Using Live Mesh to access my recorded shows
For the last year I’ve been using Windows Live Mesh to sync files between my desktop PC and various laptops that I own. The process works well, and is very transparent. I basically have folders on my Desktop PC that I’ve designated as Live Mesh sync folders, and any files put in those folders are automatically synced with a similar folder on my other laptop machines. Thus, I can have certain files synced an accessible on all my computers.
In addition, Live Mesh has a “virtual desktop” which is in the cloud (Internet) where I can sync files (there is a limit on total storage size, though). That way, I can store and backup important documents online just in case my computers are damaged in a fire, stolen, etc. What’s really nice, is that Windows Live Mesh is free to use and works very well.
This week, I’m traveling up in Canada and although I brought my Zune HD for watching recorded TV shows, I can’t access the shows that are being recorded nightly on my home PC system. So my favorite shows for this week (24, Fringe, etc) are inaccessible to me while I’m hundreds of miles away…. or are they?
The hotel I was staying at had a fairly high-speed Internet connection (4 MB/sec download), so I was able to access my home PC via a Remote Desktop Connection using my Dell 11z netbook. I then copied two WMV video files (converted from the Windows Media Center WTV format to WMV using DVRSMToolbox) from my standard Zune sync folder to one of my Live Mesh folders. Once I did that, those two WMV files were automatically synced to my Dell 11z laptop via the internet. Each video file was about 450 MB in size, and they seemed to sync over to my Dell 11z in about 2 hours. It was slow, but worked automatically.
So now I can watch those WMV files on my Dell 11z using Windows Media Player. Although these video files were converted for the Zune screen resolution, they seemed to play back just fine on my Dell 11z’s screen when I enlarged the playback window.
So, I now have access to my recorded TV shows even when I’m away from my home PC. If I start the syncing file transfer before I leave my hotel room for dinner, the video files are usually synced by the time I get back. Of course, YMMV depending on your Internet connection speed.
Target stores getting rid of Zunes?
I was at my local Target store and noticed that they were missing the Zune HD products. In fact, they only had a few of the older Zunes available and everything was marked as “Clearance” (the Zunes and accessories). So, it seems that either Target will no longer sell the Zunes at their local stores or they are trying to clear out everything for new Zune HD hardware and accessories? I’m not sure.
I do know that across the Zune display aisle is the Apple iPod assortment of products which seems to be selling in full force. What gets me, is that I don’t see a lot of advertisement for the Zune. The Sunday paper is full of ads for the iPods, but I rarely see anything for the Zune. I’m sure that if stores did more advertising, the Zunes would definitely be selling more. Go figure. I guess we’ll see what happens over the Christmas holidays.
New Zune HD Firmware update available
Microsoft has released a firmware update for the Zune HD. To install it, you need to bring up the Zune Software on your PC and go to Settings -> Device -> Player Update to download and install version 4.3. I just did the process and it took about 3 minutes to complete. All my video and music files remained intact after the update.
Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows has all the details on what changes were included in this update. Mainly “faster-better” tweaks (which is good!).
EncodeHD – Another video conversion utility
EncodeHD is another video conversion tool that you might consider for your video needs. It is basically a simple front-end interface for FFMPEG, which does all the heavy lifting for the conversion process. You simply drag your source files into the main area of EncodeHD, select the output type, and click the “Start” button. Very easy to use, however, you don’t have a lot of control over the settings used (unless you already know the FFMPEG command line flags, in which case you can enter them under the “Advanced” screen).
Here’s a list of target devices that EncodeHD can create videos for. As you can see, there is an entry for “Zune” and “Zune HD”.
As a test, I converted a DVR-MS file (which is basically a container for MPEG2 video and audio) to a Zune HD output, and EncodeHD generated an MP4 file. So, EncodeHD only creates Mp4 formatted video files, not WMV files for the Zune. When I check the details of the generated MP4 file, I see the following attributes:
The video bit rate seems pretty high (which is good) but the frame rate doesn’t seem correct to me. In any case, this might be a good simple tool if you want to do some quick conversions. EncodeHD also uses other freeware utilities such as AtomicParsley to embed some meta data tags (e.g., video title, description, etc.), however, none of those tags are read by the Zune media player.
Microsoft Expressions Encoder 3
Microsoft Windows Encoder 9 has been my workhorse for encoding videos to WMV format for my Zune. It has a graphical user interface as well as a command line interface (which I mainly use), along with its own SDK that can be tied into custom applications (like the VisualBasic code, Media Encoder Batch). Unfortunately, in 2003 Microsoft decided to stop development to WME9 in favor of its replacement, Microsoft Expressions Encoder.
This evening, I decided to check out Expressions just to see how it compared to its predecessor, WME9, particularly for creating high-quality WMV files for the Zune HD. As it turns out, Expressions is designed to generate such files for the Zune HD. Below is what the main interface looks like with Expressions. It is actually a much cleaner GUI than WME9, in my opinion.
Among the various predefined output settings, was one for the Zune HD and another for the Zune HD playback on a AV-Dock. The settings were defined as:
One nice thing, is that Expressions can convert native WTV files (recordings generated by Windows 7 Media Center) which WME9 could not do. Also, you can use the Expressions to cut out commercial segments manually if you wish before the conversion process. As a test, I tried converting a WTV file which was in standard 4:3 format, and the default Zune HD conversion settings generated a 480×272 WMV file with black bars to the sides of the video (preserving the aspect ratio of the original 4:3 source). The quality of the playback was very good.
The only bad thing I see with Expressions, is that the version 3 does not have a command line interface. So you either use the GUI they provide or write your own code to interface with the Expressions SDK.
Most importantly, Microsoft Expressions Encoder 3 is free. You can download it from this link and run it on your Vista or Windows 7 system.
So if you want to use Microsoft’s latest free encoder software to create WMV files for your Zune, here it is.
Perfecting video conversion for the Zune HD
For you diehard videophiles who want the perfect video conversion, I think I’ve finally perfected the process of taking TV show recordings and turning them into WMV files for the Zune HD. There were lots of challenges to getting this to work, especially finding the right combination of tools and settings.
Now, the objective is to convert a TV show recording (WTV file from Windows 7 Media Center) into a WMV formatted file for my Zune HD media player. My TV recordings are in standard NTSC format (4:3 ratio) which is a squarish picture. The Zune HD has a wide-screen display (16:9) so I need to configure the conversion to handle this situation. One option is to stretch the picture side ways to fill the screen, but then the displayed image is distorted. Another option is to crop off part of the top and bottom of the TV image to create the 16:9 size. For my process, I decided to do the cropping option.
So, my first step is to convert the WTV file to the older DVR-MS format because most of the available conversion tools are compatible with DVR-MS and not WTV format. This is done by using a conversion program (wtvconverter.exe) that is supplied with Windows 7. Note, that the TV video resolution is 720×480, so we need to do some cropping to get it down to the 16:9 ratio size.
For this operation, I chose to use a freeware program called FFMPEG which is designed for video conversions. My goal in this step is to crop off 38 pixels from the top and bottom of the image, and then shrink the image down to a final size of 480×272 (which is the Zune HD screen resolution). I also want to convert the DVR-MS file to MPEG2 format at the same time. To do all this, I use the following command line with FFMPEG: Read the rest of this entry »
My video conversion process
On a daily basis I record TV shows with my TV Tuner card and convert them for viewing on my Zune HD media player, so I automate the process using a wonderful utility called DVRMSToolbox (DTB). In conjunction with another great tool called ShowAnalyzer, I have a process of scanning through a recorded TV show file to find commercials, strip them out, and then convert the edited video file to WMV format for my Zune HD. All completely automatic.
Now, with a video conversion there’s lot of different converters, options, and settings you can use. For the Zune, I have the option of generating WMV or MP4 formatted files. I prefer using the WMV format, since it is designed to run on Microsoft OS devices. The MP4 is equally good, and is more universal as it can run on the Zune as well as the Apple iPod and other video media players. I opted for WMV because I can add more metadata (e.g., TV Show title, category, etc) than with the MP4 format.
With regards to playback quality, I’m not sure which of the formats (WMV or MP4) is better. That is one thing that I want to investigate in the future. Along with picking a format, there is a multitude of settings you can use. Video bit rate, Audio bit rate and frequency, frames per second, smoothness settings, keyframe rate, etc. are some of the different settings you can use. Each setting will affect the video playback quality as well as the final file size, so there’s a trade off. If you don’t care about file size, you can jack up the settings for the best quality. If generating a smaller file size is important, then you need to dial down these settings.
Being the stickler that I am with my videos, I’ll sacrifice having a larger file size if I can get better video quality. It really annoys me when the video I’m watching has a lot of video tearing, pixelation, bluriness, or jumpiness. I want a really smooth and high quality video for playback on my Zune. Read the rest of this entry »
SOLVED: Issues with running Windows Media Encoder
After doing a clean install of Windows 7 on my main desktop PC, I installed Windows Media Encoder 9 to assist in video file conversions to WMV format for my Zune. When I tried to run this command to do a batch conversion,
c:\Windows\System32\cscript.exe “C:\Program Files\Windows Media Components\Encoder\WMCmd.vbs” -input “C:\Users\Public\Recorded TV\ER_TNTP.mpg” -output “C:\Users\Public\Recorded TV\ER_TNTP.wmv” -loadprofile “c:\Dave’s Files\VideoTools\zune_profile_hd.prx” -v_clip 0 2 0 0
this error message dialogbox appears on the screen,
This error is related to the Data Execution Protection feature in the Windows OS, and the system won’t run the VisualBasic script to do the conversion. The proper corrective action is to use this HotFix supplied by Microsoft titled, “Hotfix entitled: FIX: You may experience issues when you use Windows Media Encoder 9 Series on a computer that is running Windows Vista”. After installing this HotFix (originally designed for Vista), I can run this conversion script with no issues.
So if you’re running Windows 7 or Vista and you see this error when trying to use Windows Media Encoder in batch mode, here’s your fix! 
Zune Software 3.0 will convert WTV files automatically
One thing that I learned with all the video conversion investigation I did today, is that the latest Zune Software (3.0) will automatically convert your recorded TV shows to Zune format for your Zune. What you need to do, is add your “Recorded TV” show folder as a monitored video folder in the Zune Software settings. Then, whenever a WTV file (new format for Windows 7) is found in that folder the Zune Software will automatically begin the conversion and syncing process. Easy!
It actually converts the video in a reasonable amount of time, especially if you have two or four processors in your machine. I know that some users in the past have complained that the background conversion program (ZuneEnc.exe) is running with a very low priority (and thus runs slow), I didn’t see much slowness on my system. Of course, I have an Intel Quad Core processor so that may be the reason. So if you aren’t in a big hurry and do most of your TV show conversions over night, that may be the easiest way to get your TV shows on your Zune.
Now, if you want to have the commercials stripped from your shows before converting and syncing to your Zune, you’ll need to use a different process (like I do, using DVRMSToolbox) and some procedure scripts.
Video conversion issue just a glitch?
I’ve spend all day today working on this out-of-sync audio issue I have with my video conversion process. I explained the issue in my previous posting, which I find strange since I was very careful to not install any codec packs. After my fresh install of the Windows 7 OS, I installed DVRMSToolBox along with Windows Media Encoder 9 and its SDK. It might be that WME9 could have installed some DirectShow Filter or codec that is causing this problem.
So, I ran several tests today converting my 1-hour WTV file (Stargate Atlantis TV Show) with different settings. Ultimately, here was my final solution:
- Installed the freeware called InstalledCodec which I used to display all the audio and video codecs as well as DirectShow filters installed on my Windows 7 machine.
- Using InstalledCodec, I sorted the list of items by installed date, and then disabled all of them from working. Since I very recently install the Win 7 OS on my system, it was easy for me to identify the new codecs and filters that were installed after the OS by date.
- I then ran my various conversion tests, using many different methods.
Now, under these conditions I should have only the basic codecs, splitters, encoders, filters, etc. working on my system. Essentially, everything that was supplied by Windows 7 (and any downloaded updates). So after running my various tests, I still was unable to rectify the out-of-sync audio situation for my test file. So I began to think that maybe the test file was messed up when it was recorded (even though my TV Tuner card has it’s own built-in MPEG encoder) with a previous installed codec, splitter, etc.
Thus, I manually recorded a 30-minute news broadcast to a WTV file, and use that file for a 2nd test. After the conversion process, I examined the generated WMV file on my Zune HD, and low-and-behold the audio appeared to be in complete sync with the video from start to finish! So, maybe it was something on my system before the “big purge” that was causing the WTV file to be messed up. But that is really strange, since the converted video files on my PC played back fine.
I can’t explain it… I’ll just hope that by removing all those 3rd-party Codecs and filters that my system can convert videos once again without making the final product appear to be like an old English-dubbed Bruce Lee movie!
If I continue to have problems in the future, I’ll need to keep disabling any MPEG and audio -related items shown in InstalledCodec until I find the one that is causing the problem. It actually might be a Windows 7 installed item, which I might need to replace with a 3rd-party codec. Time will tell…
