Beyond TV Hearts iTunes and iPhone
September 27th, 2007 at 6:53 pm by zack
This one goes out to all the iPhone users out there.
I took a headfirst dive into the world of Apple on iPhone release day. I waxed poetically about the browser to anyone that would listen, dreamed of pinching my way through maps and marveled at the bright hi-res screen. The prospect of watching a video where squinting wasn’t required had particular appeal.
Then my utopia was shattered. How in the world would I get my TV shows on it? Pay $35 a series on the iTunes store? I think not.
Heck, if you’ve read my other post in the things that heart things series, you know I hate to pay for tv.
So it was off to the internets I went… finding a few tools that seemed to hold promise. Promise, that was, until I tried them. After waiting a while for my first Videora conversion (it seems I should have known to tell it I had a multi core cpu if I wanted it fast) I victoriously copied and started playing the file. There was Bryan Williams, reading the news to me in all of his High Def glory. (You know I only have OTA HD, right?) All was well and good until about 10 minutes into the show. At that point, it all started to look like a badly dubbed kung fu movie… lips were flapping, but the sounds didn’t match up.
So I twiddled and tweaked. A setting here and an option there. Learning the ins and outs of ffmpeg’s conversion settings and even going as far as to load a “version of an open source program that a dude changed that should help, some times”.
Despair set in. Even if I could get it in sync, the meta data would still need to be tagged. And how would I tell Beyond TV to compress the right shows?
Man I tell you, the next day I was really happy that I just happen to work for SnapStream.
We had a few discussions and then decided it was time to settle this problem right.
There were two main goals.
1. Works
2. Simple
Making it work right was surprisingly easy from my vantage point. The developers did their magic and the files came out in sync and looking nice.
So how simple did we make it?
The entire gig boils down to:
1. Tell it you have an iDevice (phone, pod or Apple TV)
(this can be done on any machine on your network by going to http://machinename:8129/setupitunes.aspx)
2. Choose what shows you’d like to compress
3. Click the magic button to tell iTunes to do something
Tell it you have an iDevice
Choose what shows you’d like to compress
Click the magic button to tell iTunes to do something
You can click the “Big” button to subscribe to the main feed, or the smaller buttons to subscribe to only one show.
That’s it… Beyond TV is ready to go.
In iTunes, of course, you can tell it how many shows to keep on hand, both on the server and on the device.
You can even choose which specific feeds to send across to your device.
Since we use podcasts to feed iTunes, these settings should be familiar.
Now, whenever you plug in your device, iTunes will send down the shows.
Of course, if you’d like to get fancy, you can have different shows go to different devices (thankfully or I’d have a ton of “The Bold and the Beautiful” on my phone) or you can manually choose what jobs to squeeze down when viewing the details of a recording in the Viewscape.
Any way you do it, it’s tons better than all of the other options out there. And best of all, it doesn’t cost $35 per series.
P.S. If you read this article and wondered about Apple TV, the new video Nano or the iPod Touch….. I’ve got good news for you. Beyond TV has profiles for all of those devices and the process is the same.
You should notice in this picture that my nano has Iron Chef and Thank God You’re Here…. pretty sure those aren’t on the itunes store.
About the Author:
Zack Price, a long time member of the SnapStream engineering team, is a notoriously cheap geek. He’s recently described how to ditch cable and move to over the air HD. When not at SnapStream, Zack enjoys time at home with his wife Candice, dog Watson, cat Mittens (whose breath smells like cat food) and two iPhones.
September 27th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
[...] Madeline Miller wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptHe’s recently described how to ditch cable and move to over the air HD. When not at SnapStream, Zack enjoys time at home with his wife Candice, dog Watson, cat Mittens (whose breath smells like cat food) and two iPhones. [...]
September 28th, 2007 at 12:23 am
Nice function for those of you wilth iPhones, but I ave to say this is a frustrating post. Most of us with portable devices that play MP4 movies have had to muck about with Handbrake, Mediacoder, Smartmovie, or other kludgy software to get the Snapstream DivX files onto our devices. (I have a Nokia N95, my wife has an N73, and my kids watch videos in the car on an N800, but there are a myriad of other — non Nokia — devices out there that play different flavours of Mp4).
I’d love for Snapstream to allow me to compress to my devices, although I suspect it won’t happen soon. But since you work for snapstream, you can fix BTV to compress to your iPhone and iTune in what seems like 12 hours.
But why just cater to the iCrowd? Why not make a solution that works for the rest of us too?
That’s my furstration, I guess.
September 28th, 2007 at 3:56 am
Can this work with other devices, like ones that can only do lowres mp4 video playback? I use a device (a PSP to be exact) that can only do lowres mp4 videos and this feature would be great if it doesn’t require one to use an iPod for playback.
September 28th, 2007 at 11:23 am
Jota,
I use an N800 with some kind of free add-on media player software and it works with the divx files from BTV fine. You might want to look into it if you really need it to work.
September 28th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Jota,
From http://www.osnews.com/story.php/17837/Review-Nokia-N95/page2/
“h.264 support was added in S60 3.1 and indeed it played back perfectly a 230 MB QVGA h.264 file we had around….. ”
So I think it should work for you if you setup a quality profile that your device likes. You can do that from http://localhost:8129/SetupQualities.aspx
Also, to everyone out there that uses divx for their device, you can get a “podcast” rss feed from http://localhost:8129/rssfeedgenerator.aspx
That page allows you to set the format that is included in the feed.
JMac,
The psp is currently not supported. It should work with h.264, but we’ve been unable to make it work. We have an outstanding but to keep working on it.
September 28th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
The iPhone feature is nice, but lets get the TV experience right first.
When will you port Beyond Media into Beyond TV? This is my number one reason that I have not yet purchased your products.
I want one consistent interface that allows me to watch TV, listen to my music and play the DVDs I have in my library (Stored on a HD). Please, please, please give this to us.
Hoping for the best…
September 28th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Hi,
I have been doing this for some time now with the extraordinary program iPodifier, even I can create podcasts to syncronize with other computers in my home network and is FREE, so why I have to paid for something I already enjoy without problems.
If you want to try: http://www.ipodifier.com/
Thanks
September 29th, 2007 at 8:51 am
[...] to make this worthwhile. Has anyone tried this out? del.icio.us | Digg it | Netscape | reddit | StumbleUpon| [...]
September 29th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
I do like the drive pooling feature in Beyond TV 4.71 which gives me the ability to make use of the external hard drives that I have laying around. Also, the ability to transcode the videos to h.264 is a nice bonus for Apple users. I’m sure over time they will add support for other video devices such as the Sony PSP.
Next thing I would like to see is native closed caption support for SD and HD content. I currently have to use hacks to make it work, no big deal but would be nice if it’s already done natively.
September 29th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Jfestrada,
Ipodifier is great for what it does - I’ve used it in the past, but you it’s really just a half-step to true integration with the PVR app. You can’t beat the built in integration into your HTPC app. For someone who wants their HTPC app to work out-of-the box, with the compression, control and transfer of their recorded shows into their iPod/iPhone, this new version of BTV is the way to go.
Brent
September 29th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
Thanks for adding this feature. I can’t wait to finish a recording to try it. However, here are some concerns:
1) This feature should be available through the standard BeyondTV interface
2) It should also have a link in the WebAdmin; as far as I can tell, you have to type in a URL to access the settings. Is that supposed to be easy?
3) You should be able to use this process to send existing recordings to your iDevice.
4) this instructions should be clearly documented in a read me rather than a blog.
Thanks!
Joshua
September 29th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
I for one applaud you for finally adding the iPod video integration. While others will whine, the fact is that iPods are very polular so you have to cater to the iCrowd. As for iPodifier, I tried it over and over through about 5 versions a while back and gave up on it. It’s non-intuitive, the UI is hopelessly baffling, it works sometimes, and when it doesn’t, it leaves files all over your disk. It’s free and it shows it.
I do agree that BTV needs Beyond Media integration, because without it it’s crippled. It also needs the DVD plugin and iPod integration included. It’s expensive enough. Stop charging for extras and you’ll sell more copies and increase your market share. You’d better do that soon because Vista users don’t really need BTV at all and eventually most of us will be using it whether we want to or not.
September 30th, 2007 at 11:51 am
Thank you thank you thank you…
getting to listen to last night’s “mad money” on the drive to work is great.
September 30th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Joshua,
1. It is. This blog just addressed one way of doing it. There is a settings menu in the viewscape, along with job level settings.
2. This article addresses how to do this from another machine… where you would have to type in the address. From the server, there is a link from the settings screen in the viewscape and from the right click tray icon for iTunes. In Beyond TV Link, there is the option from the Viewscape settings screen.
3. It can do that. The default “big button” rss feed gives all h.264 shows into the feed. Also, if you scroll down the iTunes integration page, there are links for shows that don’t have current recording for.
4. It is documented in the Help File that is installed on the Beyond TV Server. We find that doing blog posts helps spotlight a new feature.
September 30th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
I was pretty exited about this feature, especially about the feed to ITunes to automaticly suck it down to your home systems and to different IPods. On my 3GHz P4 BoyondTV box it took 3 hours to change over to this format from both the dvix and mpeg formats for a one hour show. It plays back fine in BeyondTV but when playing back in any other player (such as ITunes or quick time) I just get a green screen with sound. This was true for the remote XP Pro box and well as my Mac. I couldn’t find any info on snapstream to figure out what might have happen, maybe I’m the only one that has seen this problem. I did try the ipodifier, doesn’t convert wmv but has been apple to convert my divx and mpeg stuff and it’s super fast compared to the the BeyondTV version.
October 1st, 2007 at 11:57 am
First off, this a great new feature. I’ve been looking for a way to easily sync and watch my shows on the AppleTV and iPod. However, I do have one issue.
I would like to sync the videos to both my 5th gen iPod and my AppleTV. However, if I encode the video using the iPod Classic / iPod Nano setting, the video quality is poor on the AppleTV. If I encode the video using the AppleTV setting, then it won’t sync to my iPod. I know the 5th gen iPod will support 1.5 Mbps 640×480 H.264 video, but I am finding it difficult to create a custom setting that will sync to the iPod. Here is what I have tried.
1. Changed the iPod Classic / iPod Nano quality to 640×480 resolution. The showsqueeze job fails with the error “Recompression of E:\BeyondTV\show.mpg to H.264 failed”
2. Changed the AppleTV quality to 640×480 resolution and 1300 Kbps total bitrate. This setting works and will play in iTunes and on the AppleTV. However, it won’t sync to the iPod.
Does anyone know how to create setting that will produce good quality 640×480 video that will sync to the AppleTV and 5th gen iPod?
October 1st, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Kyle,
Read this doc… it’s about your ipod.
http://support.apple.com/specs/ipod/iPod_Fifth_Generation_Late_2006.html
To paraphrase: 640×480 is only supported in the “low complexity” format. Regular format is only up to 320×240.
We don’t have the option for the low-complexity mode… you’ll notice that the profile for apple tv is “Baseline”. Even if we did, you wouldn’t want it…. you have have to make a tradeoff in quality to get it.
Also, the “ipod” preset for AVC Profile doesn’t allow you to leave 320×240 or it gets angry (as you noticed).
So really, you’re going to need to do two compressions.
October 1st, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Zack,
Thanks. That answered my question about why the 640×480 video will not sync to my iPod.
Is there any chance that low-complexity mode will be available in the future? The only reason I ask is that I have several movies purchased from iTunes. As far as I can tell, they are encoded at 640×360 using the baseline low-complexity H.264 profile. The video quality is reasonably good and they will play on both my iPod and AppleTV without having to encode two different copies. It would be nice to use this profile to convert my BeyondTV recordings. I know you loose quality with the low-complexity, but I would prefer that over making two copies of every show.
October 2nd, 2007 at 9:28 am
Hi Zack I’m this close to watching TV on my 5th gen iPod! Love the interface on Beyondtv, did the converstion, downloaded to my iPod…
it won’t play. I see it there in the podcasts, not as a thumbnail btw, but when i select it it just jumps back to the top menu!
any suggestions?
October 4th, 2007 at 10:59 am
[...] The tutorial on how it works is here: http://blogs.snapstream.com/2007/09/…es-and-iphone/ [...]
October 6th, 2007 at 6:34 am
Used the default settings for syncing with iTunes and it works great except that it won’t sync with my iPod. I have the latest 30GB video ipod. Itunes tells me that these recordings are in a format not supported by my player.
October 6th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
Michelle,
You’ll need to report this to tech support so we can get the right info to help figure out what is happening. The report form will ask for a tech support upload code… which will be the starting point. If all of your settings and log files check out, we’ll get a set of sample files (source and recompressed) to check in the office.
Jeff,
From the viewscape, make sure you’ve gone to settings -> “itunes integration” and enabled conpression from there. If you are doing anything from settings->showsqueeze, make sure you’ve disabled “inteligent quality selection” and then selected the ipod classic format for compression.
(basically, there are two ways to compress to h.264 and it sounds like you used the showsqueeze way without setting the format)
October 6th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Michelle,
Just thought of something…
Don’t go to the podcast list.
Instead, go to regular videos ->tv shows.
Can you play it from there?
October 8th, 2007 at 10:01 am
Lots of questions are coming up and I need answers before I’ll consider buying this DVD plugin when the 21 day trial expires. Things are quirky to say the least…
Why am I ending up with 2 of each recorded show in my ipod video podcasts. They seem identical but are wasting too much disk space?
Why in some cases do shows take a couple of days to become available as a video podcast in iTunes? I don’t want to wait 2-3 days to watch 30 Rock.
Why is the volume in recorded video so much lower than music on my iPod?
Sometimes video podcasts are showing a top line of white snowy artifacts and also in some cases static in the audio. Very anoying and only about 10% of the time so it’s impossible to debug.
Is there an option to delete the original recording and just keep 1 of each show for the podcasts?
Why in the world does it take soooo long for files to be downloded from BTV into iTunes. I understand this is a web-based transfer but the files are on the same machine. Can’t these 2 apps work together a bit more harmoniously to expedite this?
And when things go wrong in BTV, just tell me!! Don’t make me sift through a log file to try to figure out what went wrong. Make your software intelligent!
October 9th, 2007 at 11:39 am
1. It’s a “tv show” and a “podcast” according to the metadata. The file will show up twice, but isn’t copied twice.
2. Shows compress at night and itunes downloads at night by default. Turn off constraints for showsqueeze (in the showsqueeze settings) and then tell itunes to check for new podcasts every 1 hour.
3. TV encoders have wildly different volumes than other things. That’s just the way it is. From a hardware encoder (like a pvr-150) or an atsc capture (HD), beyond tv doesn’t control the volume. It just takes what it was given.
4. That’s closed captioning information. I added a feature request to trim the top few pixels.
5. There are per recording job settings for how many episodes to keep. (that may help you) Also, if you treat it as a showsqueeze (rather than going through itunes conversion), you can set it to delete source on completion.
6. Some machines have this problem…. others don’t. We still are trying to figure out why it downloads slow sometimes.
7. If things are going wrong, we’d prefer to fix the source of the error rather than just show a ton of errors on the screen. Hopefully we could get your box to a state where everything just works and logs are necessary.
October 9th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
You don’t need the itunes integration to watch shows in mpeg4 on other devices. I have a profile set up for showsqueeze that converts videos into the right settings for my palm lifedrive - works very well.
The DVD burning plugin is very well done BTW. I had to burn a DVD for a friend and I turned on the trial version. It was so easy to use compared to dragging the files into a DVD editor and mastering a DVD that I ended up buying it. I only wish we did not need to buy a unique license for each client.
October 11th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
[...] SnapStream Blog An inside look at news, events and technology at SnapStream. « Beyond TV Hearts iTunes and iPhone [...]
October 22nd, 2007 at 5:09 pm
I’m trying to figure out what happens when you tell Beyond TV to run show squeeze on files to H.264 format why you can’t play them back with iTunes or Quicktime (on Windows OR Mac OS X). In some cases it shows just a green screen, othertimes it crashes.
Additionally, I see how to convert to iTunes during a recording (as part of the convert to iTunes) which is separate from Show Squeeze. What’s the real difference here?
My goal is that I want to be able to edit out commercials and make my own DVD’s (and thought I could use iMovie) but I’m finding show squeezed programs (to h.264 format) crash anything but Beyond TV for playback. As is I may have “lost” some stuff, at least in terms of being able to edit and make the DVD’s I wanted.
(I put in a support request, and replied to the first msg, but any further answers have been extremely slow in coming…)
I’m also in the trial period and trying to decide if this is worth it or not.
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Great article.
I guess you’ll check out my blog..
Sayonara
October 24th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
The green video happens when “intelligent quality select” from showsqueeze is on. This happens when showsqueeze is used instead of “itunes conversion”
To ensure that you’re using the correct itunes conversion, go to that settings page in the ViewScape and then enable automatic conversion there. Alternatively, go to a specific show in the viewscape library and choose to send to itunes there.
December 4th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
[...] Learn how to sync Beyond TV recorded shows to your iPod/iPhone [...]
December 6th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
[...] the creative mind of such posts as Beyond TV Hearts iTunes and iPhone, Top 10 reasons I heart my over-the-air antenna, TV Viewers Bill of Rights and much more we bring [...]
December 15th, 2007 at 6:03 am
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
January 10th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
I hope you are still monitoring this blog entry.
I have a couple comments:
- The H.264 plugin needs to be activated. This is not mentioned above and even though I can access the iTunes setup page http://:8129/SetupITunes.aspx before activating the plugin and link the podcasts in iTunes it didn’t really appear to work.
I am a little confused by the responses above because of the multiple pathways to getting shows converted and experimenting takes days (while waiting for things to happen). It would be great if you could provide the URL used for the various settings to disambiguate. So far I have one show that worked and two with green screens.
Questions:
- On http://:8129/SetupShowSqueeze.aspx do I need to have Automatic Showsqueeze enabled?
- Does the format need to be set to H.264 or does the SetupITunes.aspx take care of that?
- Does the Intelligent Quality Selection here have any impact on what happens for iTunes conversion?
- How do I convert something that is already recorded?
Thanks.
January 30th, 2008 at 8:27 am
I am having a small problem that I cannot figure out. When I set showsqueeze to H.264 it makes two copies of the H.264 video. It runs through the entire process twice which ties up myu computer for twice as long as it should. Any suggestions as to why it does this?
Thanks