OK, I’ve just looked at the most recent Google brainwave inversion tracking stats for the site and found some traffic from discussion.apple.com. Seems that someone flagged the original Humax post I made as a ‘long winded’ approach to getting video from everyones’ (well, in the UK at least) twin decoder DVB PVR and converting it from MPEG TS.
Looking back at that post, it’s slightly out of date, so I’m re-casting that information here for people to follow as a simple recipe to video success on their Macs.
What you need to do:
1) Get a copy of the HumaxGUI application from Andrew Smith’s site and install it.
2) Connect your Hummy up to your Mac with a suitably long USB cable.
3) Open the HumaxGUI Application and connect to your PVR. This works just like an average FTP package – select the file you want and hit transfer.
4) Go and make tea, and more tea, and perhaps do the ironing. Take the dog for a walk, come back in, take a nap etc.
(Yes the USB implementation that Humax have achieved absolutely stinks for fast data transfer – so you’ll have time on your hands. The best approach here is to queue up what you want to transfer and then let it batch run overnight.)
5) Once you have the files on your Mac, you will need to either watch the files with something like VLC which will run just about anything.
6) If you want to change the video format to something else (QT, MP4 or MPEG2) then you will need to transcode it using either VLC (not had much luck there myself), or use the excellent MPEG Streamclip. The only caveat here is that for MPEG2, you might need to buy a copy of the Quicktime MPEG2 component from the Apple Store online. I think this runs at around £15 / $20.
That’s all there is to it. Honest.
Related posts:
Paul lives, rides and works in Cardiff, South Wales. His work seems to largely entail fixing things and keeping wheels on. Officially, he is actively engaged and interested in Enterprise Architecture these days, but has a secret past that involved standing around on glaciers collecting meltwater samples, and walking through endless fields of wheat taking radiance measurements. 
This looks encouraging, but, having transfered a file to my Mac with HumaxGUI, and it shows in the HumaxGUI window, I can’t open it from there, nor move it to VLC, nor find it anywhere else in the computer. How do I get it open. I want to put it onto a CD, so I can archive it, and subsequently view it, preferable via my DVD player and TV screen. Is this asking too much?
Hey Art,
You may be able to find the file you transfered by just using Spotlight. I think the default location for HumaxGUI to transfer to is in your Home Directory in Finder, unless you specified some other location.
Just about to crash tonight, but will pick up on your comments tomorrow and give you more of a run down on what to do.
I found the file; it is an MPEG2 file and reads fine with VLC on my G4, but now I need to convert it to DVD so I can burn it to disc to archive it and play it through my DVD player to my TV at a later date.
I have download a demo version of MPEG Works, which tried to make a QT file of it but fails, and I am now trying Squared 5, but I’m not sure that is way to go. There seems to be lots out there for PCs, but littlr for Macs – Final Cut is pricey, and I’m not sure it will do it anyway.
Yup – Final Cut is quite pricey. You may want to look at something a little more consumer friendly if all you want to do is burn the files back to a DVD for playback. Something like Roxio’s Popcorn, or if you want to go the whole hog, Roxio’s Toast Titanium will give you the drag-and-drop DVD burn experience.
The DVD menu templates they provide are a little lame, but it works at least. Oh, and the compression can work out OK if you need to squeeze more data on to a 4.7Gb Single Layer DVD-R. I’ve burnt 80% quality DVDs recently that in my mind look as good as the original DVB broadcast (not difficult with the quality of reception we have here from time to time).
Let me know how you get on.
Hi
As somebody who appears to know about this subject. I’ve happily downloaded the HumaxGUI which appears to run fine on OS10.3.9.
However, when attempting to connect to the Humax is just gives a failed to connect message.
I’ve tried two different USB cables, but have you any other ideas as to what may be wrong. Am I missing something?
Many thanks
Paul
The connectivity is a little fickle depending upon what the 9200 is doing at the time. Experience suggests that the best way of getting a connection is to have the Menu system up on the Humax when you do your connection request from HumaxGUI on the Mac. Otherwise it seems to be a little ropey getting a completed connection and just becomes trial and error.
Let me know how you get on.
Thanks for the idea, however, this doesn’t want to work either.
It’s ‘reacting so quickly with the rror message Im wondering if the USB socket is working at all. I might need to borrow somebody’s PC to see if it is.
Thanks again.
I guess I don’t understand these things well enough. Reading through the HumaxGUI stuff again it says I need libusb – so I’ve downloaded the libusb material.
However, being just a longtime Mac guy I have absolutely no understanding of trying to install this – I’m used to double-clicking Install and it just working… I have no idea what ‘libusb’ is trying to tell me.
Can you guys help me?
Does HumaxGUI need libusb to work?
If so how do I install it?
Cheers
Paul F
Hi
OK so I’ve managed to find ‘Mac-type’ installers for both libusb and Qt and run these “successfully”.
But it’s still refusing to connect.
Anything else you guys can suggest?
Cheers
Paul F
You don’t need either libusb or Qt installed to run HumaxGui.app – those are bundled with the OS X build of it. So your problem may be elsewhere – make sure you have rebooted your Humax and set it to the menus (ie not showing TV programs) before trying to connect, the device can be a bit fickle.
Have just downloaded your mac version, and the app fails to launch on my newish iMac running OS 10.5.1.
Yup – you’re absolutely right Peter. Haven’t had a chance to check this myself as there’s been nothing worth transferring off the Humax to OS X for quite some time
If I get a chance sometime soon, I’ll have a look at what might be causing the crash. I expect it’s a library change between 10.4 and 10.5 so the app may need recompiling from scratch.
I don’t have a Humax yet but I found mention somewhere of a work-around for the Leopard startup issue. If you open the humaxGUI package (right-click Show Package Contents) and navigate to Contents\MacOS you can run the humaxGUI file in there. It allowed me to start the app. You could create an alias to that file and run it from outside the package.
Rich – you’re absolutely on the ball. Just given this a quick lookover and the workaround works fine and dandy,
Hi there – I’ve used HumaxGUI successfully before on my G4 PowerBook – painfully slow but eventually got it to work, even though the PowerBook is only USB1.1 – thing is, I’ve come back to it after a long time and I cannot get it to work. I’m trying to remember what combination of dead chicken waving I used before and I wonder if anyone has any other tips? Here’s what I’ve been doing – unsuccessfully, it always loses the USB connection at some point on the second error-correction pass…
1) Turn Humax on to a channel that’s pff air, such as Cbeebies at night. Automatic software update is turned off.
2) Press MENU and go to Hard disk / MP3
3) Connect laptop and click on connect in HumaxGUI. Wait for ‘device connecting’ dialogue to appear
4) Start transfer
Any ideas for where I’m going wrong gratefully received (I’m also in Linux dependency hell trying to build HumaxGUI on an Asus eeePC with Xandros that lacks ‘make’, gcc etc, but that’s another story…)
Hmm. I never really understood why connection dropped and haven’t tested it empirically. I’ll take a look and see what’s happening sometime soon as I have a load of Xmas stuff to take of the Hummie before I go for a disk upgrade
On the Asus eeePC front, I might know a man who can help out there too, only he’s poorly sick at the moment, so I’ll wait until he’s back in the office in once piece.
Seems like I’m the EEE expert in coddies life at the moment, so I’ll help where I can.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen these sites or not but they’ve been very useful for me in getting unusual stuff working on the eee:
http://wiki.eeeuser.com
http://forum.eeeuser.com
To get the build-essential package installed is actually very easy, just follow the instructions here (http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:installingdevelopmenttools).
Hope that helps.
Thanks so much for this advice – it worked!!!
I treated myself to a new Mac and a Humax 9200 at Christmas and have tried endlessly to make the things work together, with no luck – until today!
I have a Humax 9200 T and a Macbook Pro running 10.5 and would love to save some recorded programmes on to my computer and copy to DVD. I’ve read all your information and downloaded HumaxGUI, unzipped it and then got stuck. The unzipped file has a stop sign on it. Now what?
I also tried to download libusb but don’t understand what this is or what to do with it. i am not very geeky but can usually find my way around my mac but I need help!! Can anyone tell me what is happening and what to do. I’ll try soem of the sites on other blogs but I am wondering whether my problem is related to 10.5.
I would appreciate a clue here!
Hi Teresa. Let me see if I can knock up a quick video to show you, as I’ve seen occasional issues with 10.5, particularly on upgraded installs. If I get time later, I’ll give it a go.
Thanks, That would be great. I’ll wait for it before I do anything. Otherwise I’ll give up and buy myself a dvd recorder to make dvds from the humax. But my 10.5 is not an upgrade to 10.5. It came with the computer.
Are you still planning on showing me what to do?
Yep. Sorry – been jetsetting about and haven’t had a chance to be home long enough to charge may laptop – let alone plug it in to the Humax
Apparently life returns to ‘normal’ tonight, so may get a chance then.
OK – give this a go:
Download the HumaxGUI tool (which you may have already done). Double click on the application, and see if it starts – if it doesn’t, then ctrl-click the application icon and select ‘show package contents’.
In the window that opens, navigate to Contents > MacOS and double click on the humaxGui binary. That should launch the app OK. Then you have all the fun of trying to get the humax to actually connect.
Give that a bash and see how you get on. I’ve recorded a quick screen cap, but prob won’t be able to post it ’til Tuesday as I’ll be out and about again!
Thanks a lot. This jet setting is a bit of a problem. I am traveling just now too but when I get home over we I’ll give it a go.
Thanks for the advice so far posted, I came across your site after downloading HumaxGui and running into some problems. I’m running 10.3.9 and have installed xcode 1.5; have also tried installing qt 4.5 and libusb but to no avail. When I try and load HumaxGui it just quits after about 2 seconds without any window coming up. Using your advice from above, I tried launching the binary, and finally got some diagnostic messages as follows:
/Applications/humaxGui.app/Contents/MacOS/humaxGui-Computer:~ csGui; exitcations/humaxGui.app/Contents/MacOS/humax
dyld: /Applications/humaxGui.app/Contents/MacOS/humaxGui Undefined symbols:
/Applications/humaxGui.app/Contents/MacOS/humaxGui undefined reference to ___stderrp expected to be defined in /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
Trace/BPT trap
logout
[Process completed]
From advice elsewhere with similar problems and other applications, it appears that HumaxGui is trying to execute a system call that doesn’t exist. Any advice on where to go would be greatly appreciated!
Chris
Haven’t had a look at this in while (as you can probably tell by the age of the posts and comments). I’ll take a look over the weekend sometime and post back.
Hi,
I was googling on humaxGUi and came across here.
I have an iMac/leopard and a Humax. Installed humaxGui app. (the one that would be compatible with leopard) and plugged in with usb cable: immediately there’s the popup with ‘failed to connect to the device’. Whatever i do, it doesn’t connect at all. Any suggestions?
Ephra
I think I’ve had the most success when the Humax unit has been in menu mode – for MP3 playing or photos seemed to work the best. Give that a whirl.
Has any tried this with the new foxsat hdr?
not sure I want to fork out the extra £700 for the panasonic just to be able to archive stuff
Pete – the accountant hasn’t yet agreed to release funds for a Foxsat, even tho’ I have a spare minidish and LNB that could be repurposed
That said, looking at the specs and what others have done, there seems to be and ‘archive’ option for dropping content off to a USB device. The file format is still .ts transport stream, so everything else should still stand. Would love to give it a try if anyone wants to loan me a box 