I’ve been having a little problem with our PVR system. We have an Elgato EyeTV that records television shows to the computer hard drive. From there, it is exported to iTunes, and finally sent to the Apple TV in the living room via WiFi. It all works seamlessly… except for one small detail. Every so often, in shows that are an hour or longer usually, the video and audio snags and gets out of sync. Usually somewhere about halfway through.
I’m not absolutely certain what is happening, but I have a hunch, Time Machine. I think the Apple Time Machine backup system that does an automatic backup every hour is causing things to hiccup. It makes sense that a backup would interfere with data being sent wirelessly, but how to get around it to make sure.
I don’t want to totally turn off the backup system, but the shows we record are at various times throughout the day. I don’t really need an hourly backup, who needs a backup every hour while they sleep? Things don’t change through the wee hours… so why not allow users to alter the schedule? I suppose one of the good things about Macs is that they are somewhat goofproof for the neophyte, but for those who like to weak machines…. it can be a bit annoying sometimes. So…is there something that will enable me to alter the Time Machine schedule without totally turning it off?
Turns out the answer is yes.
Enter Time Machine Editor.
A nifty little freebie that gives you some control over your backups… and hopefully solves my AppleTV problem at the same time.
“Time” will tell.
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Update: Seems that the TIme Machine was not the problem. We were watching TV the other night and the signal clitched and made us both think that when the cable signal pixelates it probably hits the recording with a bit of a corruption and puts the audio and video out of sync. It is probably magnified when it is exported into the Apple TV file format and sent to the box. Probably a function of the new requirement for digital signals from all TV stations.
But, I don’t think I needed an hourly Time Machine backup anyway. Every 6-12 hours is probably more than enough for my purposes and I like having the control.
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Update to the update: Nope, finally figured it out…I had all my video files being recorded to an external drive…it would seem that the coding was causing glitches as it recorded…moved the EyeTV library to the main drive and I think we are good now….
Tags: backup, Elgato, EyeTV, mac, Time Machine