Hi All,
Just to add my findings (i'm a UK PAL user):

TheaterTek DVD - NO
WinDVD 5 - Confirmed NO, (in either standalone or MCE versions, RDP or compatibility mode [n/a as i'm on PAL])

Thanks your your attempts guys. End of the road for me though.

---

Regards, Andy
My MCE setup
MCE2004	Shuttle SK41G , AMD 1.2Ghz , Connect3d ATI Radeon , WinTV PVR-250

True

Thanks for the "colon" bug report and workaround.  I had two files that just would not convert, but that seems to be the problem.  I could not figure out what made these two different, since many other shows were converting perfectly.  I am converting them successfully now.

Thanks!

---

Alex S. Brown
webmaster@alexsbrown.com
http://www.alexsbrown.com

You're welcome!

More goodies below...

I wonder if there are other people out there like myself who uses a CD Writer, not a DVD Writer.  After taking a hint from Jeff (THANKS AGAIN FOR THE HINT!) about creating my own .PRX files, I spent my whole evening last night experimenting with different settings.  Finally, I created a handful of .PRX files that I am quite happy with.

I got the idea from a VHS VCR, recall those SP, LP, EP modes?  With a bunch of calculations, I now announce the birth of 4 PRX files!!!!!

• CDR-30.prx      - stores up to 35 min of WMV video on a CD-R/CD-RW at a high bit-rate (~2800 kbps)
• CDR-60.prx      - 65 min (~1500 kbps)
• CDR-90.prx      - 95 min (~1030 kbps)
• CDR-120.prx    - 125 min (~780 kbps)

I used 700MB as the amount of storage available on a CD-R/CD-RW.  Calculated the maximum bit rate and so forth.  I'm testing them out as I speak.  They are currently only good for NTSC, I can create PAL also.  If anyone is interested, I can post.

This leads to another idea for Jeff.   --> Allow user to select a different PRX file for each file conversion.  This can be done by duplicating the file selection screen, such that each file selection screen has a different PRX file associated with it.  When files are checked off on different screens, user can click on Start and go to bed!  After the conversion, those files can be saved to a CD-R/CD-RW.

I'm sure the idea on CDR-30,60,90... can be applied equally well for DVDR, such as DVDR-1H,2H,4H... just like VHS tapes!!!

Cheers!

Shawn (CA)

---

Dell Dimension 4600 2.4GHz 1GB
WMCE 2005 SP2 Rollup 2+
ATI AIW 9600 PRO, Omega Driver
AverMedia A180 HDTV
Creative SB Audigy
Issues:
1. MCE hangs recording off both tuners for hours
2. Audigy 2 Sampling Rate 96kHz does not stick after wake up

Yep, very good catch!

Not sure of the method at the moment but it shall be fixed.

---

Jeff Griffin
www.jeffreygriffin.com

I have PowerDVD 5 and it works in compatibility mode only in both the UI and Standalone. 

Hope this helps!  Thanks for the Speed improvement.

Good deal Shawn! (I guess you posted that while I was writing my post... did not notice it until now).

I had had the idea to include many more profiles with the program but then decided that most people will pick one and stick with it. I do feel that there will be a thread popping up when the final is released to talk about different profile settings though...

As far as selecting the different PRX files for the same dvr file Jose has suggested this as well and I believe it to be a good idea, but more than likely will be a V2 thing. Reason for the wait is mostly due to the MCE version... Some things that sound easy turn out to be quite hard to "dumb down" enough to be usable from a remote. I have some ideas for this but the priority for now is just getting the final bugs out and getting the final out the door.

---

Jeff Griffin
www.jeffreygriffin.com

Shawn,

I really like your CDR-90, CDR-120 convention for naming the PRX files.  I recommend that we start swapping good PRX files with each other on the TGB boards here, and use that basic convention.  It is so much easier to understand than all the gibberish settings you need to actually create a PRX file!

To Jeff, Alex, Jose, and anyone else who contributed code, I want to say that this release is rock-solid for me.  I have already converted more than 20 shows, all with commercials cut via DVR Edit, all with successfull Closed Caption conversion.  I have saved almost 30 gigs of hard drive space.  Thanks!

I actually like the converted captions better than the standard ones.  After they are converted to a SAMI file by DVR 2 WMV, the captions appear in a black area beneath the show -- standard captions sometimes block part of the scene.

Great, great work.  The only bug that got in my way was when there is a colon in the title, and that was easy to workaround.

---

Alex S. Brown
webmaster@alexsbrown.com
http://www.alexsbrown.com

This application looks great but it just won't work correctly for me. Is there anyone in PAL land who has got it to work properly? I've tried PAL CBR & PAL VBR & had problems with both.

When processing just one file in the MCE GUI, the file reaches the end but the encoding time goes on forever. I can cancel out & there is a .WMV file created however which appears complete.

Stacking up three files it processed the first one correctly I think but then displays the error "No combination of intermediate filters could be found to make the connection. The program will now exit". As per a previous posting this is supposed to indicate that it doesn't like my DVD decoder which is NVDVD 2.55 & also doesn't explain why it should correcly convert the first file.

---

--

Cheers

Nigel Barker
Live from the sunny Cote d'Azur

OK, I figured out the problem. I created my own profile as per the instructions on the Microsoft web page that was posted in an earlier reply. I made it 2000Kb/sec rather than the 1700Kb/sec of the PAL CBR profile supplied. It works like a champ so I went back to look at the differences & saw that the supplied profile has the 'Allow nonsquare pixel output' box checked whereas my new profile did not. So I fixed the supplied profile & unchecked this box & now the application works & I am able to stack up several files for processing.

I looked at the differences between different supplied profiles & saw that NTSC has 'Allow interlaced processing' checked as well as the 'nonsquare pixels' whereas PPC has neither.

It's looking really good. Quality is decent & processing time is better than real time on my 3GHz P4. Only problem that I now have is that I cannot FF or RW either in MCE or WMP9 but I'm guessing that this is a limitation of the WMV format or WMP.

---

--

Cheers

Nigel Barker
Live from the sunny Cote d'Azur

Shawn - you can always write a quick batch file to use the command-line version to do the conversion with different profiles.

The way I have things setup is:
- At 1am every morning, run a scheduled task which launches the command line encoder to encode all DVR-MS files that are modified within 1 day. (Next I am going to update the scheduled task to only encode cetain shows, but for now it does all recorded shows from the previous day). These are encoded with the PocketPC profile. (I would really like to also copy them directly to the storage card on my Pocket PC at that time but for some reason I seem to have problems with that). This is so I can watch yesterday's shows on the train in the morning.
- At 2:30am every other morning, run a scheduled task which launches the command line encoder to encode all files that have been edited. And to delete them after encoding. This is for archiving and I use a high-quality WMV profile for this. (this task also then copies all my archived content to my Shared Videos DFS tree on my network as well(,

---

--
James Edelen
Microsoft MVP - Windows XP M

NigelB - You should be able to FF and REW. My guess is the indexing is screwed up in the WMV file. If you have Windows Media Encoder 9 installed, you can run the Windows Media File Editor utility to try and index the file (after opening your file just choose save and index from the file menu).

I am not sure why the indexing would get screwed up, though.

---

--
James Edelen
Microsoft MVP - Windows XP M

Alex, Shawn,

The profile names that are best are those that make sense to a consumer. I am definitely a proponent of naming them by use:

Home Theatre, Portable Media Center (unfortunately the Home Theatre profile may not work well), Pocket PC

I don't like High, Medium and Low, each profile should achieve great quality on it's intended device. I'm sure nobody wants to look at trash just to save size.

I don't think CDs are a good long-term solution. One file per disc in the long-term will result in many discs. DVDs are not much better. Maybe the Blue-ray DVD at over 20GB will make optical media useful for video. Once you have edited a TV show you rarely need to re-edit it, so I archive/backup shows to old hard drives that I don't use anymore. I put the drives in a drive caddy until full and then I find another hard drive I want to update with a newer one. At that point I remove it from the caddy. I will only need to put that drive in my machine in case of a disaster.

If enough people like the CDR naming proposal then I would suggest adding it alongside the other names, even if it duplicates profiles. The names should makes sense and maybe there are several ways at looking at this that make sense. Perhaps the identical profiles should be grouped on the UI screen so that you can tell that they are essentially identical.

FF/RW is no-op in the current shipping version of Media Center, which is why you can't get it to work in there.

You should be able to get it to work in WMP though.  There are no buttons to do so.  You have to hit ctrl+shift+f to fast forward, and ctrl+shift+b to rewind.  If that doesn't work, then the file is not indexed.  If the file is not indexed, you won't be able to move the little slider bar through the video either.

-aseigler

I want to get this higher priority item out before I get a chance to post more on the other stuff (CDR*.prx and batch scripting).

During a scripting experiment, dvr2wmv_cmd.exe crashed:

D:\Recorded TV> "C:\Program Files\Griffin Composites\DVR 2 WMV\dvr2wmv_cmd.exe" doa3.dvr-ms doa3.wmv /profile CDR-125.prx /priority 4 /closedcaptions

Now Converting doa3.dvr-ms

Unhandled Exception: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
   at cc2smiLib.ToSamiClass.StartConversion()
   at dvr2wmv_cmd.Class1.DoConversion(String source, String dest, String profile, Boolean deleteFinished, Boolean reverseTitle, Boolean forceTwoPass, Boolean forceNTSC, Boolean writeCC)
   at dvr2wmv_cmd.Class1.Main(String[] args)

doa3.dvr-ms (Xbox ad.) is one of the two videos that came with WMCE.

This crash happens everytime.

I should add that the same conversion with dvr2wmv standalone version worked fine.

More later

---

Dell Dimension 4600 2.4GHz 1GB
WMCE 2005 SP2 Rollup 2+
ATI AIW 9600 PRO, Omega Driver
AverMedia A180 HDTV
Creative SB Audigy
Issues:
1. MCE hangs recording off both tuners for hours
2. Audigy 2 Sampling Rate 96kHz does not stick after wake up

A while back, I noted that the "smi.Channel2" file was almost always empty.  I did a little research, and found that it is almost always empty, because closed captions channel 2 is almost never used in real broadcasts.  Here is an aritcle with some more details:

http://www.robson.org/capfaq/international.html#Language1

The article reports that as of 1998 "60 Minutes" is being broadcast with two closed captions channels.  Technically there are actually FOUR closed captions channels.  My Sony TV actually can show all four of them.  I scanned through all my cable channels (in the US in New Jersey) and could not find anything broadcast on CC2, let alone CC3 and CC4.

I will see if "60 Minutes" is still using CC2, just so we can test it, but it looks like that is our only real hope of testing the "Channel 2" feature for closed captions in DVR 2 WMV.

If anyone knows more about this or needs the CC3 or CC4 information, please let us know.  So far it looks like I am one of a very small group that even cares about CC1!

---

Alex S. Brown
webmaster@alexsbrown.com
http://www.alexsbrown.com