This is why as per my instructions you need to do some research yourself. IMDB, Wikipedia, CAT and tv.com are all good places.

MetaX is more built for movies with the Amazon, IMDB & poster lookup etc, but with your own data it works extremely well for TV Shows too.

Regards,
Shane.

I agree, it works well. I think I will have to start converting stuff to say AppleTV use. Maybe I might buy one eventually, who knows

Can we get this thread stuck in an articles section by any chance? I don't wanna see it drop off this page.

Have to say I am pretty impressed. I have converted a few files from 350meg avi's to 131 meg mp4's optimised for the iPhone and they look and sound fantastic

My original Macbook dual core 2.0ghz machine does the file in about 21 mins. about 1/2 the running time of the actual show converted. I dont think i'd bother with MetaX as the files are only used to watch on a plane

I've just bought an Elgato Turbo USB encoder. I should be getting the Ipod touch today so will post on how well this works - I have done a test and it converts from avi to Apple TV and Ipod format and places the file in Itunes, but since I don't have an Ipod yet can't say how it looks on the touch.

http://www.elgato.com/index.php?file...cts_eyetvturbo

http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/02/e...vidz-to-h-264/

Got my Ipod Touch yesterday and used the Elgato hardware encoder (links in previous post) to convert the video to Ipod format.
Works great. Drag and drop video files (can do multiple selections), tell Elgato the format (Ipod normal, Ipod high, Nano, Iphone) and click start. Does a 43 min TV show in about 15-20 mins. Puts the converted file into Itunes. Plays perfectly on the Touch, I tested Ipod High and Iphone settings and both were fantastic.
If you're willing to spend $200 for a one-click solution, I'd recommend this.

enzoweb,

Can you tell me what kind of Mac you have?

The reason for my question is that I use VisualHub (also a drag and drop solution) and on my MacBookPro 2.4Ghz machine VisualHub (using only one core) converts a 45 min program in about 10-15mins.

Settings to use:


I just wonder whether this device would speed up my encodes. I have a feeling the CoreDuo and Core2Duo machines are fast enough to do it without it.

* One thing I haven't mentioned before - note the "Xgrid Encoding" option - this rocks if you have more than one Mac in the house and need to encode multiple items - it farms pieces out to each Mac in the Xgrid (standard in Mac OSX - just follow instructions to setup) and you in essence get a big pool of CPU's crunching away on your encodes, finishing them seriously fast.

Regards,
Shane.

This is my macbook pro:

Model Name: MacBook Pro 15"
Model Identifier: MacBookPro2,2
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.16 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 1 GB

i haven't really done any specific timings; I set them to encode and do something else.
The blurb says it's faster, but it also uses the usb device so lightens the load on the macbook so I can web surf etc.

If I rip my DVD of a TV series, I get one Video TS folder. I can put that into Visual Hub and it puts out one mpeg4 file for my ipod touch. Is there any way I can separate the episodes and only put in one or two rather than the whole disk?

Try using handbrake to convert the video_ts - you will notice that it will (should) allow you to encode individual episodes.

If you use Handbrake instead - you can select DVD chapters and it will encode each chapter (chapter = episode) as a separate file.

Great right up - however a quick question. I've enabled x-grid on both my machines. Yet when I have two files ready for conversion in Visualhub and X-Grid enabled I get a very long Applescript Error. Any suggestions? I've tried it with X-Grid only enabled on the remote machine but still no joy. They are connected via ethernet. And it works if I disable x-grid.

thanks for that!

If you are running Leopard this error will be because VisualHub doesn't support Xgrid under Leopard. Anything else I suggest posting on the VisualHub forums.

Regards,
Shane.

Scritch what's the difference between iSquint and Virtual Hub? At a quick glance, they seem to be the same...

Thanks! Chippas.