Best Quality Movies for EyeHome at the Lowest Possible Size?

[cbeausoleil]

For those who own EyeHome.

Issue #1:
I am trying to create a library of movies in my Movies folder so I can view them on my television using EyeHome. My televisions is a 61" Sony projection TV so I am trying to get the best quality while trying to cut down on used space. So far, with the help of Handbrake, here’s what I have done:

File Fromat: AVI file
Codecs: MPEG-4/MP3 Audio
Framerate (fts): Same as Source
Encoder: XviD
Average bitrate (kbps): 2000
Audio Sample rate (Hz) at 44100
Audio Bitrate to 128

This reduced my viewable file down to about 1/4 size of the original VOB files without losing too much quality.

Would this be the correct method or is there better?

Issue #2:
Also, for those of you using EyeHome version 1.8 beware. Aliases no longer work. I spoke to Elgato’s Tech Support and they said to use Symbolic Links instead (SymbolicLinker1.2v2) but it still didn’t work. The only way I get get this issue resolved is to downgrade back to version 1.7. Has anyone else run into the same issue? Do you have a better solution?

[sdm]

#1 your method should prove pretty good. But using other software (mpeg streamclip for example) you can keep all 480 lines of resolution with anamorphic dvds so you end up with a file that is 853x480. That is better in my opinion.

#2. I have no problem making symlinks the SymbolicLinker.plugin and Eyehome 1.8. Possibly you're doing something wrong.

Good luck.
--sdm.

[sjk]

I've seen certain video files in folders linked to from the main ~/Movies folder appear to be missing when navigating in EyeHome, but was able to locate them with searching. I couldn't figure out the reason for those mysteriously stealth files before my EyeHome died a few months ago. One guess is it might have had to do with certain characters in the file and/or folder names.

[cbeausoleil]

Thanks guys... I’ll give mpeg streamclip a try & see if the quality is any better. As for the symbolic links issue, I’ll stick with EyeHome v1.7 until Elgato has a newer upgrade.

[sjk]

AFAIK EyeHome hardware has been discontinued so I'm not sure about future software updates, although maybe Elgato will provide one that's Leopard-compatible if necessary.

And current Apple TV specs claim it doesn't support SDTV or MPEG-2 (and other video formats) so it's not the backwards compatible replacement for EyeHome I'd originally hoped it might be. It might be possible to encode with MPEG-4 that's compatible with both devices; EyeHome doesn't support H.264.