Zune Tips Weblog

As you’ve probably read from my previous postings, I use the freeware utility called DVRMSToolbox (DTb) to automatically process the video recordings from my TV Tuner card to Zune format. Although DTb has a built-in action to convert the DVR-MS recording file to WMV format, it doesn’t have any provision for cropping out the top two lines of the video source (to remove the noise). In this posting, I talk about how I resolved that issue by doing the following in DTb:

1. Cut out all commercials from the DVR-MS recording file.
2. Convert edited DVR-MS file to MPEG2 format.
3. Make an external call to Windows Media Encoder 9 to convert the MPEG2 file to WMV format and crop out the top two lines of the video source.

This has been working ok, but requires an intermediate conversion to MPEG2 format before converting to the final WMV format. Since the DVR-MS format is very close to MPEG2 format, the time for this conversion is minimal, however, I’ve noticed some pixelation in the resultant WMV file between the edited commercial breaks.

Recently, the maker of DTb added a new application called DVRMStoWMVHD which is suppose to convert a DVR-MS file to WMV format and has the ability to crop the video source. So, I decided to replace using WME9 and simplify the video processing procedure. Below is what I’m doing now:

1. Cut out all commercials from the DVR-MS recording file.
2. Convert edited DVR-MS file to WMV format (using DVRMStoWMVHD) with cropping parameters

Note, that DVRMStoWMVHD takes as input the same zune_profile.prx profile file that I use with WME9, so the final WMV file is essentially the same as what I was getting using my original method, but I’m able to simplify the process. Whether DVRMStoWMVHD is faster than WME9 or gives better results, I don’t know. So far, it seems to work ok and the WMV file that it generates looks good.

In case you’re curious, the parameters that I’m using in step 2 are the following:

dvrmstowmvhd -i “test.dvr-ms” -o “out.wmv” -p “C:\Dave’s Files\VideoTools\zune_profile.prx” -ch 2 -ct 2

I highly recommend you check out DVRMSToolbox if you have a TV Tuner card and want automate the conversion process of recordings to Zune format.

If you’re a user of DVRMSToolbox for automated video conversions of DVR-MS video recordings, you’ll be interested in knowing that there is a new version (1.2.1.2 Public Release) available. I absolutely love this program, as it has worked flawlessly for me converting my recorded TV shows (from a TV Tuner Card with Vista Media Center) to WMV format and auto syncing with my Zune. I just upgraded to the latest version, and everything seems to be working fine.

My biggest problem, is recording too many shows using this method and filling up my 80 GB Zune! I’ve got so much stuff to watch, I’ll never run out when on a long plane flight or on a business trip.

As you may have read from my previous postings, I’ve got the whole PVR thing worked out to perfection. Using Vista Media Center, DVRMSToolbox and the PVR-150 TV Tuner Card, I’ve got my home PC set up to record TV Shows and automatically convert them to WMV format for my Zune 80. I’ve got certain TV Shows scheduled for weekly recording (e.g., Lost, Jericho, New Amsterdam, Stargate: Atlantis, Stargate: SG1) so I’ll never miss a show again.

With DVRMSToolbox, I’ve got a profile setup with actions that will do the commercial cutting on the DVR-MS file and save it to a 2nd drive in my system as an archive. That way, I can always reprocess the video if I want higher resolution (for maybe my TV set). Unfortunately, I’ve noticed that my backup drive (111 GB) is nearly filled with DVR-MS files. Each file takes about 3 GB of space per 45 minutes of show, so after a few weeks of regular recording this secondary drive is filling up very fast! As such, I’ve decided to not save the DVR-MS files, and just keep the WMV files that are created.

I’ll have to reconsider what I want to save to my hard drive, as I’m thinking I might convert the high-resolution DVR-MS files to a more compact WMV format (with TV-resolution) and save those files as an archive.

I wonder what people do when they have dedicated PVRs set up as a multimedia entertainment system? It’s nice to have videos on the hard drive ready to play (without having to fumble with DVDs), but they can take up a lot of space even if you have a modest number of movies and TV Shows. I can only imagine that people must have 500 GB or 1 TB storage systems for all this data!

I’ve noticed that with my new PVR-150 TV Tuner card, there are a few channels that occasionally generate one or two pixels lines of flickering noise at the top of the frame. You don’t see this noise when you playback the recorded video in Windows Media Center, but you do see it in Windows Media Player or on the Zune when you convert the DVR-MS file to MP4 or WMV format. Also, this noise is not unique to my PVR-150 card, as I’ve seen it with live and recorded TV shows while using an AverMedia USB external TV Tuner (that I had a few years ago). The noise is very distracting while you’re watching a video on your Zune, and it’s particularly distracting if the video is dark (see below).

So what can you do about this? If you’re using the Windows Media Batch Encoder utility, you can specify that the top two pixels of each frame be cropped out of the converted video, which is an excellent method for getting rid of the noise. However, this cropping option isn’t intuitively available with the DVRMSToolbox utility (which I use for automating video conversions for my Zune). If you’ve read my web page on the topic of using DVRMSToolbox for converting DVR-MS files to WMV format for the Zune, you’ll see that I use the built-in action called “Convert DVR-MS to WMV using DVR2WMV”. This action works great, but it doesn’t give you the flexibility to crop the video output. Fortunately, the Windows Media Encoder 9 software (which I discuss the usage on a different web page) can be used with DVRMSToolbox in the video processing procedure. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve got to rave again about my digital media center. Last night I laid in bed watching the pilot episode of New Amsterdam, and it was great watching a video that had excellent picture quality and resolution, great audio, and no commercials. Let me say that again, no commercials! As I was bracing myself for each commercial break, the video just transitioned into the next act of the show. No need to fast forward through a commercial, back up because I went to far, etc. And, using the DVRMSToolbox utility allows for completely automatic video processing. All I do is sync my Zune and I have my recorded TV show available for viewing.

Now, the software to identify commercials in a TV recording isn’t always perfect. I’m using a shareware product called Show Analyzer which does a very good job (worked perfectly for New Amsterdam), but sometimes it will miss a commercial for various reasons. Of course, I can always fine tune the Show Analyzer program using it’s SchoolHouse application, but I can live with a few commercials for those programs that I only want to watch once.

I’m sure glad I got a Zune 80 GB device, since I’m quickly filling it up with episodes of Lost, Jericho, Stargate Atlantis, and many more TV Shows to come!

I know, this web blog is starting to sound more like a DVR-MS Video blog rather than a Zune blog, but just bear with me. I’m currently engrossed in the world of Windows Media Center, TV Show recordings, and video processing.

As you know from my previous postings, Windows Media Center (or Vista Media Center) generates DVR-MS formatted files for recorded TV Shows. The utility called DVRMSToolbox can edit and process these files automatically, but there are other freeware utilities that may be useful for manual processing.

The blog page called “Fun with DVR-MS” by Stephen Toub contains detailed information on how to create code to manipulate DVR-MS files using available SDK modules. His page is pretty techie and is probably more suited for a developer, but he does have a few example utilities available for download that you might find useful.

One utility is a simple Media Player that he put together to play DVR-MS videos. Of course, you can always use Windows Media Center or Windows Media Player to view DVR-MS files, but his utility seems to be a lightweight and effective player alternative.

Also included is a DVR-MS Editor, which allows you to define sections of video in a DVR-MS file to be written out to a new DVR-MS file. This is a nice utility for editing out commercials manually, however, it has very basic controls for editing so it’s usefulness is probably limited. In any case, it offers a quick and easy way of editing DVR-MS files manually.

A link to downloading his sample applications is near the bottom of his web article.

I got my Zune 80 last Christmas specifically for watching videos. Up until now, I was at the mercy of whatever videos I could find on the Internet for download. Sites like Stage6.com was nice in that they had uploaded TV Shows available for download, however, it was very time consuming to search through their database, download the desired video files, convert them from DIVX to WMV format, etc.

I also struggled with using my DVR (which records to DVDs) to record live TV Shows so that I wouldn’t miss them when I was on a business trip or away from home. The DVR that I have is difficult to use, and it always takes me 15-20 minutes to read the manual, figure out which buttons to press, make sure the recording time is set right, etc. Even if I can successfully record a TV show, I could never figure out how to get the recorded video onto my PC to convert the file for my Zune.

Because of all this, I decided to purchase a Hauppauge PVR-150 TV Tuner Card for my Desktop PC system. My only snag, is that I didn’t have a cable line running into my home office. So after a trip to Home Depot for supplies and about an hour in my house attic, I was able to wire an extra cable line into a convenient corner of my office. Note, that I decided to get the PVR-150 model since it has a built-in MPEG2 encoder, so all the encoding is done on the TV Tuner card itself and doesn’t rely on the Desktop PC’s CPU to do the processing. If you’re planning to get a PVR, I highly recommend getting one with a built-in hardware MPEG2 encoder. Read the rest of this entry »

In a previous posting, I noted that I was using a freeware application called DVRMSToolbox (DTb) to process my recorded TV Show files. What’s nice, is that I have it all set up to convert all new video recordings automatically. Thus, I no longer have to manually convert video files using Windows Media Encoder. Using this utility, I have automated this process:

1. Find and edit out all commercials in a new TV Show recording
2. Convert the recording to WMV format for my Zune
3. Merge all MetaData from the original recording file to the new WMV file
4. Move the WMV file to my Zune Sync folder
5. Save the edited TV Show file to a backup folder on my 2nd hard drive
6. Clean up all temp files, etc.

Note, that this all happens automatically, without my intervention. The DTb application has a “Watcher” service that monitors a specified folder on my system for new files, and processes them as per my defined actions. So every morning I can simply sync my Zune to my PC and have all the TV Shows that were processes last night synced to my Zune for viewing later! It can’t get any easier than that.

If you want more details on how I’ve set up DTb and my system to do this, you can check out my new Blog page. Also, I’m using DTb to process DVR-MS formatted files (which are created by the Windows Vista Media Center software that I’m using), but you could get creative and configure DTb to also process DIVX, MPEG2, etc. files automatically for the Zune.

I got my PVR-150 TV Tuner card in the mail on Friday, and spent all last night and this morning working with it. I do have to say that I really like the Media Center software that comes included with the Vista Home Premium OS. It was really easy to use and setup my PVR card. I didn’t bother installing the 3rd-party software that was supplied with the Tuner card (probably junk, anyways). What’s really cool, is that the Media Center software has provisions for a program guide which it downloads from the Internet nightly. I can very easily select individual programs (or series) to record and it does so all in the background.

Note, that Media Center stores the recordings as DVR-MS files, which is a derivative of the MPEG2 format. Unfortunately, the Windows Encoder 9 Software that I’ve been using to convert files to WMV format for my Zune can’t handle that format, so I needed to find another way to convert the recorded video files. Luckily, I stumbled across a freeware application called DVRMSToolbox which does exactly what I need. It’s not the easiest program to set up, but after some configuring this is what I can do with it:

• The Toolbox software will automatically monitor my “Recorded TV” folder, and for all new files that are generated the Tuner Card it will convert from DVR-MS to WMV format (using my Zune .prx profile file).
• Toolbox will also automatically enter the meta data for the TV show (taken from the online program guide). This means the show title, episode name, text description, etc. are all included in the WMV file!
• Toolbox will then move the WMV file to my Zune video sync folder, so the next time I sync my Zune it will have my new TV Show files.
• All temp files that are created are automatically cleaned up and deleted.

I’ve got all of this working now, except I’m having a small problem with the converted video. The top of my video has a 2-pixel tall line of noise that changes in color, and it’s quite distracting. I need to find a way of clipping it out during the conversion, or maybe use a different converter inside of Toolbox. I’m investigating this now, and hopefully can find a good answer. If I do, then I’m all set with my automated system of getting recorded TV shows on my Zune! Read the rest of this entry »