settings for EyeTV export with Mac for Droid, synced Audio & Video
Okay, here’s what I have discovered. Bit rate matters. 1200 kbit rate seems to work about right, audio and video are synced and no skip. My guess is that the Droid processer, software and RAM are just a little too weak. One recent post was just thankful that the Droid played video at all (an optimist). I am just a little disappointed since my IPod touch plays video flawlessly. I don’t own an IPhone, but I assume it handles video as well as an IPod touch. Comparison of the Droid and IPhone are inevitable. Never the less the video quality is acceptably good considering that I live in an area where ATT 3G service does not exsist or is poor (isn’t that just about everywhere really?) Verizon service in my area is 3G, fast and excellent. Still I hope that the next generation of Droid will beef up the video capabilities to at least the level of IPhone.
So, to make an acceptable, and relatively good video for the Droid from EyeTV here is how you do it.
Record your show in the standard way on EyeTV. I like to use the editor to remove the commercials first. It saves a lot of valuable room on the SD card and speeds up compression. While in EyeTV application choose your show and choose File>Export. Choose Format MPEG-4. Click Options. The only thing I change here is Data Rate using 1200 kbit/sec. Other settings should be default settings and they should be; Image size- 640 x 480, Video Format - MPEG-4 Improved, Frame Rate 29.97, Key Frame Every -14 frames. Click Okay, then save. EyeTV will compress it and save it to where you tell it to. You could even mount your phone before you export so that you can compress and send the completed video directly to the SD card>videos folder. Trouble with sending it to the SD card is that your phone is tied up the whole time and you can’t use it.
Connect the phone to the Mac with the USB cable and mount it. I assume most people know how to do this. That’s another story. I think many people are using Salling Media Sync, but I find it unnecessary and slow. I just mount the drive and drag my movie to the video folder on the phone. You are then ready to watch your show.
There is another setting that seems to work from EyeTV and it is really quick and easy. Choose File>Export and then for format choose IPod Best. The picture is slightly more grainy and smaller, but it requires very little effort.
There are a lot of video converters out there. Of course all Macs have Quicktime. Quicktime Pro upgrade requires a small fee, but it should do the same thing. I have not tested it but I would just choose the same compression parameters and I see no reason why it wouldn’t work. Just be sure to choose 1200 Kbits/sec. Same thing applies to any other video processing programs.
Out of sync has been a problem. These settings seem to allow you to get a good sync with A & V, but if you mess with the phone or video controls while the video is playing the A & V may go out of sync. Restart of the show will put it back in sync. I tried other settings and decreasing bit rate and FPS (and so on) will be more robust and less prone to unsyncing. They seem to stress the hardware and software less, but you pay the price of having less quality video and audio. The settings I give above seem like a reasonable compromise. This should help EyeTV and Mac users. I have loved my Mac and EyeTV for years. Now I can love my Droid just as much! I can’t wait to watch Mythbusters minus the ads on my Droid!
