When TV Shows Are Just Too Big...

[Jason Dunn]

A friend of mine is really into World Cup Soccer; I've been recording a few matches for him and burning them to DVD. I've run into something surprising though that hasn't happened before: the shows are too big to fit onto a DVD. The soccer (football?) match in question was Germany vs. Argentina. It was 90 minutes long plus 30 minutes of extra time, then there was some sort of penalty shoot-out at the end. That's a whole lotta' video!

Windows Media Center Edition 2005 by default doesn't include any software to burn TV shows to a DVD in a format that a regular DVD player can read (for shame!) so you need to install the Sonic Encoder from Primetime (http://www.sonic.com/products/Consumer/PrimeTime/Standard/quicklook.aspx) that will compress the TV down to fit. It seems to top out at around 2 hours as being the maximum amount of compression that it can do. I installed Nero 7 and tried to use Nero Vision 4 to burn it, which has worked in the past for videos near the three hour mark, but no dice this time - even at maximum compression of both video and audio, the file was just over 4.8 GB.

Dual layer DVD to the rescue? I used the only one I had to burn the Ultimate Fighter 3 finale last week. The cheapest I can find them in Calgary is $2.89 each when purchased in a five pack. That's a far cry from the 27 cents each for single-layer 16x DVD-R I paid at a recent Costco promotion. What would be really nice would be an integrated DVD burning program inside MCE that would auto-detect commercials and remove them for you to cut down on the file size for DVD burning. That's ultimately what I ended up doing with this long-ass soccer match: I used Nero Vision 4 to trim out the first 16 minutes of preliminary footage before the match started, and I was then able to burn it.

Do any other MCE owners struggle with this issue? What has your solution been?

[Janak Parekh]

then there was some sort of penalty shoot-out at the end.
"Some sort"? Let me guess, you don't follow soccer. :lol:

Sorry for being offtopic. I couldn't resist. To be more ontopic: I'd assume this is a relevant question for any sporting event, although I haven't tried myself.

--janak

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Why not split up the footage? First 90 minutes on one disc, then extra-time and penalties on another one.

[Outlaw94]

I did this a few years ago with the world cup of hockey, olympic hockey (Salt Lake), and any New York Rangers game on TV. I ended up just taking 30 minutes out of my day and cutting out each and every commercial break and intermission. After all that juck was gone I could fit two game on each disc and have menus using Nero.

[xycury]

I've been mostly a background forum reader and have been somewhat mixed on this related issue.

I have always wondered an easier way to cut out commercials. There are a few programs from the TheGreenButton that are free but have not been able to work properly. dCut and MSDVRtoMPEG... are the names.

dCut is a manual cutting with start and stops, and the other is more automatic, and not perfect but close. Again, from what I heard, and not by using it.

I would like some way to convert all the data to WMV and have still decent quality. I'd like to recover all the space that gets eaten up without any hassle.

[jeffd]

when I was converting my anime divx files to dvd using tmpeg express, I could do over 3 hours with reasonable quality (ie, barly any loss over the original divx).

that said... why do you want to save these games to dvd? Once you watch it, its going to sit on the shelf and collect dust.

[xycury]

when I was converting my anime divx files to dvd using tmpeg express, I could do over 3 hours with reasonable quality (ie, barly any loss over the original divx).

that said... why do you want to save these games to dvd? Once you watch it, its going to sit on the shelf and collect dust.

well i beleive he was recording it for a friend and wanted an easy way to transport the recording.

DVD would be the easiest if the DL dvd would have fit fine.

[Jason Dunn]

Why not split up the footage? First 90 minutes on one disc, then extra-time and penalties on another one.

That's just as manual of an option of hacking out some of the footage - I'm looking for something easier than editing the video. ;-) That's would be a great idea though for Microsoft to implement in future versions of Media Center - software that would look at the size of a show and automatically span it onto two DVDs....

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Sorry. :oops: Didn't know the limitations of MCE.

[Jason Dunn]

dCut is a manual cutting with start and stops, and the other is more automatic, and not perfect but close. Again, from what I heard, and not by using it.

I've used dCut before, but it caused problems for me on my MCE system and I'm wary of installing it again.

I would like some way to convert all the data to WMV and have still decent quality. I'd like to recover all the space that gets eaten up without any hassle.

Check out this product:
http://www.mytvtogo.com/site/products.htm

[Jason Dunn]

Didn't know the limitations of MCE.

When it comes to burning DVDs of TV shows that you've recorded, MCE is surprisingly limited. :(

[davea]

I have used DVD SHRINK on quite a few occasions and it is FREE:

Some specifics:

DVD Shrink - DVD Ripping and Backup
Latest Version - 3.2.0.15
Operating System Support - Windows 9x/2000/XP
License - Freeware

DVD Shrink is software to backup DVD discs. You can use this software in conjunction with DVD burning software of your choice, to make a backup copy of any DVD video disc.

DVD Shrink will also burn your backup DVD, if you have installed the latest version of Nero or if you download CopytoDVD.

Web Page - http://www.dvdshrink.org

[Jason Dunn]

I have used DVD SHRINK on quite a few occasions and it is FREE

I'm familiar with DVD Shrink, but I don't see how it could have helped me here... :?

[xycury]

Check out this product:
http://www.mytvtogo.com/site/products.htm

Do you have a review on it, any opinions? This is new to me, thank you, i will check it out more.

Side note, Are WMV files fully supported in MCE? i've never tested that. I was hoping that by converting all these would save space but still have the ability to show them up as a Recorded TV show.

[Jason Dunn]

Do you have a review on it, any opinions? This is new to me, thank you, i will check it out more.

I have a copy but haven't played with it much - I'll try to do just that in the coming week.

Side note, Are WMV files fully supported in MCE? i've never tested that. I was hoping that by converting all these would save space but still have the ability to show them up as a Recorded TV show.

Yes, WMV's are one of the few files that ARE fully supported. ;-) I believe they should show up in Recorded TV. Although I hope there isn't that stupid filter whereby Recorded TV shows ONLY DVR-MS files, regardless of whether or not they're in the monitored folder...hrm.

[xycury]

If there is a filter, then there must be a way to get My Movies on the list. I have heard a hack edit that will allow you to rip DVDs onto the MCE and have this option avialable. my guess would be that WMV's would be easy to do also.

I want the size smaller!.... having well over 1TB of recorded media... i don't watch TV often but am willing to want to when the chance arrives.

i've been pinned to have just "fair" quality just to save every bit of space. I would like it to get the 2+ hour movies down, and bump up for the 1 hour or 30 min show quality.

of course i'd rather have a batch server running all this, right now i just have a file server swapping back and forth DVR-MS files when i want to watch them... they take a few minutes to copy over though.

I'm surprised they haven't updated the WMV 9 Encoder to do Batches and edit the DVR-MS files.....

[Jason Dunn]

I'm surprised they haven't updated the WMV 9 Encoder to do Batches and edit the DVR-MS files.....

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! :lol: (sarcasm) In order for them to do that, they'd have to first update the damn encoder to read ONE DVR-MS file... :roll:

[xycury]

I'm surprised they haven't updated the WMV 9 Encoder to do Batches and edit the DVR-MS files.....

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! :lol: (sarcasm) In order for them to do that, they'd have to first update the damn encoder to read ONE DVR-MS file... :roll:

lol, yeah too bad. Though i wonder why they haven't already. It's alot of space already taken up. and they can already do it with the sync to my device. why not just run that in the background and shrink all the recordings.

[xycury]

Jason: Posted about Avivo and wondered if you might find a bit interested in this.

http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=63951#63951

Found that the Avivo converter works well in "Medium" and "high" quality but is shown poor with the "low" quality (all you get is a slider.... ). This is with WMV. I haven't tested with other settings/encoders.

anyways i'm inbetween thoughts so this may not sound complete.

the encoding is fast though, a 30 min show went to WMV in about 10 minutes. I haven't tested with anything bigger.