EyeTV: Removing Ad Breaks
So you have an AppleTV and you record television to your Mac via the great Elgato EyeTV software. One of the minor annoyances I find with the Apple TV is trying to rewind or forward when watching a video. If you record with EyeTV and export direct to iPod or AppleTV format you will have felt the frustration of trying to forward through ad breaks and not miss 3-4 minutes of the film.
The good news is EyeTV allows you to easily remove the Ad breaks (and the footage at the start and end of your recording).
Once your programme or film has finished recording, right click on the programme’s icon in the ‘Recordings’ section of EyeTv and select ‘Edit’. I always make sure the ‘Fine’ option is click for greater accuracy in removing the ad break and thus not chopping bits off the recorded programme.
Once compacted you can export the recording to whatever format you require using the main interface of EyeTV. The results are seamless and if you have ticked the ‘fine’ option you shouldn’t even be able to spot where the breaks were in the first place.
Obviously this adds a bit of time between recording a programme and being able to watch it. EyeTV can automatically add recorded programmes to AppleTV a short time after they have been recorded.
That said we find this step of removing the Ads makes for much less painless viewing experience, especially if you are like us and can not really get to grips with that little white Apple remote.
For a text version of the complete process visit this previous article.
Nice to see how smooth and responsive editing in EyeTV 3 is. In the early days of EyeTV and with slower Macs – trimming was rather painful and sluggish.
Trimming really improves your Mac TV experience and very much worth the effort. I often find myself appalled at just how LITTLE content you end up with, and how MUCH ad time has to be trimmed out! Saves a ton of disk space as well after compaction.
Have you tried ComSkip for Eye TV? It automagically finds the commercials and skips them. I guess that’s why they call it ComSkip
It can be a bit hit and miss at times but worth a try.
http://code.google.com/p/etv-comskip/