> From: Josh McKinnon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > but this is slooow on my 1GHz TiBook. Can anyone give a brief > critique of the various video encoding formats (quality, size, time > to encode) that I might try, including H.264, MPEG-4, DivX etc.? I > tried H.264, but gave up encoding a movie when it was half-finished > in a day (my G5 2x2.7 at work does a similar task in an hour!). I > guess I'll have a Macbook soon enough, so that should help with speed...
I export all the movies I record as H.264 and change the datarate to 2500Kbps (it annoyingly defaults to 500Kbps) which results in average length movies consuming around 2GB (I edit the ads out in the EyeTV Editor before exporting). I keep the resolution the same as the original (around 720 x 404) and the quality is fantastic. This way I easily fit 2 DVD quality movies on each single-layer DVD-R. I used to set the datarate to 2000Kbps or lower but found that a fair number of movies would suddenly become *extremely* pixelated halfway through as if H.264 suddenly gave up trying to achieve high quality at such lower datarates. Has anyone else had this problem? I don't mind too much as I'm happy to save 2 movies (or 3 short ones) or 4-5 documentaries per DVD-R and always play them back in a computer and thus don't need them to be compatible with consumer DVD video players. H.264 does take ages exporting, but I leave our 1.8GHz iMac G5 churning away overnight and all day exporting movies in the background and it doesn't worry me. The 1.8GHz G5 isn't affected much at all while it exports in the background. The pristine DVD-quality of the result is more than worth it in my mind. I also record music videos off Rage every weekend and extract the few gems in amongst the garbage and export these using the EyeTV recommended iPod MPEG-4 setting (which is considerably faster than H.264) to download to my Video iPod. At 640x360 these look fantastic on the iPod and not too bad on the screen of the computer or on our data projector in the lounge though they can certainly get a bit pixelated at times during fast motion sequences. However, I am happy with the trade-off. DHT's "Listen to your Heart" video for example runs for 3min 49sec and consumes 45 MB of disk space. > Next to the computer, signal strength = ~50% and signal quality = 0%. > Relocate it to next to the TV, signal strength ~55 - 60%, signal > quality = 100%. I can turn the signal on and off just by picking up > the receiver box and moving it around just a few inches (55% seems to > be the magic number for reception). I can't explain it, except to > assume that something is providing some kind of interference. We had problems with our reception (both analog and digital) with signal strength heading down to 60% and below until I replaced our antennae (fat pigeon syndrome) and coax cable (rusty half-broken wires) with new RG-6 "digital-ready" coaxial cable and now get a solid 100% Signal Quality and 98.8% Signal Strength. Moving the EyeTV receiver makes zero difference for us. We are in Kardinya (near Murdoch Uni). We bought EyeTV 2 and the extra features we find to be more than worth it. Just being able to queue up dozens of exports that progress one after the other rather than all at once like the old EyeTV is essential. What we'd like to know is whether the new Cinergy Hybrid T USB XS... http://tven.terratec.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2 36 ...which EyeTV 2.2 now supports... http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=14672 ... will work in parallel with our existing EyeTV 400 to allow recording on two channels at once. I have heard of one user with 4 USB digital EyeTV interfaces being able to record 4 channels simultaneously so I'm hopeful. The nice thing about this Cinergy interface is it is the first to have built-in digital (DTT) and analog TV tuners as well as having composite and S-VHS video inputs for converting your old analog video tapes etc. And it is tiny - the size of a USB Thumb drive. Not bad for 129 euros. So Daniel, how much would you be able to do it for landed here? :-) Also Daniel, have you tried your EyeTV DTT in parallel with your EyeTV 410 yet? Did it allow 2 channel recording? ciao -Mart -------------------------------------- Martin Hill email: mart "at" ozmac.com homepages: http://mart.ozmac.com Mb: 0417-967-969 hm: (08)9314-5242
