How can I burn a TV recording to DVD

How...

Get Roxio's Toast Titanium 7. The EyeTV software and Toast work together very well.

iMovie and iDVD won't be of any use.

Just to add to the already good advice from Fred as posted above. The way he mentioned is likely the most cost effective approach and it works well.

But there are other approaches that work well in order to capture/ record TV/Cable directly into your mac via firewire. I can think of at least 2 alternate approaches both of which I have used on my own G4 PM.

1. Connect a standard VCR (analog rca output)to the input of a minidv camcorder w/ digital pass thru. Then connect the fw cable to your mac. Launch iMovie and you are set to record any available channel on your VCR. That's one approach that works for me.

2. The second approach I use involves a Canopus ADVC50 pci card which also allows for any standard analog input into my G4 (Picked it on ebay for under $50 plus shipping).

3. A third option is to use a media converter box like the sony DA2 or the DA1 which serves as an interface to most anaolg sources and then into iMovie > iDVD

SDMacuser



(3) G4 PM's/(3) S-Drives/Sony TRV900/Nikons/6FWHD's/PS7/iLife06/FCPHD/DVDSP/etc. Mac OS X (10.4.8) My ichatav AIM account is: SDMacuser1 (Please use Text chat prior to video)

SDMac

I have an EyeTV product (the Hybrid that's a great product) and the EyeTV software is designed to work with Toast 7. See page 53 of the EyeTV 2 Software Manual. It requires a minimum of effort to make the recordings with Toast 7. Period.

Fred, you're right. And as noted above I did mention your approach is the best and most cost effective. Plus I am aware that Eye TV products work hand in hand with Toast. For the price of the Roxio software the poster is set to go.

I simply wanted to post alternate approaches for other forum members as well who may not have Eye TV products nor Toast but are still looking for ways to capture TV into their macs.

Hope this proves helpful




SDMacuser

Ask support at Eye TV / Elgato ..... might work (not sure).

http://www.elgato.com/

Benny,

I suspect you may need Toast 7 because there were major changes between Toast 6 and Toast 7. However, since you already have Toast 6, why not give it a try.

Drag the program you want to record from the EyeTV Program window into the VIDEO tab, DVD-video window of Toast 6 and see if it works. Let us know how it goes.

Grab the whole lot, drag & drop them into Roxio Toast.

Post back if the file size exceeds the capacity of the DVD.

There are 5 files which do I drag to Toast?

I assume those 5 files are 5 recording sessions.

It depends on the quality level you want.

When I transfer my EyeTV programs to Toast 7 to record one at a time, if they are standard definition (4:3) up to about 2 hours, there is NO additional encoding done by Toast and everything goes very fast. 16:9 content must be reencoded and this takes a lot of time.

Trying to get all 5 on one DVD will require a lot of reencoding and quality loss.

Writable DVDs are fairly inexpensive now - why not just write 1 program per disc - especially for your first test to see if Toast 6 will work for you and how long it takes.

Is there some way to open the recording in iMovie.
That way the commercials could be removed and make
the file smaller.

No. The files are compressed.

Which version of EyeTV software do you have? I have EyeTV 2 Software and it is VERY easy to remove the commercials using the EyeTV Visual Editor. (Page 28 of the manual.)

I'm confused. I import cable video into the eyetv software using the Plextor video converter. I then click on the file menu, go to export, and export it as a DV file. It creates only one DV file which easily imports to iMovie. You can also export just the audio or a whole list of file types.

How are you saving the movie in eyetv?
I have version 1.85 EyeTv Digital Recorder software

Hey, we are using a Mac, there has got to be a way to
open them in iMovie or why are we using a Mac?

I take your lack of responce on your EyeTV software version to mean you don't have the latest version. I suspect you can export a QuickTime DV movie out of your software (DV video runs 13 GB per hour), bring that DV video into iMovie to edit it, transfer the edited movie to iDVD to be recompressed and written to a DVD disc, but I 'gotta tell you - that is A LOT MORE WORK (and time) than I have to do!

I edit out commercials in the EyeTV software, drag the edited EyeTV recording into Toast 7 and burn- now THAT'S the REAL Mac way of doing things! SIMPLE!