So you’re recording everything under the sun with your Media Center and you laugh in the face of those 80gb DVR users. That is, until you realize that you too have your limits. The options quickly become an ever expanding number of hard drives ($$) or find a way to squeeze those WTV files down into something more reasonable. There’s no reason to compress them into a zip file, why not turn them into something you can still watch from time to time without the hassle of decompressing.

That’s where MCEBuddy comes in, with the latest versions supporting WTV files you can finally save some space while keeping your vast recording collection intact. You’re even able to setup MCEBuddy to do regular checks and automatically compress your recordings for you.

To get started you’ve got to sign-up over at the MCEBuddy to be able to download the latest beta version. As mentioned this version includes support for WTV files that wasn’t previously included in MCEBuddy. This bleeding edge support does come at a price, however, as there is no GUI for this beta version at the time of this article.

After Downloading MCEBuddy

Not to worry though, once you’ve downloaded and installed MCEBuddy we’ll take a look inside the config file, make a few changes and be all set. Once you’ve downloaded and installed, open Windows Explorer and navigate to the location you installed MCEBuddy. Copy the “mcebuddy.conf” file to your desktop to allow us to make and save edits since Windows won’t allow you to save them directly to Program Files folders.

Video Conversion Settings

Afterwards, open the mcebuddy.conf file in notepad. As you can see it doesn’t get very complicated. Under “[SearchPath-0]” set path equal to the location of your Recorded TV directory and create a new line that reads “searchpattern = *.wtv”. This way we’ll only be looking for and converting WTV files, not everything.

Under “[Task-0]” you may want to change the profile from “H264MP4” to “x264-HDTV-BEST-HD” as problems arose from using the default H264 setting during these tests. You can find these updated profiles on the MCEBuddy Forums and they should be entered into the “mcebuddymencoder.conf” file using notepad in the same manner as with “mcebuddy.conf”.

Automatic Conversion Service Settings

By default MCEBuddy checks for new recordings once every minute then begins conversion once it finds one. You can change these by adding “StartTime” and “EndTime” to the “[Settings]” section of the configuration file. Set these values equal to the 24hr value you’d like to start and stop transcoding. For example, “StartTime=20” and “EndTime=6” sets start time to 8pm and end time to 6am. You may also adjust the polling time with “pollperiod” using milliseconds, so “pollperiod=60000” checks for new files every minute (60 seconds).

Once you’ve finished editing the conf files copy them back into the original location in the MCEBuddy program directory. By default, MCEBuddy runs as a service which can be enabled or disabled through the Services control panel (start –> type “services” –> enter) but it can also be run manually.

Starting the Process

To manually start MCEBuddy run “MCEBuddy.Service.TestAsCMD” from the program directory. Using this method you’ll also be able to monitor the progress of the conversion.

Unfortunately, once you’ve compressed them they’ll no longer appear under Recorded TV. You’ll need another viewer such as Media Browser to look through your newly compressed recordings. Also, conversion can take quite some time depending on the maximum sizes you desire as well as the processing power of the machine doing the work.

For even more information on MCEBuddy head over to the website at mcebuddy.com and sign-up!