Mac software for transcoding, commercial removing, burning to DVD?

[aclarke]

Hi. I record my TV with the straight stream from my Hauppauge PVR-250, but this video format is incompatible with Quicktime. I have Quicktime Pro but since I can't open the video in Quicktime I can't remove the commercials prior to burning it. I also can't use iMovie until the video is transcoded either.

I've tried ffmpegX which works OK but is veeeeeery slow, at least if i want to keep reasonable video quality. On my 1.67GHz Powerbook the 1 hour TV show took about a day to transcode with the settings I used, and then for some reason deleted it and started right over so I don't want to go through that again!

Are there any other Mac people out there taking commercials out and burning stuff to DVD? This isn't something I do often but I'm trying to do it now so a friend who doesn't have cable can watch a certain show.

Thanks for any ideas,
- Andrew.

[bcjenkins]

Why qo through the hassle of deleting the commercials? On the Mac, I have yet to run across a program with the speed of Video Redo on the PC. A different approach to editing out the commercials might be to mark the beginning and ending of the segments as chapters and just use chapter skip on the DVD remote.

The answer to your question is check out http://www.squared5.com/

B

[acrowe]

Do you have the quicktime MPEG2 component?

When I want to burn to a DVD from my Mac (usually for archiving shows without commercials, etc) This is what I do:
1. I always record using DVD Long Play encoding (though any DVD encoding will work).
2. Copy the mpeg file to my Mac
3. Use the mentioned MPEG steramclip from squared 5 to clip out the commercials (this is a manual process unfortunitly)
4. Use Toast to burn the DVD.

[Scriber]

Originally Posted by acrowe

4. Use Toast to burn the DVD.

As a newer Mac user, I still think it strange that the Mac won't burn a DVD movie from an mpeg out of the box.

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by Scriber

As a newer Mac user, I still think it strange that the Mac won't burn a DVD movie from an mpeg out of the box.

Keep in mind that the tools which come with your new Mac are designed to work with camera footage. They work in DV format, not mpeg2. I do find it funny that you have to buy an mpeg2 decoder any more, but I guess that is part of the MPAA?

If you don't want to pay for Toast, check out Visual Hub. Inexpensive, and can convert to quite an array of formats including creating DVDs. Although, I have not had much luck going to WMV with it.

B

[aclarke]

Thanks for the tips. I bought a core 2 duo computer as my new server over the weekend, so I'll likely relegate any heavy lifting like video postprocessing to that computer now.

I am also suprised and kind of pissed that after buying Quicktime Pro I have to shell out ANOTHER $20 for the MPEG-2 codec. I'm running Windows and Ubuntu VMWare instances on my new server so I'm sure I can find a way of doing it without giving more money to Apple for stuff I think they should have included in what I already have.

Thanks again,
- Andrew.

[bcjenkins]

Don't forget that there are free players for viewing mpeg-2 as well.. VLC and MPlayer OS X. VLC will do transcoding too.

B

[acrowe]

Yep there are definitly other programs out there that can do a similar thing, I just havn't worked with them much.

I just wanted to be able to mix clips and such together in the Apple tools (Final Cut Express, iMovie, iDVD, etc) from time to time. I already had QT Pro and the $20 for the MPEG decider wasn't too bad for me. Though I completely understand others not wanting to pay for it

The nice thing is that from what I've seen you only ever pay for it once. I bought it with QT 5 and have been able to redownload it whenever I need a new copy.

I've never had much luck with MPlayer, though I didn't spend much time with it either.

What I'd like is a trimmer able to batch process the commercial removal (ala VideoRedo) so I don't have to hand search with MSC.

[aclarke]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Don't forget that there are free players for viewing mpeg-2 as well.. VLC and MPlayer OS X. VLC will do transcoding too.

B

I haven't used MPlayer on OS X but VLC is great. I read that it did transcoding but gave up after fiddling with it for 2 minutes or so. It seemed like it was set up more for transcoding while streaming or something like that, but I guess I read it wrong.

- Andrew.

[Scriber]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

They work in DV format, not mpeg2. B

Commercials are not an issue for me so the key is to transcode to DV format (using VLC which I use to watch mpegs on my Mac but didn't even know its full potential) and I'm set.

This is a bit more interesting in light of Sage's beta announcment....

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by Scriber

Commercials are not an issue for me so the key is to transcode to DV format (using VLC which I use to watch mpegs on my Mac but didn't even know its full potential) and I'm set.

This is a bit more interesting in light of Sage's beta announcment....

VLC has a streaming export wizard located under the file menu. I just tried it out this morning, and failed miserably.

2 issues:

1) It doesn't output to DV
2) I selected H.264 encoding and mpeg-4 audio. It faild and said the encoders weren't present.

I went back to Visual Hub. I will look at VLC again when I have more time.

B

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by acrowe

What I'd like is a trimmer able to batch process the commercial removal (ala VideoRedo) so I don't have to hand search with MSC.

Did a quick search. Myth .20 is out with commercial detection capabilities. If the commercial scanning piece is a separate binary, you could probably run it against the files. BTW - .20 now includes Intel Mac support for backend. Front end client was available since .19 from what I gather.

I sure hope Sage comes out with a package soon. I would much rather pay for a package already done instead of having to put it together myself.

B

[acrowe]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Did a quick search. Myth .20 is out with commercial detection capabilities. If the commercial scanning piece is a separate binary, you could probably run it against the files. BTW - .20 now includes Intel Mac support for backend. Front end client was available since .19 from what I gather.

I sure hope Sage comes out with a package soon. I would much rather pay for a package already done instead of having to put it together myself.

B

It isn't for the watching that I want to trim. I actually want it to remove the commercials and resave so I can dump to DVD via toast.

Heck I'd be willing to write an applescript/automator if I could get that to work... hmmm... I'm making myself think about that now... Wonder if I could make that work...

[bcjenkins]

I tried finding binaries for mythcommflag.app and mythtranscode.app with no luck. I may break down and build from source. These two apps should do what you are after which can be automated. That is if they work without need of a Myth backend.

B

[acrowe]

That would be cool

THough I guess there is probably some way to script MSC and use the SA files, but I'll have to play with that too...

[Scriber]

I've poked around with these suggested apps and it looks to me that I have to either by toast, an mpeg to dv converter, or the quicketime mpeg compenent (then use streamclip which requires this apparently).... are there no free mpeg to dv converters for the Mac? So close...

[aclarke]

www.ffmpegx.com . They like you to donate, but you don't have to "buy" it.