ascii,color 🌈)

the -progname or -pid option specifies the program or teletext PID when you're using the DVB interface 📡

if you use neither of those options, alevt outputs info about the currently accessible streams and uses the first of those PIDs as the default 🛰️ this output has the PIDs and names you can feed into -progname or -pid, in the context of the TV channel you've currently got tuned 📺

🚨 DIAGNOSTICS

if the program timed out and some pages are missing, the exit status is 1 😭 on fatal errors, the exit status is 2 💀

📝 NOTE

before you start this program, you have to set the TV channel with another program, like xawtv or set-tv 📺🫶

📁 FILES

  • /dev/vbi*
  • /dev/dvb/adapter*/demux*

🔗 SEE ALSO

alevt(1x), alevt-date(1) 🌸

🐛 BUGS

⚠️ if you give a page number that's never transmitted, the program will not terminate, so keep an eye on that one 😭

bug reports go to <https://gitlab.com/alevt/alevt> 💌

Source: ALEVT-CAP(1) manual page, LINUX 1.8.3 🌈 bestie, you're officially a teletext capture expert now 👑💖 periodt ✨

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