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Another VHS-to-DVD thread (using eyetv and toast)

O

OrganMusic

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 21, 2008
292
1
Chicago
I've searched all over the internet and can't seem to find anything recent that helps me...

I can make DVD from VHS ok with eyetv and toast, but with no menu or chapters.

All I want to do is chop a bit from the beginning and end and add chapter markers. Is it really necessary to export to imovie then back to idvd etc? I'd prefer to keep transcoding to a minimum, which one would think is possible with so little editing.

Should I be using different software?

I have the following:

MBP 15" 2.4 ghz and 24" imac 2.8 ghz
Eyetv 250
Eyetv 3 software
Toast 7 basic (included with eyetv)
Toast 9 titanium (christmas present)
iMovie HD
iMovie 08
iDVD
thinking of getting FCE (but I might be talked out of it)
Canon ZR-xxx DV camcorder (no passthrough, but works great with iMovie)

This was all perfectly easy with Pinnacle Studio 10 and a cheap ATI video input card on my PC. As a new mac convert I'm not impressed yet.

Thanks, all.
 
Sorry I should have pointed out eyetv250 plus as being a video input device.

The eyetv encodes into Mpeg2 before sending the video in through usb. So the main question is how to do just a tiny bit of editing - trimming the start and end AND adding chapter markers without having to transcode into imovie then back to idvd. The goal being to not spend too much time waiting on transcoding and losing quality each time.

I've got a good number of VHS-C tapes of my Sister-in-law's kids to make into DVDs. Ahh, VHS-C at EP speed, what a wonderful format.
 
Sorry, I've never needed to use one of these things, I can just use my tape deck or DVD/VHS player to convert to DVD.:D

Not to be harsh or mean but I think you may of misunderstood an Apple sales person or websites because iDVD is for authoring DVDs NOT editing, hence the DVD part of iDVD. If you could edit in iDVD then there would be no need for iMovie, which is meant for doing the editing of your movies. You still need to go to iDVD to burn anyways. You need to do your editing in iMovie then save. You need to open up iDVD and make your menus for you DVD. Once you are done you can select movie that you want to put on your DVD and drag it into the DVD menu where you want it. Keep the movie selected and click Advance>Create Chapter Markers for Movie. You can select the time that you want to be in between each chapter and BOOM, you have chapters. Going from iMovie to iDVD isn't very hard and doesn't take much time at all. Pinnacle Studio is a piece of software that isn't free with a PC, and iMovie and iDVD are free with a Mac. So if you want something that is a lot better than Pinnacle and iMovie then you can take a look at Final Cut Express and Final Cut Studio. But I think iMovie and iDVD are great free applications.
 
FCP.guru.guy said:
Keep the movie selected and click Advance>Create Chapter Markers for Movie.
Click to expand...

I should have said that the eyetv software seems to be able to handle trimming the ends of the file, so adding the chapter markers is the main thing I was looking for. I hate to transcode a recording twice just to add chapters.

So if I drop a 2-hour MPEG file into iDVD I can select points to have chapters start, or do I have to do those in imovie?

Of course I hate the pre-made menus in iDVD but that's a separate issue.
 
Ha ha, I hate 'em too. And actually you can't make chapter markers in iMovie anymore because in the release of iLife '08 you can no longer add chapter markers in iMovie, but you can in iDVD. The problem with adding them in iDVD is that you can't add them at a specific point, only every x-amount of minutes. To do this click Advanced at the top of the screen (in iDVD), then go down to Create Chapter Markers for Movie. This option will be grayed out if you don't have the movie selected and in your menu. The first picture shows this operation. So now, iMovie is an unnecessary step!
 

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Well chapters every x minutes is better than no chapters; It'll have to do for now. Thanks for your help.

I was hoping Toast could handle this but I don't think it can do better than chapters every x minutes either.

I immediately dismissed iMovie08 as TOTALLY useless; HD 06 on the other hand is almost as good as the Pinnacle I had in windows (with fewer bugs too!)
 
Well I did manage to get the cheesy editor in eyetv (which is exactly the same as the one in toast) to do what I needed.

(Pay attention now, other people looking to copy home movies to DVD with eyeTV and Toast: ):)

Here's how I did it; this preserves the original eyetv hardware MPEG2 encoding all the way through to the DVD burning:

In the eyeTV editor: (and do update to the latest 3.0.4 version)
  • Assign the markers to eliminate any garbage at the beginning and ends of the file, or anything else you want to eliminate. Footage between the vertical side of the triangles is deleted.
  • If you want to not have a chapter start on your edits, click "Compress" under the menu on the bottom right. Then click "remove all markers"
  • Assign a pair of edit markers touching each other where you want a chapter to start (the default action when you click the marker button)
  • When finished editing, leave the playhead on the frame you want to use as the thumbnail in the main DVD menu

in toast: (I have toast 9 platinum)
  • Drag the files from the eyetv program browser into toast and arrange in the order you want them to play.
  • Adjust the menu settings as you see fit
  • I selected "Never" under the reencoding option under the encoding tab in the disc options menu. I don't know if this is needed, but it seemed like a good option since the eyetv records in MPEG2.
  • I found it helpful to burn an image first so I could make sure the menus came out right before making discs.

The "compress" function on the editor only takes a few seconds even on videos over an hour long, and preparing the image takes only a few minutes instead of hours of reencoding.

If you need to split one video into two, make a copy of it in finder and drag it back into the eyetv program library. Chop the end off one and the beginning off the other.

I copied 4 DVDs worth of VHS-C tapes in about 1.5 days, including figuring out all this stuff. Not as fast as with a stand-alone recorder, but with a better result. Also much faster than dealing with iMovie etc.
 
OrganMusic said:
In the eyeTV editor: (and do update to the latest 3.0.4 version)
  • Assign the markers to eliminate any garbage at the beginning and ends of the file, or anything else you want to eliminate. Footage between the vertical side of the triangles is deleted.
  • If you want to not have a chapter start on your edits, click "Compress" under the menu on the bottom right. Then click "remove all markers"
  • Assign a pair of edit markers touching each other where you want a chapter to start (the default action when you click the marker button)
  • When finished editing, leave the playhead on the frame you want to use as the thumbnail in the main DVD menu
Click to expand...

This is JUST what I was looking for. I have done a few DVDs and this is working wonderfully. I need to upgrade Toast so I can have a few more features there.

One question I have for you on this. I am currently going through and trimming the front and end of the whole video and doing a compress. Then I go through and put my chapter markers in where ever there is a change in the action. Then I send to Toast. What I'm finding is that I usually have a couple of bad transitions where I'd really prefer to edit out some material where the chapter marker will go. At that point, I usually already have a bunch of chapter markers and don't want to remove them so I can do a compress and start over. Then I got to wondering... can I put my trim markers and my chapter markers all in... then do a compress... and then send to Toast? I am working with 2 hour videos so I didn't want to take a chance on wiping out all my chapter markers to test it out.

Also, is there a way in Toast to create a menu that shows a thumbnail for each chapter? I am new to Toast so didn't know if that was possible. I'm suspecting I have to break things up into multiple clips to do that and I don't want it bad enough to do that.
 
I can't remember for sure, but I think your edit markers are still there after you do a compress, so you really only have to compress right before you go to burn. If you want to cut something out but not have it leave a chapter marker at the edit, I think you'll want to do that first because I think the only way to get rid of edit markers is to do a "remove all markers"

I wouldn't necessarily worry about upgrading toast; the DVD menu authoring even in the latest version is really pretty limited. You'll get a title thumbnail for each separate file you drag into toast, and a submenu with chapter thumbnails with no captions. I haven't found a way to set what these thumbnails are, you just get the first frame by default.

The main benefit to this method is that it's really quick - with no re-encoding it takes only a few minutes to prepare a DVD image which has the additional benefit of no loss in quality from recompresion.
 
OrganMusic said:
the only way to get rid of edit markers is to do a "remove all markers"
Click to expand...
Try clicking either triangle for the marker, and then press Delete (the backspace key, usually above the backslash, not the "Del" on some keyboards).
 
Thanks

Hey Organmusic
Thanks for the enlightening tutorial on using eye-tv and toast. Works like a charm. It's really quick and imho is better quality than converting to DV for import into iMovie then burn with iDVD.
Thanks again
Dave
 
VHS to DVD

P.S.
Just another thought. I have some legally bought and owned commercial VHS movies so I'm not advocating piracy. I tried the eye TV-Toast thing and they copied perfectly but when I tried a Camera D/A converter it refused due to copy protection.
Just thought you would like to know this. :D

Dave
 
gkarris said:
^^^^

Depends on the length of the clip/captures. The longer the captures, the more out-of-sync the audio/video...
Click to expand...

2+ hour captures here and not had a problem of out of sync audio/video. If it doesn't get out of sync when you watch it, then why would it get out of sync when you copy it?
 
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