Restore sound on EyeTV MPEG4 AVIs in QuickTime

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Dec 04, '06 07:30:03AM • Contributed by: pianojoe

The format of ElGato's EyeTV application's MPEG4 files must be somewhat odd. VLC can't play them, and ffmpeg doesn't understand them. QuickTime Player shows the video, but you get no sound, even though an MPEG audio track is displayed in the movie info window.

This usually happens when QuickTime doesn't have a codec to decode the audio. But I just found out you can export the movie from QuickTime Player to, let's say, MP4, and, boom: audio is back. I don't see why this works, but it does. Seems like a bug in QuickTime Player to me.

[robg adds: I can't test this one. If you can do so, one way or the other, please comment.]

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Restore sound on EyeTV MPEG4 AVIs in QuickTime
Authored by: b00le on Dec 04, '06 08:57:19AM

Well, I tried it, and found that QuickTime played the resulting movie with sound, without problems. I do have Apple's Pro Apps (Final Cut etc.) installed, which might make a difference. (I don't know why we need so many codecs...) This is the first time I have tried EyeTV's MPEG 4 export: it is very slow and produced pretty horrible results. While we're on the subject, I wish someone would come up with a way to access EyeTV's buffer files.

Restore sound on EyeTV MPEG4 AVIs in QuickTime
Authored by: sokobi on Dec 04, '06 08:38:28PM

accessing the buffer would be one of the most important features Elgato could add to EyeTV. I would so much love to save something I have just seen on live TV (without momentarily recording it) and it's quite frustrating to know that it's actually there, in the cache, and to be unable to save it. So: any tips in this direction are surely welcomed here!

Restore sound on EyeTV MPEG4 AVIs in QuickTime
Authored by: fbitterlich on Dec 04, '06 09:32:31AM

I have no problems with the MPEG-4 files from EyeTV. OTOH they are not AVI files for me; they have the correct .mp4 suffix.

I do stumble across wrongly-named movie files from time to time, having the wrong suffix. Most of them appear to come from the Windows world, so maybe there is a buggy app out there. But "analyzing" the files from the terminal using the command

file whatever.avi

usually reveals the true file type, and renaming them often solves any playback problems.

Restore sound on EyeTV MPEG4 AVIs in QuickTime
Authored by: rackerby on Dec 04, '06 09:57:04AM

Are you talking about MPEG 4 files encoded via software (e.g. QuickTime export) or via hardware encoding (e.g. EyeTV 200)?

Restore sound on EyeTV MPEG4 AVIs in QuickTime
Authored by: pianojoe on Dec 04, '06 05:36:53PM

Hardware encoding. My eyeTV 200 records to MPEG4.

Restore sound on EyeTV MPEG4 AVIs in QuickTime
Authored by: g1gsw on Dec 04, '06 10:49:09AM

I have never had a problem with this myself and have exported loads of videos to mp4 from eyeTV.

Restore sound on EyeTV MPEG4 AVIs in QuickTime
Authored by: tak on Dec 04, '06 11:02:59AM

Most of the current EyeTV devices do not encode or re-encode the data stream coming from the broadcaster. They just store it on the hard drive and the EyeTV software decodes it while viewing.

So when you are having difficulties with the MPEG data, it's the broadcaster's fault not EyeTV's.

tak

p.s. Btw, it's Elgato, not ElGato.

Restore sound on EyeTV MPEG4 AVIs in QuickTime
Authored by: rackerby on Dec 04, '06 02:06:08PM

That's true only for digital TV (EyeTV 500). For analog TV, some sort of encoding must occur by either the tuner device (EyeTV 200) or the EyeTV software (Hybrid-analog).

Restore sound on EyeTV MPEG4 AVIs in QuickTime
Authored by: cortig on Dec 04, '06 12:22:10PM

Reading what's described here, it looks like the "EyeTV MPEG Support.component" is not installed in /Library/QuickTime
This QT codec is required to play the sound in EyeTV-generated AVI files for instance.

---
Alea jacta Ouest

Restore sound on EyeTV MPEG4 AVIs in QuickTime
Authored by: cortig on Dec 04, '06 12:24:24PM

I should have been more clear...
EyeTV exports audio in a format that doesn't seem so universal. QT Player can only play the audio track if the "EyeTV MPEG Support.component" is properly installed and non-QT based players won;t be able to play them. Of course, transcoding the audio track to a more universal format will correct the issue.

---
Alea jacta Ouest

>>> Solution!
Authored by: pianojoe on Dec 04, '06 05:40:18PM

Thinking about this, you're right. I was trying to play the movie on a different machine which doesn't have the eyeTV software installed. Still, how come Quicktime Player can't play the audio, but convert it to another format?

Restore sound on EyeTV MPEG4 AVIs in QuickTime
Authored by: oracheski1990 on Jan 20, '07 12:57:15PM

I export the recording so there is no re encoding and just one file per recording, but when i play them back, a few will play back faster and audio is fast forwarding. What is the problem

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