How to burn video DVDs from Eye TV?

[gafferbee]

Hi there.

I recently bought an Eye TV digital terrestrial gizmo for my iMac G5. It's great, it records programmes, I watch them. Love it. Now I want to export some of them onto video DVDs to play downstairs and watch movies etc in comfort.

I thought it would be easy, and I'm usually quite good at figuring things out, but this is flummoxing me.

When I choose "export to Toast" (my version is 6.0) from Eye TV, it creates an Mpeg2 file. These files are of a sensible size - ie a 2hr movie fits is about 2GB ish, which fits on a 4.7gb DVD.

However, when I tried to burn to dvd Toast told me the file was too large, something like 7gigs. Hmm. I read a little bit, and downloaded Popcorn, which I thought would help.

But I don't know what I'm doing - i made a disc image of my files, but Popcorn said it wasn't a DVD Video disc image.

And Quicktime won't recognise Mpeg2 without a paid-for plugin.

In short - what is the best way to export from Eye TV to burn a video DVD? Eye TV can export in a bewildering array of formats - which is best? Should I toast or use iDVD? What is Popcorn actually for?

Phew. Thanks for listening!

 

[varmit]

Hi there.

I recently bought an Eye TV digital terrestrial gizmo for my iMac G5. It's great, it records programmes, I watch them. Love it. Now I want to export some of them onto video DVDs to play downstairs and watch movies etc in comfort.

I thought it would be easy, and I'm usually quite good at figuring things out, but this is flummoxing me.

When I choose "export to Toast" (my version is 6.0) from Eye TV, it creates an Mpeg2 file. These files are of a sensible size - ie a 2hr movie fits is about 2GB ish, which fits on a 4.7gb DVD.

However, when I tried to burn to dvd Toast told me the file was too large, something like 7gigs. Hmm. I read a little bit, and downloaded Popcorn, which I thought would help.

But I don't know what I'm doing - i made a disc image of my files, but Popcorn said it wasn't a DVD Video disc image.

And Quicktime won't recognise Mpeg2 without a paid-for plugin.

In short - what is the best way to export from Eye TV to burn a video DVD? Eye TV can export in a bewildering array of formats - which is best? Should I toast or use iDVD? What is Popcorn actually for?

Phew. Thanks for listening!

I would export to iMovie if you can, where you can add some edits such as fade in and fade out for when it cuts to commercials. Then export it to iDVD to burn. I believe EyeTV can skip past the iMovie and just export directly to iDVD.

 

[Gerg]

The new version just released (1.8.3, I think) has a new feature that lets you burn directly to Toast from with the EyeTV software. That may make the process seasmless an error free.

I have yet to try it, but I saw it listed in the notes for the update.

 

[steevey]

Eye TV problems

I currently make alot of dvd's off of my "topfield" set top box and usually when you get to the stage of having an Mpeg2 file the process is really simple :
open Toast Titanium , select: "video (from the choices of "data", "audio", "video", "copy",
Drag and drop the Mpeg file here. when you hit burn, it sets about the task of compiling the DVD before actually burning the disk. If you have toast titanium 7 it will give you an option of compressing the file down to 4.38 gig size. I don' know why the file size changes for you 9 except that the accompanying audio file will add to the dvd size. by the way I am thinking of buying a Eye TV, when you "export for toast" how long does a 2 hr program take to make?
hope this is of some help