I've gone this route. The red and white is audio, where red is the right channel (channel 2) and white is left (channel 1). And Yellow is the video. The main hurdle for an analog capture card is setting the "channel" that the VCR is broadcasting on the coax cable (normally 3 or 4).

For Channel 3:

# v4l2-ctl -f 61.25

Or some other option, not seeing that one in modern versions of the v4l stuff. It might be the older v4l-utils pre 2 that has that option(?v4lctl?). You can also set it in things like xawtv and such. Just annoying to use those old gui's on modern flavors. To capture that old tech, I generally display it on screen with mpv / mplayer and screen capture it. That way it can be de-interlaced and prettied up. Plus an alternate audio in since cd-audio cables aren't exactly an option on modern things.

>>I've gone this route. The red and white is audio, where red is the right channel (channel 2) and white is left (channel 1). And Yellow is the video. The main hurdle for an analog capture card is setting the "channel" that the VCR is broadcasting on the coax cable (normally 3 or 4).

These comments don't make sense together. You only need one interface. If your VCR or camcorder has a yellow composite video cable you would use that instead of the RF coax input. It wouldn't then matter which channel the VCR was broadcasting as you are using a direct composite video connection.

>>>With all due respect, that is not a "DVR server".

The OP never explained what type of "DVR server" you can build with a camcorder. A DVR is usually built with a cable or satellite box as front end to provide programming where the DVR digitally records shows for later viewing. If someone had a camcorder and a bunch of tapes with vacation or family videos and just wants to archive them on a computer they could just use utilities such as dd to transfer the videos. Then they could use any player such as vlc or Kodi to view the video collection later.

>>>Can you also confirm that the card will default to the analogue in and not just output noise to /dev/video0?

First of all if it's an analogue card such as a PVR-250 all of the inputs will be analogue. However you may have RF/coax input, composite input and possibly S-Video input.

I can't confirm what the default will be. It is safer to set the input yourself in one line with v4l2 utils.

$ v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 --set-input=2
Video input set to 2 (Composite 1: ok)

You can get the inputs for your card with:

v4l2-ctl --list-inputs

$ v4l2-ctl --help-io

Input/Output options:
-I, --get-input query the video input [VIDIOC_G_INPUT]
-i, --set-input=<num>
set the video input to <num> [VIDIOC_S_INPUT]
-N, --list-outputs display video outputs [VIDIOC_ENUMOUTPUT]
-n, --list-inputs display video inputs [VIDIOC_ENUMINPUT]
-O, --get-output query the video output [VIDIOC_G_OUTPUT]
-o, --set-output=<num>
set the video output to <num> [VIDIOC_S_OUTPUT]
--set-audio-output=<num>
set the audio output to <num> [VIDIOC_S_AUDOUT]
--get-audio-input query the audio input [VIDIOC_G_AUDIO]
--set-audio-input=<num>
set the audio input to <num> [VIDIOC_S_AUDIO]
--get-audio-output query the audio output [VIDIOC_G_AUDOUT]
--set-audio-output=<num>
set the audio output to <num> [VIDIOC_S_AUDOUT]
--list-audio-outputs
display audio outputs [VIDIOC_ENUMAUDOUT]
--list-audio-inputs

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