resetting bbtv card v4l2

Greetings,

I would like to capture video w/o having to reset the card(s) with
awtv,tvtime, etc.,etc.
through X.

It can be done with mencoder so I am assuming there must be some 'trick' to
doing
it with transcoder. As claimed by a student over here the mencoder command
looks
like this:

mencoder -ffourcc XVID -oac lavc -ovc lavc -lavcopts
vcodec=mpeg4:mv0:trell:v4mv:vbitrate=3000:ildct:aspect=16/9:acodec=mp2
-tv driver=v4l2:norm=ntsc:input=2:adevice=/dev/dsp:width=720:height=480
-o /videos/test.avi tv://

Here is a command I have been using for quite a while which captures
perfectly the
way I want but still requires starting x, running tvtime (for example), then
closing x:

( $TSCODE -x v4l2,null \
        -M 2 \
        -i /dev/video0 \
        -f 30,5 \
        -y ffmpeg,null \
        -R 0 \
        -F mpeg4 \
        -c 0-$LENGTH \
        -g 640x480 \
        -u 100 \
        -Q 3\
        -w 1500  \
        --export_fps 15 \
        -J
text=pos=$(($XPOS))x$(($YPOS)):points=12:notransparent:font='/usr/share/f
onts/truetype/freefont/FreeSans.ttf',\
fps=30:15:pre   \
        -o "$VIDEOLOCATION/video.avi"  \
        -I 5 \
        --progress_meter 0 \
        > /dev/null 2> ~/"Cam0error_log.txt" \
        ) &



thanks to any/all in advance for suggestions and help.

Ted