[zigzag]

I didn't see this answered in any of the other threads:

My old TV conked out so I'm thinking of getting one of these TV cards. El Gato says that Toast 6 is required to burn DVDs, but also says that EyeTV exports to iMovie and iDVD. If it exports to iMovie and iDVD, why would I need Toast to burn DVDs?

Also, since iMovie 5 can now import MPEG-4, would I not be able to go straight into iMovie, then burn DVDs in iDVD? I'd rather spend $50 for iLife5 than for Toast 6.

While I'm at it, are there any inherent advantages to Alchemy's MotionJPEG format over EyeTVs MPEG-2 format, or vice-versa?

Sorry if these are dumb questions - the whole video formatting/codec thing can be confusing to novices. Does anyone know of a site that spells it out in plain English?

Thanks in advance.

[GORDYmac]

Well, the exporting features in EyeTV are fairly new, so, it's not as necessary to use Toast anymore. Before, Toast did the conversion.

Motion-JPEG is more QuickTime friendly than MPEG. QuickTime doesn't transcode MPEG formats well. I rely on ffmpegX for this purpose.

[zigzag]

Originally posted by GORDYmac:
Well, the exporting features in EyeTV are fairly new, so, it's not as necessary to use Toast anymore. Before, Toast did the conversion.

Motion-JPEG is more QuickTime friendly than MPEG. QuickTime doesn't transcode MPEG formats well. I rely on ffmpegX for this purpose.

Thanks for your help. I thought perhaps ElGato had neglected to update their documentation, but I wasn't sure - the website still says Toast 6 is required.

If you know of a source that explains all of these formats and how they interact (in plain English), I'd love to know about it so i could figure it out for myself. For example, is there a place where a novice could acquire the knowledge that MPEG isn't QT-friendly, and that something called ffmpegX is an alternative?

Thanks again.

[hab]

With EyeTV200, the reason Toast is nice is that you can burn a DVD of the TV show you capture almost directly since they are both the same format (MPEG-2). Using iMovie and iDVD will work. However, you should know that going down that road means that you will build in alot of processor and hard drive work [and alot of hours] converting the MPEG-2 file to DV format for iMovie, then back to MPEG-2 format by iDVD for the burn. Toast is just simple and well integrated. The hours you save will surely make the cost worth it in short order.

[zigzag]

Originally posted by hab:
With EyeTV200, the reason Toast is nice is that you can burn a DVD of the TV show you capture almost directly since they are both the same format (MPEG-2). Using iMovie and iDVD will work. However, you should know that going down that road means that you will build in alot of processor and hard drive work [and alot of hours] converting the MPEG-2 file to DV format for iMovie, then back to MPEG-2 format by iDVD for the burn. Toast is just simple and well integrated. The hours you save will surely make the cost worth it in short order.

OK, that makes sense. scottiB told me essentially the same thing but I got confused when the ElGato site said that Toast 6 was required. It would be clearer if they said "Toast 6 is required to burn DVDs directly from EyeTV."

Thanks.

[slapdash]

Just to add to this, the conversion from a format such as MPG4 or AVI to Toast to burn a DVD is absurdly time consuming. I mean a HUGE amount of time. Over 2 hours of top quality AVI took me something like 3-4 hours in conversion.

I highly recommend the purchase of Toast if you're going to use Elgato's EyeTV. It's well worth the money. Heck it's worth it anyway, that is a great piece of software.

[Kenneth]

I have the Alchemy PCI card and it's MPEG-4 by default. I tried MotionJPEG long time ago, but it ate up a lot of disk space than MPEG-4.

[webraider]

Originally posted by slapdash:
Just to add to this, the conversion from a format such as MPG4 or AVI to Toast to burn a DVD is absurdly time consuming. I mean a HUGE amount of time. Over 2 hours of top quality AVI took me something like 3-4 hours in conversion.

I highly recommend the purchase of Toast if you're going to use Elgato's EyeTV. It's well worth the money. Heck it's worth it anyway, that is a great piece of software.

I also have the Alchemy PCI Card and I wanted to share a few thoughts. First of All... both Alchemy and Elgato Products now Support Mpeg 4 which is a Native file format in the new release of i-movie as some cam corders support that format now. This is supposedly one of the better codecs to use (For High Definition etc...) I haven't been able to determine if the Alchemy card can burn Mpeg 2 or not... it seems to burn just about everything else. If you read carefully on Elgatos website in the FAQ sections of each product from the EYE TV 200 and up it does say you can now use i-life directly with their product as opposed to toast. As much as I like toast... I don't think we should have to have that product for basic burning benefits in our OS! Apple does seems to be closing the gap more now which is a good thing. Mpeg 4 is the new codec for High Def which is also supported natively in QuickTime 7 if I'm not mistaken.

Either Way... I believe you'll be okay with either product for compatibility and direct usage with the latest i-apps and/or toast. Now that standards seem to be set it should be easier. This said.. I wanted to comment on the differnces between the two pieces of hardware. First of all is the obvious... The PCI Card from Miglia (Alchemy TV DVR) provides your mac with the ability to watch TV, and record it to your hard drive. It's a PCI Card so it's internal and it includes a wire that you can string out that will recieve information from the remote control. It DOES NOT Have hardware encoding of movie files as it is dependent fully on QuickTime for viewing, and Recording it's file formats. In this way it's 100 percent Apple compabtible but heavy on the Processor useage. It is cheap as you can get it for around $120 if you look. It does support deep sleep BUT It will not wake your computer to record anything. It also won't power it on and power it back off. They are working on these features and will add them if it's "Technically possible". ON that note though my card does work. It does what it's supposed to do.

The Eye TV 200 has just gotten much better and is now not only viable competition for Miglia... but better in some ways. It offers built-in hardware decoding for Mpeg 2 (the current DVD standard) so the processor doesn't have to do the encoding. I'm not sure if this is true of the Mpeg 4 decoding or not. this means that it can record full screen on slower machines than the PCI card can. It's set-up is much easier and it CAN power on your machine for a recording and power it back off. It can also wake your computer from sleep and seems to be fully sleep compatible. They both seem to support Mpeg 4 and now what the i-apps will, they are both on the same footing there. Eye TV being more expensive may be the best choice as it actually offloads the work from the processor. ATI's USB wonder doesn't have the HardWare Decoding of the files. It seems to me that the Eye TV is easier to use and choose the right formats. I wish I had done more investigation on it before I bought my Miglia Card. I'm happy with it but I like the Hardware help so that the processor is freed up. the upside of the card though is that it should be easier to update it's file format compatibility in the future.

[zigzag]

Thanks webraider, that's helpful.

According to Apple, iMovie5 supports MPEG-4 Simple Format - I don't know if that will support Elgato or Alchemy recordings or not.

One other thing that I've seen mentioned, but don't know if it's still true: people used to complain about EyeTV's picture quality because you were seeing a post-processed image through USB 1.0. A supposed advantage of the Wonder USB 2.0 and Alchemy cards is that you see an unprocessed picture when you're not recording - Elgato even mentions this as an advantage in the Wonder USB 2.0 documentation. But I wonder if it means anything now that EyeTV200 uses Firewire?

I'll mostly be watching, not recording, so live picture quality is probably my biggest priority. I seldom record for archival purposes, so convenient DVD burning isn't that big a deal for me. I'll probably only archive occasional bits on my HD in MPEG-4. I do, however, want to be able to edit out commercials easily.

[webraider]

Originally posted by zigzag:
Thanks webraider, that's helpful.

According to Apple, iMovie5 supports MPEG-4 Simple Format - I don't know if that will support Elgato or Alchemy recordings or not.

One other thing that I've seen mentioned, but don't know if it's still true: people used to complain about EyeTV's picture quality because you were seeing a post-processed image through USB 1.0. A supposed advantage of the Wonder USB 2.0 and Alchemy cards is that you see an unprocessed picture when you're not recording - Elgato even mentions this as an advantage in the Wonder USB 2.0 documentation. But I wonder if it means anything now that EyeTV200 uses Firewire?

I'll mostly be watching, not recording, so live picture quality is probably my biggest priority. I seldom record for archival purposes, so convenient DVD burning isn't that big a deal for me. I'll probably only archive occasional bits on my HD in MPEG-4. I do, however, want to be able to edit out commercials easily.

I have been doing a lot of research on this too lately. I can't comment on every feature yet of my PCI card as I'm still using OS X 2.8. The card now only works with OS X 3.0 or later. It sort of works in 2.8 but full screen isn't working for me. I think it's because I'm not in 3.0. Needless to say I will be at the end of march (4.0 actually when it comes out). Both Eye TV 200 and Plextor's USB 2.0 device (which you can get for almost the same price as ATI's USB 2.0 Wonder) have built in, hardware Video Compression which is what you see when you are watching TV. The Plextor device is called ConvertX Personal DVR for the Macintosh and it uses the Eye TV software too. Ths only Difference again is the Hardware Encoding of the Three new DVD standards Mpeg 1 for Video CD's, Mpeg 2 for DVD's And now Mpeg4 (Natively supported on all Apple apps and also the card by Miglia). This means that if you are recordning a show, the ones that have the hardware encoders will use less processor power to write the Mpeg 4 (or mpeg 1, or 2) code to the harddrive. The Plextor, The ATI, and the EyeTV also have the ability to Power on your comptuer, or wake it from Sleep to record and you don't have to have the program running. Miglia's Alchemy TV doesn't have that feature Yet. The Alchemy has no hardware encoding.. (as is the case with the ATI) only tuning but it does support Mpeg 4 natively and does have a great TV picture (even in OS 10.2.8) The nice thing about the card is that the audio in port shows up in my sound manager meaning that I can use this as an extra audio input for Garage Band. I don't know if Eye TV can do that or not. Initially it couldn't. I also know that you can see the video ports (on the Alchemy) in i-movie directly when you have something plugged into it. That's a nice feature too!

The Ati USB 2.0 wonder and The plextor do not come with a remote control to my knowledge, the Alchemy and the Eye TV do. I do know that the Alchemy card is the cheapest way to get TV on your mac . It's going for about $120. It seesms that they are eager to catch up with EyeTV in ease of use as they seem to be releasing updates regularly. As far as watching TV goes... it works great and the movies I record open in QuickTime immediately. My advice is to download the instruction manuals for each of the products and see what it does. My biggest gripe with the Alchemy card are:
1. no hardware compression.. good for viewing, bad for recording. 2.You have to have the software open and your computer on to have a timed recording... that will change hopefully in the future.

I'll try to let you know more as I find out more. It does seem hard to find information on all of this.

I do know that you can record to a straight DV file which you can't do with EVE TV. That's the native format support by the original i-movie.

[threestain]

I'm interested in getting something like this for my powerbook - a 2 year old TiBook (no USB 2 sadly).

I think my only real option is the EyeTV200 - but its a lot of money. Are there any powerbook friendly options that are cheaper for a poor British student?

[webraider]

Originally posted by threestain:
I'm interested in getting something like this for my powerbook - a 2 year old TiBook (no USB 2 sadly).

I think my only real option is the EyeTV200 - but its a lot of money. Are there any powerbook friendly options that are cheaper for a poor British student?

You may have two options: You can wait and get a FireWire version of what I have. They are coming out with one. It shouldn't be as expensive as the EyeTV and will probably be under $200 easy. You can check it out at http://www.miglia.com It does support British Broadcasting standards etc...

You can try and get a Formac on Ebay. Formac DVR's are available see (http://www.formac.com/p_bin/?cid=sol...ers_studiodvtv). I just haven't heard that much about them from people who are using them. The retail price of a new one is about much as an EyeTV however.

[webraider]

Okay...I found out the the Alchemy card has a plug in available that will let you edit your content (w/o having to upgrade to QuickTime Pro) It just doesn't work with OS X 2.8 which is why I didn't have it. Apparently You can encodeit in mpeg 2 (mpeg 4 works VERY well so I can only imageine that Mpeg 2 won't be as CPU intensive) and Use a plug-in that came with the program that will take what you've edited in Mpeg 2 and import it quickly into i-DVD. You by-pass i-movie but the editor is a simple editor that allows you to cut commercials etc...This way you don't have to encode the Mpeg 2 to DV and then back to Mpeg 2 again and lose image quality/time. Again... Mpeg 2 is the best way to go for making DVD's and there is no direct way with Apple or PC's for that matter to take a raw mpeg 2 file and burn it to DVD with the i-software.. unless you have a patch or program to hand it off to I-dvd or use Disc Burner. If you have a fast enough processor.. it will handle the encoding. The Alchemy doesn't let you pause live TV... but of course you can record it while you're away. either way you're going to use Hard Drive space. It also won't let you watch one channel while you record another one. I don't know if that will be fixed or not but I haven't used that ability in recent years on my TV. I'm just trying to give you enough information to make a good decision. If anyone else has anything to comment... please do. Any Alchemy PCI owners out there?