DVD burns from EyeTV incomplete with 10.0.7

[J_C_T 0]

With Toast 10 Titanium Pro 10.0.6, I could select "Toast" from EyeTV to transfer a high-def TV recording to Toast, select DVD-Video and use the default options to burn to DVD, even for a 2-hour movie (in excess of 10 gigabytes, in MPEG-2 format according to the Toast window with the big red record button, and with ".eyetv filename extension), and Toast would find an appropriate compression to get it all on a DVD. I just hit the red button, selected the default on the next window, filled in the video name on the next window, and inserted a blank DVD+R disk. The window became a gold-colored progress bar, and when it was done, the disk popped out. Previous versions I used performed the same way.

 

Since updating to 10.0.7, however, I've seen the recording on the DVD truncated--the last part is simply missing, with no error message or any other indication that anything was wrong. All the steps used in making the DVD are the same, and the DVD is playable. It just doesn't have the whole program that EyeTV recorded.

 

I did edit out commercials with EyeTV's editor, but the point where Toast chops off the recording doesn't seem to correspond to where there was a commercial. I've tried the EyeTV's "remove markers" option, thinking the markers might be confusing Toast, but it chops off the end at the same point.

 

Is this a known bug in version 10.0.7? Is there a work-around? Or am I doing something wrong that previous versions of Toast 10 would let me get by with?

[tsantee 231]

I've seen the same thing when using Toast's editor with some TiVo transfers. I suggest reinstalling Toast 10.0.6. You can have both it and the current version installed at the same time. Just use the one that works. I'll look into this some more. I haven't checked it with my EyeTV recordings as yet.

[abg 1]

With Toast 10 Titanium Pro 10.0.6, I could select "Toast" from EyeTV to transfer a high-def TV recording to Toast, select DVD-Video and use the default options to burn to DVD, even for a 2-hour movie (in excess of 10 gigabytes, in MPEG-2 format according to the Toast window with the big red record button, and with ".eyetv filename extension), and Toast would find an appropriate compression to get it all on a DVD. I just hit the red button, selected the default on the next window, filled in the video name on the next window, and inserted a blank DVD+R disk. The window became a gold-colored progress bar, and when it was done, the disk popped out. Previous versions I used performed the same way.

 

Since updating to 10.0.7, however, I've seen the recording on the DVD truncated--the last part is simply missing, with no error message or any other indication that anything was wrong. All the steps used in making the DVD are the same, and the DVD is playable. It just doesn't have the whole program that EyeTV recorded.

 

I did edit out commercials with EyeTV's editor, but the point where Toast chops off the recording doesn't seem to correspond to where there was a commercial. I've tried the EyeTV's "remove markers" option, thinking the markers might be confusing Toast, but it chops off the end at the same point.

 

Is this a known bug in version 10.0.7? Is there a work-around? Or am I doing something wrong that previous versions of Toast 10 would let me get by with?

 

I've also seen the same problem after updating to 10.0.7. It seems to be intermittent. I just un-archived my old copy of 10.0.6 and it seems to have no problems with the EyeTV files that have consistently been causing me problems.

 

The only workaround I found that worked (sometimes) was to export to H.264 and then burn a DVD from that. I say "sometimes" because a couple of times my audio ended up 10 seconds ahead of the video and thus the exported product wasn't usable.

 

I've also reported the issue to Elgato so perhaps they can identify the problem.

 

Alan

Edited June 1, 2010 by abg

[J_C_T 0]

In investigating further, I realized that Elgato released an update at about the same time as Toast 10.0.7 came out, so I'm not really sure whether the problem is in EyeTV or Toast.

 

However, re-installing Toast 10.0.6 did not seem to fix the problem on at least the program I was trying to burn to DVD.

 

In any event, whether the problem is with Toast or EyeTV, the suggested work-around of exporting to H.264 from EyeTV and then burning that with Toast does work (thanks and kudos to the one who suggested that!), though the encoding time is painfully long. That will get me by for now, and hopefully Roxio and Elgato will work out a fix between them to solve whatever incompatibility is causing the issue. I wish I could try going back a revision on EyeTV, but unfortunately I didn't save the previous version when I updated, and it's no longer available on Elgato's Web site (or at least I couldn't find it there).

[tsantee 231]

In investigating further, I realized that Elgato released an update at about the same time as Toast 10.0.7 came out, so I'm not really sure whether the problem is in EyeTV or Toast.

 

However, re-installing Toast 10.0.6 did not seem to fix the problem on at least the program I was trying to burn to DVD.

 

In any event, whether the problem is with Toast or EyeTV, the suggested work-around of exporting to H.264 from EyeTV and then burning that with Toast does work (thanks and kudos to the one who suggested that!), though the encoding time is painfully long. That will get me by for now, and hopefully Roxio and Elgato will work out a fix between them to solve whatever incompatibility is causing the issue. I wish I could try going back a revision on EyeTV, but unfortunately I didn't save the previous version when I updated, and it's no longer available on Elgato's Web site (or at least I couldn't find it there).

Thanks for the update. If you exported from EyeTV using the MPEG Program Stream setting then you should be able to use that file in Toast without any re-encoding. To make sure Toast multiplexes rather than encodes, go to the custom encoder settings window and choose Never next to re-encode. The window is accessed by clicking More..., then Encoding, the Custom.

[abg 1]

In investigating further, I realized that Elgato released an update at about the same time as Toast 10.0.7 came out, so I'm not really sure whether the problem is in EyeTV or Toast.

 

However, re-installing Toast 10.0.6 did not seem to fix the problem on at least the program I was trying to burn to DVD.

 

In any event, whether the problem is with Toast or EyeTV, the suggested work-around of exporting to H.264 from EyeTV and then burning that with Toast does work (thanks and kudos to the one who suggested that!), though the encoding time is painfully long. That will get me by for now, and hopefully Roxio and Elgato will work out a fix between them to solve whatever incompatibility is causing the issue. I wish I could try going back a revision on EyeTV, but unfortunately I didn't save the previous version when I updated, and it's no longer available on Elgato's Web site (or at least I couldn't find it there).

 

I'm slightly surprised that reverting to 10.0.6 didn't fix your problem.

 

The problem I had persisted into EyeTV V3.4 from the previous version (3.3.3, I believe) where I first encountered it.

 

When you went through the H.264 process, did you end up with any videos where the audio was WAY out of sync? That was the one major problem I encountered with that process. Not sure if that was a 10.0.7 artifact or not.

 

Alan

 

[J_C_T 0]

Okay, a little more digging resulted in a little more information on the problem.

 

As someone noted above, Toast 10.0.6 has the same bug. I never noticed it because I never got around to viewing the things I recorded with it, but when I checked, it did have the same truncation problem. Now I've probably got at least half a dozen DVDs to throw away. I'm trying 10.0.5 now, and the first thing I tried seemed to work fine with EyeTV 3.4.

 

I've also determined that the problem does appear to be in Toast, not EyeTV.

 

In the two things where I used the H.264 conversion, I didn't encounter an audio synchronization issue, but that may have been more luck than skill. Toast does seem to do things a bit randomly.

 

I haven't tried the tip someone gave above of forcing Toast NOT to re-encode, so I can't confirm that that works, but it sounds like an easy work-around if you can't revert back to 10.0.5.

 

I also experimented with using Burn (a freeware DVD-burner from Sourceforge). However, it doesn't seem to recognize the native output from EyeTV recordings of HD TV. It might work if you export from EyeTV in another format, but, then, Toast 10.0.7 might, too. If one needs to go the H.264 route and there's an audio synchronization issue with Toast, that might be an option for solving the audio problem.

 

[J_C_T 0]

The plot thickens:

 

I went through the last 40 DVDs I burned with Toast. I didn't write down the exact dates of the recordings, so I can't tell for sure exactly when the bug appeared, but it appears to roughly coincide with release 10.0.6.

 

However, many things burned since then recorded just fine. I then looked for a pattern in which were bad and which were good. I found 6 DVDs to throw away out of the 40.

 

What appears to be happening is that the recording gets truncated (sometimes after two minutes, sometimes after upwards of an hour) if TWO factors apply: 1) the broadcast was in full HD, not just low-resolution content broadcast in digital format, and 2) the program was over an hour in length. These factors may trigger re-encoding as someone mentioned above.

 

For example, the Dancing with the Stars semifinals (full HD, 1 hour) recorded okay; the finals (full HD, 2 hours) recorded only the opening credits (and not all of that). But an old black-and-white movie from PBS, broadcast digitally but with NTSC-quality content, recorded normally although an hour and a half long.

 

I've abandoned the last two revisions and expect to use 10.0.5 from now on (until I find a bug in that version or Roxio releases 10.0.8 with a bug fix). It would help if they would label their beta releases as such.

 

[abg 1]

The plot thickens:

 

I went through the last 40 DVDs I burned with Toast. I didn't write down the exact dates of the recordings, so I can't tell for sure exactly when the bug appeared, but it appears to roughly coincide with release 10.0.6.

 

However, many things burned since then recorded just fine. I then looked for a pattern in which were bad and which were good. I found 6 DVDs to throw away out of the 40.

 

What appears to be happening is that the recording gets truncated (sometimes after two minutes, sometimes after upwards of an hour) if TWO factors apply: 1) the broadcast was in full HD, not just low-resolution content broadcast in digital format, and 2) the program was over an hour in length. These factors may trigger re-encoding as someone mentioned above.

 

For example, the Dancing with the Stars semifinals (full HD, 1 hour) recorded okay; the finals (full HD, 2 hours) recorded only the opening credits (and not all of that). But an old black-and-white movie from PBS, broadcast digitally but with NTSC-quality content, recorded normally although an hour and a half long.

 

I've abandoned the last two revisions and expect to use 10.0.5 from now on (until I find a bug in that version or Roxio releases 10.0.8 with a bug fix). It would help if they would label their beta releases as such.

 

In the end, Elgato investigated the problem and reported to me that the issue was definitely a bug with Toast V10 that they had reported to Roxio (but they wouldn't give me any kind of reference number).

 

I've given Elgato a ~12 minute recording with 7 random edits in it that exhibited the "missing video" problem so one definitely can get the problem with short recordings (it was, though, ABC-HD).

 

Still trying to find a permanent solution. For now, it's to burn the DVDs with no edits and with all commercials in place :-(

 

ABG