TVMini eyeTV to iPod extraction - takes what seems to be ages :-(.

[newbie2macosx]

Hi,

I finally decided to buy a Miglia TVMini after checking the price on this product for many months now and plugged it in late last night to find that it worked straight out of the box which was great.

Several recordings of 'Pimp My Ride', 'Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps' and so on later and I'd like to export some of these to my 5G iPod.

What I'd like to ask is why it takes 1 - 1/2-hours to extract a 30-min program (0.6Gb approximately) of let's say Pimp My Ride to iPod?. Are there settings that are recommended to be tweaked so that the extraction process is quicker?. Cannot think of any other reasons why the extraction process should take so long other than it's a very much CPU intensive process. I'm using a Core Duo MBP 2.16GHz with 1Gb RAM with Mac OS X Tiger installed. Does eyeTV work better on a PowerPC CPU as opposed to an Intel Core Duo CPU?.

Are there any third-party downloads that can extract recordings from TVMini to iPod that can be used instead of eyeTV?.

Thank you.
Kind Regards.

 

[Eidorian]

Mac specs then we'll talk.

 

[mkrishnan]

Are there options with respect to the format it's being recorded in to begin with? It sounds as if it is being recorded in one format (MPEG 2 is really popular with DVRs) and then converted to H.264. If I download an hour-long show from my DVR to my iMac G5 / 2GHz, it takes about 90 minutes to convert it into an iPod format file....

 

[newbie2macosx]

Mac specs then we'll talk.

Hi, Apologies. Forgot to add specs. These have been added now.

Thank you.
Kind Regards.

 

[Eidorian]

Hi, Apologies. Forgot to add specs. These have been added now.

Thank you.
Kind Regards.

Now that is odd on a 2.16 GHz Core Duo. It should be lightning fast since it's being reduced to 5G iPod size.

 

[newbie2macosx]

Are there options with respect to the format it's being recorded in to begin with? It sounds as if it is being recorded in one format (MPEG 2 is really popular with DVRs) and then converted to H.264. If I download an hour-long show from my DVR to my iMac G5 / 2GHz, it takes about 90 minutes to convert it into an iPod format file....

Hi, Thank you for your reply. I believe that there are options with respect to the format it's being recorded in to begin with but i've got to admit that this is all completely new to me. I was going to build a Mini-ITX based PVR however decided to opt for a Miglia TVMini. I'm really impressed with the fact that this product works straight out of the box and is from what I can gather very user-friendly. I am however confused as to what formats are used and would very much like to be able to extract to iPod a little quicker as this is painfully slow. Just played back part of one of the episodes of 'Pimp my ride' and it's brilliant!.

Any suggestions with regards to optimising eteTV for iPod extraction would be appreciated.

Thank you again.

 

[newbie2macosx]

Now that is odd on a 2.16 GHz Core Duo. It should be lightning fast since it's being reduced to 5G iPod size.

Hi, I'd hoped that the extraction would be quicker than this particularly as i've almost had to take out a second mortgage to buy a 2.16GHz Core Duo but thought that there must be settings that need tweaking in order to optimize eyeTV to iPod extraction. I'm still a newbie to Macs so please bear with me if i'm making obvious mistakes. Nothing else is running that should cause things to run so slow therefore I'm a little confused as to what needs to be checked.

iPod extraction is in the following format:

640 x 480px H.264 (default).
There's also a setting for 320 x 240px H.264 (guess that this will result in more blocky video being at half the resolution of the default setting).

The version of eyeTV that i'm using is 2.3.2 (2404).

 

[mkrishnan]

I'm not that familiar with the Miglia.. it uses the EyeTV 2 software, right?

First, make sure you are using the latest Universal Binary version of the software, just in case you somehow ended up with a PPC binary (this will make a huge difference for something like this, I think).

Second, according to this, you might try using MPEG4 instead of H.264 compression...they say it will be much, much faster (although H.264 will be nicer in a given filesize).

 

[newbie2macosx]

I'm not that familiar with the Miglia.. it uses the EyeTV 2 software, right?

First, make sure you are using the latest Universal Binary version of the software, just in case you somehow ended up with a PPC binary (this will make a huge difference for something like this, I think).

Second, according to this, you might try using MPEG4 instead of H.264 compression...they say it will be much, much faster (although H.264 will be nicer in a given filesize).

Hi, Thank you. Much appreciated. Yes, i'm using the eyeTV 2 software (think that I'd downloaded the update last night but am not 100% sure). Shall try to export using MPEG-4 as opposed to the default setting. Was clicking on the iPod export button which gave no options to change export settings :-(. The clicking on Command+E instead allows for the default setting to be changed as per the URL that you'd mentioned (thank you again).

Hopefully the eyeTV to iPod export will work quicker now .

Almost forgot. Another question. In the instance where an update has been downloaded that has the same filename or program name as an original that's already installed in the Applications folder is it alright to rename the original as 'filename original' (or similar) or does the original need to be over-written/deleted?. Not sure about this as a Mac Newbie.

Kind Regards.

 

[Eidorian]

The version of eyeTV that i'm using is 2.3.2 (2404).

I'm not that familiar with the Miglia.. it uses the EyeTV 2 software, right?

First, make sure you are using the latest Universal Binary version of the software, just in case you somehow ended up with a PPC binary (this will make a huge difference for something like this, I think).

Second, according to this, you might try using MPEG4 instead of H.264 compression...they say it will be much, much faster (although H.264 will be nicer in a given filesize).

Yeah it comes with EyeTV 2. I find it odd that it's so slow.

Almost forgot. Another question. In the instance where an update has been downloaded that has the same filename or program name as an original that's already installed in the Applications folder is it alright to rename the original as 'filename original' (or similar) or does the original need to be over-written/deleted?. Not sure about this as a Mac Newbie.

You can simply replace and overwrite it.

 

[newbie2macosx]

Yeah it comes with EyeTV 2. I find it odd that it's so slow.

You can simply replace and overwrite it.

Hi, The version that i'd downloaded is 2.3.2. Just checked that this is a universal binary and thankfully it is. Thought that i'd better post the URL for this:

http://www.elgato.com/index.php?file=support_updates_eyetv2

I'd renamed the original installation as eyeTV original. I've now trashed this. Is this the correct way to removing/uninstall (as opposed to choosing 'replace')?.

Thank you.

 

[gekko513]

Keep in mind that video encoding is perhaps the most processor intensive tasks that normal people will use their computers for. How long it takes usually depends on the compression settings you use. More compression without reducing quality takes a lot longer, but you can sacrifice quality to make it go faster.

I'm not sure if the EyeTV recordings are saved as standalone movie files, I know the live tv-files are not, but if recordings are, you should be able to find the files in Finder and try other encoding software to see if you find anything faster. ffmpegx used to be free and flexible, but a bit hard to use. I haven't used it in a while. Then there's Handbrake, which I think also can reencode video. If you can't find the recordings as single files in the Finder, you could try save/export from EyeTV using the fastest settings possible (big files, little compression, fast encoding), and then export those to iPod format using another program.

 

[mkrishnan]

I'd renamed the original installation as eyeTV original. I've now trashed this. Is this the correct way to removing/uninstall (as opposed to choosing 'replace')?.

I think it should be fine. In the future, the easiest thing to do is to just drag the icon from the disk image to the apps folder and then choose replace in the window that pops up. But I doubt that what you did is inferior in any way.

Do encode a video in MPEG4 and let us know what you observe. This should be very fast on your computer... it should certainly be faster than my experience on my G5.

 

[Eidorian]

Hi, The version that i'd downloaded is 2.3.2. Just checked that this is a universal binary and thankfully it is. Thought that i'd better post the URL for this:

http://www.elgato.com/index.php?file=support_updates_eyetv2

I'd renamed the original installation as eyeTV original. I've now trashed this. Is this the correct way to removing/uninstall (as opposed to choosing 'replace')?.

Thank you.

Drag the old application to the Trash and empty it. Whenever I upgrade a program in OS X I just replace and overwrite the older version.

 

[newbie2macosx]

I think it should be fine. In the future, the easiest thing to do is to just drag the icon from the disk image to the apps folder and then choose replace in the window that pops up. But I doubt that what you did is inferior in any way.

Do encode a video in MPEG4 and let us know what you observe. This should be very fast on your computer... it should certainly be faster than my experience on my G5.

Hi, Thank you for your reply. Just noticed that there are two different options for MPEG-4, 'basic' and 'improved'. Shall try various settings and by all means post back on this thread.

Thank you to everyone who has offered suggestions/advice here. Much appreciated.

Not sure what Countries this product is available to buy but I'd recommend this product very highly compared to non Mac products I've tried and tested previously. I should have switched to Macs earlier. Can now understand why they've got such a large following . Was a little disappointed that Core2Duos were introduced onto the market so quickly though. Guess that quad-core CPUs are next to be rolled-out onto the market. I guess that keeping up with technology is not possible unless you've got masses of cash which is something I do not have.

It's almost 00:30am over here in the U.K. therefore I'll more than likely post back here tomorrow evening.

Kind Regards.

 

[newbie2macosx]

Drag the old application to the Trash and empty it. Whenever I upgrade a program in OS X I just replace and overwrite the older version.

Thank you .

 

[newbie2macosx]

Keep in mind that video encoding is perhaps the most processor intensive tasks that normal people will use their computers for. How long it takes usually depends on the compression settings you use. More compression without reducing quality takes a lot longer, but you can sacrifice quality to make it go faster.

I'm not sure if the EyeTV recordings are saved as standalone movie files, I know the live tv-files are not, but if recordings are, you should be able to find the files in Finder and try other encoding software to see if you find anything faster. ffmpegx used to be free and flexible, but a bit hard to use. I haven't used it in a while. Then there's Handbrake, which I think also can reencode video. If you can't find the recordings as single files in the Finder, you could try save/export from EyeTV using the fastest settings possible (big files, little compression, fast encoding), and then export those to iPod format using another program.

Thank you for that. What you've said does make sense. I'll post back on this thread tomorrow evening with details of what file format the standalone movie files are stored in etc.

Kind Regards.

 

[Eidorian]

Hi, Thank you for your reply. Just noticed that there are two different options for MPEG-4, 'basic' and 'improved'. Shall try various settings and by all means post back on this thread.

Thank you to everyone who has offered suggestions/advice here. Much appreciated.

Not sure what Countries this product is available to buy but I'd recommend this product very highly compared to non Mac products I've tried and tested previously. I should have switched to Macs earlier. Can now understand why they've got such a large following . Was a little disappointed that Core2Duos were introduced onto the market so quickly though. Guess that quad-core CPUs are next to be rolled-out onto the market. I guess that keeping up with technology is not possible unless you've got masses of cash which is something I do not have.

It's almost 00:30am over here in the U.K. therefore I'll more than likely post back here tomorrow evening.

Kind Regards.

Thank you .

Good luck then. It's much simpler to manage applications on the OS X side.