File Conversion/Storage

[lupi]

Right now I have a WMC server/extender setup going with a couple homerun units. Using this to watch live TV on most of the TVs in the house along with being a house wide DVR.

Only real concern I have after using this for awhile, WMC seems to like being on the excessive size for the shows being recorded. I can get anywhere from 2 gb to 4.5 gb per 30 minute session.

I was thinking about doing xbmc or plex for the shows that mostly I only watch (and do so normally from another computer/laptop, so keeping those easy for someone to watch on the extender not an issue. Using either those have an easy to use method to convert the .wtv files to something of a significantly smaller size (and better suited for long term retention?)

 

[TheELF]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTV_(Windows_Recorded_TV_Show)
According to the all knowing wizard of wiki you can convert them with ffmpeg and/or handbrake,the latter supports quick sync so if you have a newer intel chip try that out,since it comes with an graphic interface,ffmpeg is used as the coding engine by a lot of converters but you will have to search for one that also supports wtv files.
You will have to experiment with the settings to get the smallest size that is still acceptable to you quality wise.

 

[Binky]

Blasphemy! Don't shrink the size, just buy more hard drives!

Both MCE Buddy and DVRMStoolbox can convert and remove or mark commercials if desired.

 

[Raincity]

Plex will read and transcode WTV files if you setup the Plex home video directory and point it to your WMC TV recordings directory. Be aware that Plex wont be able to download the TV metadata unless you go through the trouble of renaming them in the proper scheme that TV.db requires. You can recode them with handbrake but I found that's its not worth the time in my opinion. I just delete the content after viewing and learned to live with the size of the recordings.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Blasphemy! Don't shrink the size, just buy more hard drives!

This without the wink.

 

[DesiPower]

Blasphemy! Don't shrink the size, just buy more hard drives!

Both MCE Buddy and DVRMStoolbox can convert and remove or mark commercials if desired.

This without the wink.

Agreed, bad idea to permanently downgrade quality when you have Plex to do it if needed

 

[tential]

You can use handbrake to shrink the filesize with very little hit on quality.
That's what I use to do it.

Takes awhile to do though if you don't have an i7 processor and it'll take awhile to get a size/quality you're happy with. I'd say do an encode at various settings til you find what you're happy with.

As far as stripping commercials, gotta ask someone else for that.

Quality downgrade isn't nearly bad as what people are making it out to be, well, assuming you use good encoding settings.

 

[lupi]

Probably around 85% of the library is recorded, watched once then deleted, so minor quality lose for significant size savings wouldn't be a problem. Would have thought this would be more common given the older format wmc uses.

 

[Binky]

Why not setup dvrmstoolbox to monitor a folder, then you can drop files there and they will be converted then deleted. It's very configurable - i.e. set it to watch for files, mark or remove commercials, convert to this or that file type, move new file here, delete old file, etc. Commercial marking or removal requires paid versions of comskip or showanalyzer. Showanalyzer still works fine, but it looks like development has stopped.

The author of dvrmstoolbox is fairly active over at missingremote.

 

[nextJin]

Both MCE Buddy and DVRMStoolbox can convert and remove or mark commercials if desired.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTV_(Windows_Recorded_TV_Show)
According to the all knowing wizard of wiki you can convert them with ffmpeg and/or handbrake,the latter supports quick sync so if you have a newer intel chip try that out,since it comes with an graphic interface,ffmpeg is used as the coding engine by a lot of converters but you will have to search for one that also supports wtv files.
You will have to experiment with the settings to get the smallest size that is still acceptable to you quality wise.

Op just use these 2 methods and WMC.


It'll be what you are looking for.