Hey All,
Let me start off by saying, I know little to nil about converting video. Today I needed to convert a news segment I recorded for a friend to WMV so they could watch it.
I tried all three utilities in the "DVR-MS Utilities" with no luck. The first, "DVR Ripper" presented me with the standard "<<programname>>.exe has encountered an error and needs to close" message every time I tried to convert. Threw that one out. Next "DVR-Edit". Turns out that only edits, no conversion features yet. Booo. Out. Last was "DVR 2 WMV". This one just wouldnt launch. It installed no problem. When I tried to launch it either through the start menu or through "more programs", it would say "Loading..." and then it would minimize media center, then nothing. So I scrapped that one too. Now I'm not totally dissing these apps, I just think they could use some work in the bug fixes.
At this point I'm frusterated and I'm Googling like mad looking for a solution that works. I find this one article by a Microsoft techie (Stephen Toub) talking like its soo simple to write up a little program to do DVR-MS conversions. When I noticed he offered up a download on his "sample" code I got excited. So I downloaded it and I was really impressed.
He's even tied it in to the 10-foot interface and it works like a charm. There's a few different apps in his package but the one I used was "WmvTranscoderPlugin Setup.msi". Beauty!
Bottom line, if you're looking for something that works, check this out:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/smartclient/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnxpmce/html/dvr-ms.asp
And hoping the author doesnt mind, a direct link to his download:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/b/2/9b269201-0f66-40a0-bdb3-8ff22bb854e0/DVR-MS%20Sample%20Code.msi
Personally, I'd like to see more quality interfaces like this in programs that "just work".
Wow, sweet!
I'm going to try it out.
I wonder if the commercial version is worth paying for?
http://powercompress.com/
(Click Product Tour)
Shuttle PC SX58J3 Win 7 x64 Ultimate Media Center, i7-980X, Ceton quad cablecard tuner (Comcast, SF), Geforce GT-240 single slot card, gigbit network, 3 XBox extenders, two Linksys Extenders, Slingbox Pro HD, PowerDVD 10 Ultra for integrated MCE Blu-Ray playback via My Movies & WHS 2011 with StableBit Drive Pool. Denon AVR-4311CI HDMI Detective box, EX495 Windows Home Server with "My Movies" 4 plug-in, AirPort express and speakers in every room. iPhone 4, Lenovo W520 Thinkpad.
You might want to check out Chris Lanier's blog about Power Compress. Frankly, I always found it "interesting" that after the sample source code was released about editing dvr-ms files, a "commercial" product suddenly became available.
http://msmvps.com/chrisl/archive/2005/05/25/48902.aspx
It's a shame Toub's add-in doesn't work on PAL broadcasts!
MyTVtoGO looks even better.
http://mytvtogo.com
I found it in the davesipaq podcast.http://davesipaq.com/news/davesipaq_podcast_37.html