I’m trying to find an alternative to the DVR-MS format to save HD space.

 

Currently, I am streaming movies in DVR-MS format from my PC to my Xbox 360 / HDTV.  My movies are typically in AVI or MKV format.  I use ConvertXtoDVD to decode these movies into DVD VOB files.  I then use VideoRedo to replace the VOB container into the DVR-MS container.

 

Problem is, for AVI’s that are barely pushing 700 MB, the final DVR-MS is typically 4 GB (stemming from the decoding to DVD).  I’ve got 2 externally housed HDs totallying 800 GB and they are filling fast.

 

I noticed VideoRedo can replace MPEG containers but not AVI.

 

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Depending upon the precise video & audio formats used you can stream avi files to the 360, though not through the Extender interface. If you want to stay in the Extender world then WMV is your only choice. There are a number of tools that will convert DVR-MS to WMV (eg DVR-MS Toolbox) and Windows Media Encoder (free from Microsoft) should be able to (slowly) convert your avi files to WMV.

 

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MCE2005 (Reluctantly decided not to upgrade to TV Pack - will see if 7MC fixes the issues) | AMD64X2 3600+ | 1Gb Ram | 3x500Gb SATA | Hauppauge PVR150 | nVidia 7300LE silent GPU | Pig ugly big black case | Virgin Media cable | Xbox 360 wired extender

Thanks for the reply, Mark ... can I expect better compression with no loss as opposed to converting the AVIs to DVD then to DVR-MS?

It'll be different, that's all.

WMV is still a lossy compression method, but is more advanced than MPEG2 so can fit similar image quality into smaller files. The greater bitrate you give it, the better image quality you'll get, but at a cost of more disk space being used. It should always be smaller than MPEG 2 though.

 

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MCE2005 (Reluctantly decided not to upgrade to TV Pack - will see if 7MC fixes the issues) | AMD64X2 3600+ | 1Gb Ram | 3x500Gb SATA | Hauppauge PVR150 | nVidia 7300LE silent GPU | Pig ugly big black case | Virgin Media cable | Xbox 360 wired extender

Given the low prices of hard drives (about $160 for 1 TB) there isn't as much to be gained by sending lots of time reencoding files. DVR-MS is the best way to go when you are using an extender as it gives you more control over your files such as Skip, FF, Rew.

I agree on using DVR-MS.  For a long time I used Nero Recode to make MP4's.  But, DVR-MS has the best fast forward and reverse (it actually works) that I have seen.  Since it is native to Vista and extenders, it works out of the box. I do use DVD shrink to save space and notice very little difference at 75% compression.  One TB drives are just so cheap now, it is not worth trying to save too much space.

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Asus P5E-VM HDMI (onboard audio/video), Core 2 Duo E8200, 4 GB RAM, Hauppauge HVR-1800 (x2), LG-GGC H20L, DMA-2100 (x4), Yamaha RX-N600, InFocus IN76, D-LINK DIR 655, Vista Ultimate

They are cheap but not much fun to manage even if you have 2TB or more. And HDTV DVR-MS file sizes are ridiculous. These files have to get smaller. I can't believe there is no way to encode and playback using a different codec that supports FF/REW and has good compression.

My 2TB is already busting at the seams from the lack of good compression in these DVR-MS files. For instance, the entire 2008 Olympic coverage on NBC in HD takes up about 750 GB. The Saturday and Sunday 8-hour coverage files are 50-60 GB alone. The 2007 NHL Hockey season is another 750 GB. I have tried using conversion to WMV9 (using VC-1 specification) to maintain compatibility with XBOX360 but this would take weeks to encode one file.

 

I checked out MCE Video Encoder on the Lightning software site. It will let you encode to DivX/Xvid through MCE but it's only re-active and not pro-active.I would like to have a solution that natively encodes in this format (really I don't care about the codec, just make the files smaller) when recording in MCE.