Re: EyeTV and DVDs
On 28/01/2007, at 3:04 PM, Severin Crisp wrote: 1. Is there a way of verifying that EyeTV will perform as well as the settop box in this known poor reception area? I've found the EyeTV hardware to generally be as good as the digital set-top boxes we had previously. Originally our analog reception was very poor and when we first got a digital set-top box, the signal kept breaking up and glitching until we got a new antennae and I re- cabled with RG-6 digital-ready coax cable from the antennae to the box. (the old cable was rusted and connected on only one strand.) Our Firewire EyeTV 410 gets an absolutely perfect signal (100% Signal Quality and 98.8% Signal Strength) while our new USB EyeTV Hybrid which we added to allow us to record 2 channels simultaneously does sometime suffer the odd artifact. This could be due to the fact that the EyeTV Hybrid is getting 100% Signal Quality but only 58.8% Signal Strength. I think i'll have another look at my splitter-amplifier. 2. What format does EyeTV save to disk in with respect to importing into iMovie, ie is there a need to convert to .dv first? EyeTV digital TV receivers all capture recordings natively in MPEG-2 format (that is the format broadcast from the TV stations). EyeTV has an Export to iMovie option which takes a bit less than a minute to convert every minute of MPEG-2 format video to DV format for iMovie on our 1.8GHz iMac G5. 3. Having edited in iMovie, my own experience is that Toast is the simplest way to convert and copy to DVD. iDVD is great if you want to add menus and other glitz. In both cases the compute time to convert to DVD to burn to disc is considerable. I recently produced an iMovie/iDVD of a concert I had filmed, edited and adorned and iDVD took about three hours to prepare about 80mins for burning (single processor G5 1.8 so newer machines will certainly improve on this). If you have Roxio Toast, EyeTV can with a single button-click create DVDs directly from these MPEG-2 recordings as they are the same format used by DVDs. This is by far the quickest and easiest way to create DVDs as the conversion from MPEG-2 transport stream used in digital TV broadcast to MPEG-2 Program stream used on DVDs only takes a few seconds compared to the hours and hours it can take to convert into other formats (as you mention with iMovie Toast and iDVD). With the EyeTV Hybrid, you can also take advantage of this speed for converting analog video such as old VHS or Video-8 tapes to DVD. It is blindingly fast compared to converting to DV format to edit in iMovie and then exporting back to MPEG-2 in iDVD to actually burn the DVD (not to mention the quality degradation due to all the generational losses incurred as a result of these format conversions). However, I personally export all the recordings I want to keep from EyeTV as iPod Video format as I can then fit 4 normal length movies (typically around 1GB each in size once the ads are edited out) on one single-layer DVD-R and of course they are also good-to-go on my video iPod. If you have a newer dual-layer DVD burner, you could fit 8 or so movies per DVD which is a great way to store them. The new highest quality iPod Video format is 640x480 using H.264 and it does take a long time to compress, but I just leave them queued up compressing overnight. I am more than happy with the quality and can't generally tell the difference compared to the original MPEG-2 file in EyeTV at full-screen size (though the audio is stereo instead of surround sound). Any suggestions welcomed. The good news is that this may mean another convert to the Mac family of a case hardened PC user. His brother likewise, recently added an iMac to his family of PCs. Likewise - my non-technical PC-using brother-in-law now has a Mac Mini, EyeTV Hybrid and a 19 LCD monitor as the TV in their small lounge room and they are very content. Similarly, my Dad who is in his 70s now has an EyeTV Hybrid connected up to his 15 MacBook Pro connected to his existing TV with an AV cable and uses that for his regular TV viewing. He is now quite competently pausing and re- winding live TV, scheduling and recording TV shows and generally appreciating the far better quality of digital TV reception over his old analog TV reception. -Mart -- Martin Hill email: mart at ozmac.com homepages: http://mart.ozmac.com Mb: 0417-967-969 hm: (08)9314-5242
G4 runing hot
Heck it warm. My 1.25 mirror door G4 is running hot today . I downloaded menu temperature this morning and about 20 mins ago it was saying 50 deg c, now its 44 deg C. I am in a ambient air temp space, with a single fan - blowing onto the G4's cooling ducts. For most of the day I have been getting frequent grey screens of death ie: restarts I am running OS 10.4.8, Sketchup V4 V6 , GoogleEarth v4.0 and BoA v3.0- all graphic intensive 3D programs. Am I doing any harm to my system. chow -- gary dorn north perth
Re: EyeTV and DVDs
On 29/01/2007, at 3:33 PM, Martin Hill wrote: On 28/01/2007, at 3:04 PM, Severin Crisp wrote: 1. Is there a way of verifying that EyeTV will perform as well as the settop box in this known poor reception area? I've found the EyeTV hardware to generally be as good as the digital set-top boxes we had previously. Originally our analog reception was very poor and when we first got a digital set-top box, the signal kept breaking up and glitching until we got a new antennae and I re-cabled with RG-6 digital-ready coax cable from the antennae to the box. (the old cable was rusted and connected on only one strand.) Further to that , after my experience with an antennae lead there are things to be learnt about terminating the cable ends . Cable normally has an inner core covered by nylon then a copper mesh with finally a very thin metal wrap before the outer plastic jacket . The lead needs two connections the core ... and the metal wrap or copper mesh . Since the metal wrap and the copper mesh are continuously in contact with each other it would seem that using the metal wrap would be good and sufficient. .. NOT SO in my case . I was finally pushed to re terminate all ends of my cables and this time chose to fold back the mesh across the metal wrap and use the mesh as the contact point. Previously channel 31 was hopeless , and not useable ! Now it's a quite good picture plus all the other channels are much better. SO , if you have POOR reception visit all the ends of your aerial cable and re terminate them . You have nothing to lose . Bob
Re: EyeTV and DVDs
Hi Marty Can you please tell me the difference between the hybrid model and the 250? I want something that can pick up both analogue and digital signals and I understand that the hybrid does that. I have been told that the 250 can pick up digital if connected to a digital set top box. kind regards and thanks for any info Chris On 29/01/2007, at 3:33 PM, Martin Hill wrote: On 28/01/2007, at 3:04 PM, Severin Crisp wrote: 1. Is there a way of verifying that EyeTV will perform as well as the settop box in this known poor reception area? I've found the EyeTV hardware to generally be as good as the digital set-top boxes we had previously. Originally our analog reception was very poor and when we first got a digital set-top box, the signal kept breaking up and glitching until we got a new antennae and I re-cabled with RG-6 digital-ready coax cable from the antennae to the box. (the old cable was rusted and connected on only one strand.) Our Firewire EyeTV 410 gets an absolutely perfect signal (100% Signal Quality and 98.8% Signal Strength) while our new USB EyeTV Hybrid which we added to allow us to record 2 channels simultaneously does sometime suffer the odd artifact. This could be due to the fact that the EyeTV Hybrid is getting 100% Signal Quality but only 58.8% Signal Strength. I think i'll have another look at my splitter-amplifier. 2. What format does EyeTV save to disk in with respect to importing into iMovie, ie is there a need to convert to .dv first? EyeTV digital TV receivers all capture recordings natively in MPEG-2 format (that is the format broadcast from the TV stations). EyeTV has an Export to iMovie option which takes a bit less than a minute to convert every minute of MPEG-2 format video to DV format for iMovie on our 1.8GHz iMac G5. 3. Having edited in iMovie, my own experience is that Toast is the simplest way to convert and copy to DVD. iDVD is great if you want to add menus and other glitz. In both cases the compute time to convert to DVD to burn to disc is considerable. I recently produced an iMovie/iDVD of a concert I had filmed, edited and adorned and iDVD took about three hours to prepare about 80mins for burning (single processor G5 1.8 so newer machines will certainly improve on this). If you have Roxio Toast, EyeTV can with a single button-click create DVDs directly from these MPEG-2 recordings as they are the same format used by DVDs. This is by far the quickest and easiest way to create DVDs as the conversion from MPEG-2 transport stream used in digital TV broadcast to MPEG-2 Program stream used on DVDs only takes a few seconds compared to the hours and hours it can take to convert into other formats (as you mention with iMovie Toast and iDVD). With the EyeTV Hybrid, you can also take advantage of this speed for converting analog video such as old VHS or Video-8 tapes to DVD. It is blindingly fast compared to converting to DV format to edit in iMovie and then exporting back to MPEG-2 in iDVD to actually burn the DVD (not to mention the quality degradation due to all the generational losses incurred as a result of these format conversions). However, I personally export all the recordings I want to keep from EyeTV as iPod Video format as I can then fit 4 normal length movies (typically around 1GB each in size once the ads are edited out) on one single-layer DVD-R and of course they are also good-to-go on my video iPod. If you have a newer dual-layer DVD burner, you could fit 8 or so movies per DVD which is a great way to store them. The new highest quality iPod Video format is 640x480 using H.264 and it does take a long time to compress, but I just leave them queued up compressing overnight. I am more than happy with the quality and can't generally tell the difference compared to the original MPEG-2 file in EyeTV at full-screen size (though the audio is stereo instead of surround sound). Any suggestions welcomed. The good news is that this may mean another convert to the Mac family of a case hardened PC user. His brother likewise, recently added an iMac to his family of PCs. Likewise - my non-technical PC-using brother-in-law now has a Mac Mini, EyeTV Hybrid and a 19 LCD monitor as the TV in their small lounge room and they are very content. Similarly, my Dad who is in his 70s now has an EyeTV Hybrid connected up to his 15 MacBook Pro connected to his existing TV with an AV cable and uses that for his regular TV viewing. He is now quite competently pausing and re- winding live TV, scheduling and recording TV shows and generally appreciating the far better quality of digital TV reception over his old analog TV reception. -Mart -- Martin Hill email: mart at ozmac.com homepages: http://mart.ozmac.com Mb: 0417-967-969 hm: (08)9314-5242 -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing
SMS for Mac
Is anyone else using the widget SMS for Mac to send SMS messages from their Mac. Mine has started to play up. Has anyone else had problems? Normally it works well. Lloyd Lloyd White Write a Winning Job Application 3rd Edition. http://lloydwhite.iinet.net.au/ --
iTunes
G'day All, I am wondering if or how can I order from the US iTunes site? I am registered here in OZ with iTunes and when I try to order on the US site it says I can only order in Australia with my current email address. Is it as simple as opening a new email address? Any help/ direction will be much appreciated. Just for clarification, the products I want to order on the US iTunes site are not currently available in Australia. Thanks, David
Re: iTunes
Hi David, Unfortunately Apple deliberately blocks us from purchasing from another countries store. http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/sales.html U.S. SALES ONLY Purchases from the iTunes Store are available only in the United States and are not available in any other location. You agree not to use or attempt to use the service from outside of the available territory. Apple may use technologies to verify such compliance. I'm not suggesting that there is no way around this, just that they will attempt to prevent it. Cheers Paul On 29 Jan 2007, at 21:17, David Wood wrote: G'day All, I am wondering if or how can I order from the US iTunes site? I am registered here in OZ with iTunes and when I try to order on the US site it says I can only order in Australia with my current email address. Is it as simple as opening a new email address? Any help/direction will be much appreciated. Just for clarification, the products I want to order on the US iTunes site are not currently available in Australia. Thanks, David -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml Guidelines - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml Unsubscribe - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Macbook Pro hanging on connect using USB modem
I have a user here with a MacBook Pro that as soon as she clicks on the connect button to use her Apple external modem (purchased and supplied with MacBook Pro)instantly causes her machine to lockup with the multi-lingual you must restart your computer kernel crash. config seems fine, setting correct, System profiler sees and correctly identifies the Apple USB modem. Have run FSCK, repair permissions and disk repair (while tethered via firewire target mode) no problems noted or repaired. tried downgrading the modem version without joy literally new out of box and doing this. What does /Library/Logs/panic.log say? For the (somewhat) technical explanations, check out: http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2002/tn2063.html and http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter/bugbestpractices.html#KP Have fun, Shay -- === Shay Telfer Perth, Western Australia Technomancer The love of liberty is the love Opinions for hire [POQ] of others; the love of power is http://newtonslore.com/fnord the love of ourselves - Hazlitt
Re: Macbook Pro hanging on connect using USB modem
all support so far has been via phone - and explaining how to set up the target disk mode and running disk util on it was about as technical as I think this user is able to handle (don't even ask about getting them to boot in to single user mode and use the dreaded command line) ... she'll be bringing it in later this week so I'll get to see it in the flesh. I have a user here with a MacBook Pro that as soon as she clicks on the connect button to use her Apple external modem (purchased and supplied with MacBook Pro)instantly causes her machine to lockup with the multi-lingual you must restart your computer kernel crash. config seems fine, setting correct, System profiler sees and correctly identifies the Apple USB modem. Have run FSCK, repair permissions and disk repair (while tethered via firewire target mode) no problems noted or repaired. tried downgrading the modem version without joy literally new out of box and doing this. What does /Library/Logs/panic.log say? For the (somewhat) technical explanations, check out: http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2002/tn2063.html and http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter/bugbestpractices.html#KP Have fun, Shay -- === Shay Telfer Perth, Western Australia Technomancer The love of liberty is the love Opinions for hire [POQ] of others; the love of power is http://newtonslore.com/fnord the love of ourselves - Hazlitt -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml Guidelines - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml Unsubscribe - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Mark Secker Computer Support Officer ph# 61-8-6488 1855 (ECEL) mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] University of Western Australia - CRICOS Provider No. 00126G ~ It takes an idiot to do cool things that's why it's cool - Haruhara Haruka (FLCL) Ubi fumus, ibi fumus
a quick question or 2 about Apples 30 monitors and G5 towers...
for those lucky enough to own such beasts. is the Apple 30 display supported by ALL of apple's G5 towers even the lower end single processor slower bus models? if not which G5 towers don't support the Apple 30 display? looking at getting a cheap s/h G5 tower to bridge me over for 5 to so months - I mean has anybody seen just how cheap they are going for on eBay! it must break the heart of any one who bought one new :( :( watched one of the single processor ones get passed in at $750 with not even a single bid!!! My G4 TiBook is starting to really showing it's age but not looking to replace it in that form factor immediately. Will probably salary package a MacBook Pro 15 and a Apple 30 monitor mid year or slightly later I'll probably end up using the 30 display more with the G5 (if I get it) for assorted photo processing tasks and beefing up the ram to handle Photoshop CS2 stuff should give suitable performance for a couple of years to come and use my current 20 Apple display with the MacBook Pro. -- Mark Secker Computer Support Officer ph# 61-8-6488 1855 (ECEL) mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] University of Western Australia - CRICOS Provider No. 00126G ~ It takes an idiot to do cool things that's why it's cool - Haruhara Haruka (FLCL) Ubi fumus, ibi fumus
Re: G4 runing hot
My iMac has had its's fans running continuously, It does usually run them at all! Mac On 29/01/2007, at 6:03 PM, gary dorn wrote: Heck it warm. My 1.25 mirror door G4 is running hot today . I downloaded menu temperature this morning and about 20 mins ago it was saying 50 deg c, now its 44 deg C. I am in a ambient air temp space, with a single fan - blowing onto the G4's cooling ducts. For most of the day I have been getting frequent grey screens of death ie: restarts I am running OS 10.4.8, Sketchup V4 V6 , GoogleEarth v4.0 and BoA v3.0- all graphic intensive 3D programs. Am I doing any harm to my system. chow -- gary dorn north perth -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml Guidelines - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml Unsubscribe - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Malcolm McCallum [EMAIL PROTECTED] Skype docmactor
Re: iTunes
Hi Guys, I guess you could in theory buy a US gift card from ebay, and then sign up an account under your name but with a different email acct and a made up US postal address. The theoretical problem with this is that the only way to top up your acct is buy buying more gift cards as you would need a credit card with a US billing address to use that. But you could in theory then get all the free songs every week.. as crappy as some of them are... Cheers James On 29/01/2007, at 10:14 PM, Paul Doyle wrote: Hi David, Unfortunately Apple deliberately blocks us from purchasing from another countries store. http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/sales.html U.S. SALES ONLY Purchases from the iTunes Store are available only in the United States and are not available in any other location. You agree not to use or attempt to use the service from outside of the available territory. Apple may use technologies to verify such compliance. I'm not suggesting that there is no way around this, just that they will attempt to prevent it. Cheers Paul On 29 Jan 2007, at 21:17, David Wood wrote: G'day All, I am wondering if or how can I order from the US iTunes site? I am registered here in OZ with iTunes and when I try to order on the US site it says I can only order in Australia with my current email address. Is it as simple as opening a new email address? Any help/direction will be much appreciated. Just for clarification, the products I want to order on the US iTunes site are not currently available in Australia. Thanks, David -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml Guidelines - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml Unsubscribe - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml Guidelines - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml Unsubscribe - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
