Hawkeye

Application will not work with recordings made from the EyeTV 410 - something is wrong when the progress readout shows 400,000% The EyeTV recordings are DVD compliant in Toast 7 since there is no requirement to re-encode. The raw files were exported as MPEG2 program streams. Would be nice if the menu background picture could also be represented in 16:9 This application has value since iDVD does not work with MPEG2 and Toast 7 offers very little control over menus...but not today. I look forward to trying a later version in due course.

I buy a lot of television series full season dvd sets and I don't like having to navigate the endless menu trees you get on these discs to get to the episodes. And here Hawkeye does one thing that I have not found another program capable of doing, which is to look at an MTR "full disc extraction" VIDEO_TS folder and show you clearly the individual episodes in it. It then painlessly extracts them all at once as mpeg2 files including chapters which I can author in Toast as a DVD with a rudimentary no hassle menu. I won't author in Hawkeye becauseI never had any luck with its menus, plus it can only compress a file as it imports it which is a boneheaded way to do it. I can't comment on any of Hawkeye's other features since I've never used them.

The number of stars that my choice of ratings gives belies my dissatisfaction with this product. The key to Hawkeye's excellent feature set, ease of use, and stability is everyone else's shoulders upon which the product stands. As far as I've been able to tell Hawkeye burns DVDs and creates menus using Apple's framework. The translation from DVD to iPod format is done using Handbrake. It stores things in its own library, but why wouldn't someone want to just put their files into iTunes? This product pulls together a lot of people's work, reinvents the wheel, and requests payment for their efforts. If you don't want to be bothered learning to use the different components in the computer you already purchased, this is a good buy, but I just looked at what it did and realized that it tied together everything I already knew how to do.

Simple, powerful, did everything that it promised. Regular updates, great support, well worth the money.

Further to my comment on 23 June of V1.0.1 this application has improved beyond all recogition. This application has considerable value since it is the only low cost DVD authoring solution that can work with MPEG files and provide a quick menu background. It has now been further enhanced with avi support that will render to DVD a 350MB 42 minute movie in about 22 minutes (using a MacIntel). OK other applications can do this, but without a menu. The application also boasts an iTunes type interface that allows control over multimedia files. The developers are tireless in their support of any problems or fixes that I have suggested. This includes working on native eyetv files made from DVB-T sources (Europe only) without fluffing the soundtrack.

If indeed this app can turn out DVDs from MPEG-2 and audio files imported from FCP, then this is a very neat, and would be serious competition for Toast. However, I'd rather wait for reports from users who have accomplished this before paying.

Application will not work with recordings made from the EyeTV 410 - something is wrong when the progress readout shows 400,000% The EyeTV recordings are DVD compliant in Toast 7 since there is no requirement to re-encode. The raw files were exported as MPEG2 program streams. Would be nice if the menu background picture could also be represented in 16:9 This application has value since iDVD does not work with MPEG2 and Toast 7 offers very little control over menus...but not today. I look forward to trying a later version in due course.