Jumpy Video w/Toast 8.0.3 -- new user, more info

[casmithva]

I am running into what I think is the classical jumpy video problem reported by other users whereby video exported from EyeTV and burned with Toast skips like mad on a standalone DVD player. A single frame is displayed, followed by a 15-minute forward jump, followed by another frame, another jump, etc.

 

I am using an EyeTV Hybrid (North American/NTSC) with EyeTV 2.5.1 and Toast 8.0.3 on a new iMac (Dual 2.8 GHz Intel, 2 GB RAM), Mac OS X 10.5.1. I've been experimenting with video recorded by EyeTV at both 352x480, 29.97 fps, 4.0 Mbps and 720x480, 29.97 fps, 6.0 Mbps (taken from EyeTV's preferences). I have experimented with Verbatim DVD-R, Memorex DVD-R, Maxell DVD+R, Sony DVD+RW media and a generic DVD-R brand (spindle bought from BJ's), all of which resulted in the same jumpy video. These discs play fine on the iMac, my wife's iBook, my employer's ThinkPad, but not on our Sony DVD+VCR combo unit.

 

When I found the jumpy video, I dug out my just-retired PowerMac G4 (dual 1.25 GHz G4, 2 GB RAM, after-market internal Sony DVD RW DW-Q28A DVD burner) with Mac OS X 10.4.10 and Toast 8.0.1. I'd used this system extensively in the past to burn video DVDs, and I'd never had a problem with the aforementioned media on this computer and our Sony DVD+VCR combo unit. I took disc images created with Toast 8.0.3 on the iMac, burned them on the PowerMac G4, and got the same jumpy video. To be certain that I wasn't running into a batch of bad DVDs from a spindle, I re-burned a video done in early September with iMovie/iDVD on that PowerMac G4, and it came out just fine. So as far as I can tell, it's not a problem with the media, with the writer, or with the player.

 

To try to rule out EyeTV I took an iMovie project and burned it with Toast. It worked fine. I then took an EyeTV video and burned it off with iDVD. That, too, worked fine. Took forever to finish, but it did work. As best as I can tell, there is something strange about the EyeTV 2.5.1 + Toast 8.0.3 combination, but I cannot figure it out. I tried various export options from EyeTV, including "For Toast" (versions prior to 8), iDVD, and "MPEG Elementary Streams," all of which failed.

 

To avoid wasting discs, I have been saving disc images and previewing with Apple DVD Player. It never showed a problem, but I just tried VLC per a recommendation in another thread here, and it did show the jumpy video.

 

Has any progress been made on this issue? Does anyone have any pointers on what I should try or additional information that is needed?

 

Thanks!

[casmithva]

I will give it a shot. I should add to my setup list that I am using Elgato's Turbo H.264 encoder, but that does not really apply in this situation. Content is recorded in real-time and can then be immediately exported to Toast without any intermediate conversion process required by the EyeTV software like, for example, when exporting to Apple TV (slow, even with Elgato's Turbo H.264 USB-based encoder). Toast can then do its multiplexing and burning and be done in a matter of minutes. Rather fast.

[sjkrox]

Wish I'd seen this thread before writing the last paragraph in my recent post.

[tsantee]

I loaned my EyeTV 250 to my daughter so I can't check on any of this. It sounds like you are using the EyeTV Hybrid to do software MPEG encoding on your iMac. From what I've seen from my own tests with the software encoding using a hybrid, it looks rather poor compared with the hardware encoder on the 250 or 250+.

 

That may or may not have anything to do with the jumpy video you're getting. I noticed some difficulty using Toast 8.0.1 with EyeTV 2.5.1 when I had the 250. Toast's processing went very slow. So instead of exporting from EyeTV to Toast or using the EyeTV setting in the Toast media browser, I exported the MPEG files as separate audio and video streams from within EyeTV. Next, I added the resulting .m2v file to the Toast Video window (Toast automatically matches the audio stream or asks for it). The processing now went quickly as it is supposed to do.

 

So I suggest running another test. This time export the MPEG file from EyeTV and add that exported file to Toast. See if that prevents the jumpy video problem.