Removing Ad Breaks with EyeTV
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.
The first step is to select the start of the recorded programme to remove the unwanted section before the require footage starts. The easiest way to do this is to drag the timeline marker to the first frame of the recorded programme.
Then click the button at the bottom of the editing window (two triangle icon). This will put a set of editing markers under the current point in the timeline.
Drag the first (left most) yellow triangle to the very start of the recording. This marks the section of the footage to be removed.
Repeat this process for each of the Ad breaks and the end of the recording. I find the best option it click the last frame of the recorded programme just before the Ad break then drag the 2nd triangle to around the end of the ad break and then click the first frame of the continuing recorded programme.
As you can see we had a total of six sections to remove from this recording. The start, the end, and four ad breaks. Once complete click the icon on the bottom left of the editing window (with the gear icon) and select ‘Compact’. You will be warned that this process is permanent, click ‘Compact’ to continue.
Depending on the length of the recording the compacting can take ten or so minutes.
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.
3 Comments
I use Comskipper with Elgato EyeTV 3.0. This automatically finds ads and skips them under playback.
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I would like to edit some tapes of home movies that transferred from VHS though Eyetv 3.1.1 to DVD but there are no “tabs” on it and I don’t see a way to cut out clips. If it isn’t possible in EyeTV is there a program I can do it in without conversion and without a loss in video and audio quality? Does this method only work for TV recorded with Eye TV? Should I be editing in I-movie or another program?
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DigMo Reply:
June 29th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Elgato have a dedicated device for capture from VHS that will handle the correct formating of captured video (from a range of sources) see http://www.digmo.co.uk/hardware/elgato-video-capture/ If you have the footage in the computer already then I think I would stick to iMovie for cleaning it up / adding credits etc. Hope this helps..
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