EyeTV Stuttering

How much RAM do you have in the mini, and which model mini is it?

It could be a 1) Plex 2) Lion 3) Samsung 4) EyeTV or 5) network thing, it could be one or the combination of several.

Is this watching live TV and recordings or one of them but not the other? Where is the drive you're recording to? And, have you tested the recordings by playing them back 1) with a different Mac, 2) using a different display or 3) with different software on the 2011 mini?

Did you move the same Mac up to the other TV to test it?

EyeTV software is crap, and Samsung TVs in particular seem to be related to many video related issues in Macs with Lion. Play your files back with Plex and XBMC and see if there's a difference.

I was only able to get perfect EyeTV playback by using XBMC with my 2011 mini.

If your recordings are fine, and playing them back with a different software player on the same TV is fine, that's very good, then you know your problem is EyeTV itself. I never watch live TV "through" EyeTV myself.

Just out of curiosity, what desktop display res are you connecting to the UN55B7000 with? And your Mac is wired as well, right?

EyeTV has been able to automatically transcode/export for a long time...it doesn't do it as well as Handbrake does, but it can.

3.5.4 just came out today and lists lots of changes including the generic changes for Lion. Since they killed the user forums I don't know where to look for the list of changes that I read briefly in the update describer.

I have a mini that is older and slower than yours and I have had many problems with stuttering and wild-ass CPU usage by EyeTV when it should be almost nil. The CPU usage hits above 80% when I am not using EyeTV, not exporting, not sharing, not updating the channel guide, you get my drift.

This update, so far, seems to have quieted the runaway CPU usage. Time will tell. You should get this update automatically when running EyeTV.

I will say though my issues were mostly with my local NBC channel provided by Comcast with NO sub-channels it would show a min 18 to 19.5+ Mbps almost all the time. The PQ needless to say is superb but previous to today's update I would max the CPU and have ZERO idle, this caused all kinds of issues with the EyeTV controller, etc. Check the stream info read out on your Fox channel...




P.S. I always watch live TV and consider this to be one of the reasons I have the 250plus/EyeTV unit, de-interlace set to progressive for both, overscan off.

jubei,

On the old forums they had a command you could run. It worked well for fixing the stutter on my 2011 mini:

defaults write com.elgato.eyetv 'DisableDisplayLink' -bool yes

It makes the menus a bit more sketchy but I think smooth video is better.

Like you, prior to running this command I would have aggressive skipping on many, but not all, of my channels.

I just installed 3.5.4, I haven't recorded anything yet to see how Comskip works or seen if it fixes the skipping issue with the above command disabled.

Here's a nice writeup of how EyeTV handles auto-export:

http://support.elgato.com/index.php?...englishdefault

Seems it places the trancodes into iTunes for you. (I don't ask EyeTV to do this personally.)


Not really much food for thought here: for the past 7 years or so El Gato has demonstrated that it cares only minimally about functionality and design, it keeps chugging along very slowly, very incrementally and still largely inelegantly because it knows it has no competition in OS X: there's no other way as easy to get high def TV onto your Mac. If there was ANY money to be made, don't you think there'd be at least one other viable competitor in this space? This latest "Apple TV HD export" option is a nice value add, however, especially with iPad2s selling like hotcakes, but if it comes at the expense of failing to address other core problems, well, that's just something we longtime EyeTV users got used to a long time ago.

El Gato clearly got caught with their pants down with Lion and have been slow to react, given that developer previews had been available for months before actual release in July, but, run Windows instead? Sorry, no, most of us already found workarounds while waiting for El Gato to catch up.

Jubei,

Glad to hear that fixed your issue, I was so happy when it cleared things up for me.

I've recently discovered that video actually playing causes most of the sketchy menu issues. If I pause the TV and then pull up the menu things work much better. Pretty lame since it is a program for watching video but I guess it is what it is.

If I could downgrade my machine to Snow Leopard I think I would. I have to think this is a relatively isolated issue, though, if Elgato is pushing everyone to upgrade to Lion.

Thank you. This also fixed my 'stuttering' issue. I've email elGato today, asking for a workaround that doesnt make menus so slow but at least I can now enjoy my Formula 1 recordings again.

Btw, I just upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion as well. I've got nothing else installed other than 10.7.2 update and EyeTV 3.5.4.

Unfortunately above fix introduced slight audio sync issue in EyeTV. It's enough to bother me and my GF, so it's now either stuttering video or audio sync issues with EyeTV in LION 10.7.2.

I'm really starting to think about switching to MCE in Windows 7 for our livingroom setup. Now that Plex has Windows client its viable option. It is going to feel weird running Windows but liveTV is still important to us and noone has done anything worthwhile for Mac.

Hmm, I have a 2007 iMac 2.8GHz Core2Duo with 6GB RAM running latest eyeTV and HDHomeRun. I am running Lion. I don't have any issues like what you guys are describing.

Just a shot in the dark, since I haven't dared to switch to Lion yet --- perhaps the problems people are seeing depend on the OS X video output drivers. Maybe you have ATI, maybe they have NVidia, maybe they have Intel integrated, etc.

For what its worth, I've got nVidia 9400.

I've got 4 macs at home (MacBook pro, Mac Pro, Mac mini and Hackintosh) and all of them got nVidia so I'm unable to test with ATI. I will test with different nVidia chipsets tonight and report back. So far I havent heard back anything from elGato.

I wish I had a job where ticket could go untouched for over a week. :-)

This fixed my stuttering issue as well. In fact, it's running better than it ever has before!

I tried watching something on my MacMini (2011, 8GB RAM, 2.8GHz, 27" Apple Cinema Display via display port, recordings on built in flash drive, Lion latest & greatest) using EyeTV and it was stuttering. Went right back to XBMC, which is flawless.

I don't have the stuttering problems with a nearly 3 year old MBP running Lion as well. One vital difference -- I was watching on the built in, much lower rez display.

Video playback seems like a very basic feature -- one that Elgato should have mastered eons ago. It does seem that Elgato is devilishly slow to test with new versions of Mac OS X.

The fix mentioned being:
defaults write com.elgato.eyetv 'DisableDisplayLink' -bool yes

I tried it, and indeed I found the resulting audio synch problem to be more than slight -- it was immediately apparent and made the program (to me) unwatchable. Digital Audio out via toslink.

So now I am faced with the choice of never updating my main HTPC, a 2009 to Lion or not using EyeTV for playback, which would be mostly OK, but what about live/in progress programs (sports, news, etc.). Meanwhile it is my main iTunes machine with which I synch all my iOS devices... so I need to upgrade for iCloud. Not a good situation.

No, not at all. Your observations are exactly the same as mine (either the stuttering or the severe audio synch problem). And I am not using a Mac mini but an eight-core Mac Pro with 24 GB RAM and an ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphics card with 1024 MB VRAM. There should be absolutely no problem at all with playing EyeTV recordings as the system load is incredibly low, I could even play several 1080p movies in VLC and QuickTime at the same time.

Well, this is just one fraction of the more and more irritating loss of quality and performance of Mac OS X. Many areas are getting significantly less user friendly, e. g. the fact that Apples DVD Player cannot be used comfortably in combination with multiple displays and full screen, the lack of care and removal of Front Row, the completely overcharged iTunes application, the lack of system support for Blu-ray movies, etc.

I might however have found some sort of workaround. I hate workarounds as they usually cost money and/or maintenance, but in this case I was so annoyed by the loss of watching quality in EyeTV that I feel nevertheless a bit relieved.

I recently bought an Apple TV (the 1080p model) and hoped to be able to jailbreak and install XBMC on it for being at least capable to watch some of my EyeTV recordings (most of them work flawlessly in XBMC, some don't.) But as you might know, a jailbreak of the new Apple TV seems to be impossible in the short-term, so this was again a cul-de-sac. In my despair I then thought that I could still use it's wireless sound capacities in combination with EyeTV (I'm using high end digital speakers, so this option always was a temptation). For this, you unfortunately need the software Airfoil, otherwise the sound would arrive later than the picture, making EyeTV even less usable.

To obtain a synchronized sound using EyeTV with Airfoil, Rogue Amoeba teamed up with Elgato for delaying the image adequately. The result is quite surprising, as not only the sound can now be transmitted wirelessly to the TV set or the speakers but also as EyeTV's stuttering under Lion has disappeared afterwards. Since I did the installation of Apple TV and Airfoil, I had no more stuttering EyeTV recordings or live TV. I should perhaps watch more recordings for being really sure, but during a two hours session there wasn't any stuttering at all.

Unfortunately, there's no easy solution for playing DVD's afterwards. As Apple TV does not play any remotely mounted DVD's you either have to use VLC or Rogue Amoeba's own Airfoil Video Player (comes with Airfoil), which aren't both fully convincing DVD player replacements (your mileage may vary).

What can be done however is to inform Elgato about this workaround as it might help them to circumscribe the origin of the behavior which drives some of us crazy since Lion has been released. I would be happy to do so but would like to hear the results from other people still suffering from the same problem under Mac OS X Lion (10.7.3) with a sufficiently performant Mac, the most recent version of EyeTV (3.5.4, build 6786 or 6788) before transmitting my experiences to them. Did the Airfoil/Apple TV workaround work for you too?

I've spent two weekends trying to fix the stuttering to no avail. I've tried contacting ElGato only to be told to send them video file over and over. ( I told them video file is IN SYNC since VLC can play it fine ). I sent them hi-def recording of the stutter ( Its VERY obvious when you have panning shot ) and never heard back.

Then I did what I havent done in the past 10 years. I installed Windows, Windows 7 MCE and havent looked back. MCE ( in living room ) is years ahead of anything out of ElGato. Give it a shot, along with DVBLink it turns livingroom Mac into something I always wanted it to be. With PLex installed I've finally got WAF to acceptable level. :-)

Unfortunately I don't think anyone at Apple really cares about the Mac or about OS X any more. Look at this chart showing that the vast majority of their revenue is now from iOS devices. And, historically (at least under Jobs), Apple has focused on just a very very few products (relative to the size of the company). Unless Tim Cook has an epiphany soon, don't expect any change in that behavior.

I wouldn't go that far, Phantom. They are releasing Mountain Lion this summer. As far as stuttering goes, I purchased the turbo 264HD with the USB dongle and stuttering disappeared as well as the time it takes to convert videos. I realize it is an added expense, but in my opinion well worth it if you don't want to use Windows. I like EyeTV because there's an app for it on my iPhone and I can watch live TV or any of my recordings any time I want right on my iPhone with no stuttering.

While the Front Row mess is on Apple, the stuttering/audio synch is 100% on Elgato. After all, plenty of other programs can play back the same recordings under Lion without stuttering. And, BTW, I witnessed once (not to be repeated after an EyeTV drop and restart) the audio synch problem under Snow Leopard on my MacPro -- so it is an EyeTV bug which gets brought to the fore by putting in the defaults write com.elgato.eyetv 'DisableDisplayLink' -bool yes video stutter fix. BTW: for people who have played with it more -- does one get the audio synch with System Sound Out as well or just Digital Audio Out?

As far as Apple's attention to OS X -- not only is Mountain Lion coming out this summer, but they have officially gone onto a once per year OS X upgrade cycle.

That said they'd be insane to neglect OS X -- they are selling way more Macs than ever before, they are making serious inroads into the Windows user base, Microsoft is about come out with Windows 8, which could prove to be way more problematic than Vista ever was -- it breaks backwards compatibility under ARM, the Metro UI forces devs who want to support it into major rewrites and users (many of whom are still on XP) into learning something totally different. So even if it works *perfectly* there will be huge uptake obstacles, coming form end users, developers and corporate IT. This presents a huge opportunity for Apple, and I don't think they would be so stupid as to miss it through neglect.

Yes, clearly the Mac HTPC space is in neglect in favor of the AppleTV and ever rumored Apple HDTV screen. However other than deprecating Front Row (which is at least partially replaced via the iOS Remote app/iTunes), Apple isn't really doing anything to hurt our HTPC or EyeTV experience. What OS X HTPC needs above all, is a full fledged Elgato/EyeTV competitor. The Mac user base is bigger than ever, hopefully someone will see it as an opportunity. And also keep in mind -- come Windows 8, MCE is history.

I'm assuming you used Boot Camp -- would using VM Ware or Parallels work with MCE? As a very last resort that may be a livable option to use strictly as an EyeTV substitute and keep the rest of the functionality on OS X.

Yes BootCamp.

MCE7 with DVBLink is awesome for LiveTV but it took some time to set up right. There's bunch loads of add-ins to add but once set up, i havent touched it for 2 months now.

I can not see myself to go back to EyeTV for living room/LiveTV viewing. I still have 'mac only' household, but room where we watch liveTV (livingroom) I now have Windows MCE7 installed.

I'm chiming in a bit late but I just wanted to say that I had the same problem with the Mac Mini 2011, 8gb RAM, and video stuttering. The Elgato support team is completely useless. They know their software sucks but refuse to put in the effort to fix it. The only useful suggestion I got was to use XBMC for viewing recorded content which is a workaround but not a solution. It also doesn't solve the problem for live tv viewing, which is my primary use for eyeTV.

In fact, I rarely use EyeTV unless I want to watch something live (normally, I use Hulu, CBS.com, etc). I was able to eliminate 98% of my stuttering issues (for live tv) by forcing EyeTV to do all buffering in RAM. Once in a while the stuttering still happens and I have to restart the MacMini to get it to calm down again. I hate the fact that I paid good money for the software, but the clowns at EyeTV continue to completely ignore this issue after almost a full year.

One last thing... I didn't have the option to NOT upgrade to Lion because my Mac Mini came with Lion pre-installed.

Ditto on EyeTV support ( or lack of ). After explaining for what seemed like eternity what the problem was and that I have great footage where it is VERY obvious ( panning shot ), they claimed footage was 'corrupted'.

Footage was captured EyeTV 3.4 on Snow Leopard 10.6.3 and I played that shot over and over for over a year without any stuttering. As soon as I installed Lion and 3.5 I noticed stuttering.

Btw, same footage plays fine in VLC, XBMC (Eden) and now WindowsMCE7. Hummm I guess EyeTV is only app that is able to detect corrupt video :-)