To get started download MCEBuddy 1.1 (x86) or MCEBuddy 1.1 (x64) from our Hack7MC mirror or check the official MCEBuddy page for the latest version download links. Once downloaded, extract the files from the archive and run the setup .msi file. Go through the standard setup install then run the program’s configuration from Programs –> MCEBuddy –> MCEBuddy Configuration. After launching the program you can access the configuration at any time through the System Tray as long as you minimize the program instead of exiting.

The first area contains the settings to be used when converting the video file. Choose what type of video to output at the end as well as whether or not to delete the original file, cut commercials, sort by series and start the program minimized to the System Tray. For HD programming I would recommend WMV (no resize) or H.264 MP4 (no resize, 2-pass) to retain the best quality video. Standard Definition television can likely get by with lower quality settings such as MPEG2 or H.264 regular. Though there was a minor issue with one file that was processed most came out fairly good quality.

Also of note in the configuration is the Video Paths section. Here you will need to set your Recorded TV directory and another directory to use for processed videos. The program seems to strongly dislike using the same directory for both and files disappeared forever when trying to use the same directory for each.

Set to the default directories the program performed quite well. WTV files were converted and commercials were cut with a fair deal of success from the shows. You can see above that a File Log is provided giving you a full recount of processed files as well as a more detailed events log that will gladly provide you with details on each step of the process performed on every file.

Unfortunately, the program doesn’t yet support the cutting of commercials directly from a WTV file so they’ll all need to be converted. Curiously the program doesn’t seem to offer DVR-MS output either which would help to overcome the last issue being the incompatibility of Recorded TV and non Media Center file types (WTV and DVR-MS). This means you’ll either need to use the Videos section under Pictures and Videos or obtain a third-party plugin like Media Browser to look through the files.

Aside from those few issues MCEBuddy does exactly what it claims it will do, convert video files into other video files automatically and even remove commercials. Hopefully we see some further progress on version 2 and it will include support for WTV files natively. It was clear early on that the switch to WTV from DVR-MS would hinder development of programs like this (likely intentionally) and it’s a problem still lingering shortly after the official release of the operating system.

To get started you’ll need to download and install both WTVWatcher and Lifextender or, if you prefer, we’ve also got a guide on using DVRMSToolbox with Lifextender. Once you’ve got both programs installed you’ll need to setup WTVWatcher to monitor the Recorded TV location. Use the preferences to set the location of your Recorded TV folder, typically C:\Users\Public\Recorded TV. WTVWatcher will begin to go to work converting the WTV recordings into DVR-MS files that are readable by Lifextender.

WTVWatcher uses the built-in conversion program provided by Microsoft to convert each WTV file into a DVR-MS file. For even more information on WTVWatcher check out our previous review of this handy little tool right here. Once the files have been converted we can setup Lifextender to automatically scan for and cut commercials from these files. Next, open Lifextender and choose Options by right-clicking the icon in the system tray.

Under the general settings be sure to set the TV Recording path to the same directory as the one you set previously inside WTVWatcher. Also, unless you plan to run the process by hand enable the Automated Library Scanning so that Lifextender will automatically find your new shows for processing. To test your settings you can start a manual processing of the files by right-clicking the Lifextender system tray icon and selecting Scan Media Center Library.

Lifextender’s processing dialog will appear as the program scans each recorded show for commercials. This can take quite a bit of time depending on the length of the show and the complexity of commercial scanning process.

After processing each file will be added to the “blacklist” inside Lifextender’s options. This allows you to check the progress of Lifextender’s processing of files as well as preventing the program from scanning the same program each time the library is scanned for new content. You can find the blacklist under the Options –> Advanced tab. Here you can also add individual files to be excluded from processing, though if you have a certain show or channel you’d like to permanently exclude from processing there is an included Rules feature to allow for easier management.

Unfortunately, there has been some issues reported with Lifextender not accepting the converted files from WTVWatcher and the Lifextender program is no longer in active development. If you experience the same issue your only option may be to use the DVRMSToolbox method in this guide using an alternative program for converting the WTV files to DVR-MS. Also, be sure to drop a line in the comments below with as much detail as you can provide including which version of Windows 7 you’re using, Lifextender log info and anything else noteworthy. Perhaps we can sort out the issue with more information.

For most people, however, this method should provide a simple solution to easy commercial removal from Windows 7 Media Center recordings. Hopefully the future will bring us an alternative to Lifextender and more active development (and hopefully more open source projects as well!).

To get started we need to have ShowAnalyzer installed as well as DVRMSToolbox and the Windows 7 Media Center Addin. Be sure to download and install the latest version of DVRMSToolbox as well as the 7MC adding as it’s not included in the package by default. Once you’ve got all three installed let’s get started configuring each program.

Start by opening DVRMSToolbox’s DVRMSToMPEGSettings and on the first tab set your preferred Analyzer to SAV1 for ShowAnalyzer (version 1). Then switch to the MC Addin tab and make sure that the Commercial Skip option is enabled.

Finally, under the Commercial Skip tab make a note of the Commercial Path so we can setup ShowAnalyzer to use the same path when saving it’s commercial XML files. You also have the option to setup the keys used by the Media Center Addin to skip commercials during playback as well as enabling auto skipping of commercials.

Finally, you’ll need to decide whether you’ll be using ShowAnalyzer’s new directory watcher option or DVRMSToolbox’s File Watcher. We’ll cover using ShowAnalyzer’s directory watcher here as it’s much easier to setup and fairly fool-proof guaranteed to work correctly. Open up ShowAnalyzer and go to Tools –> Settings.

Under the Scheduler tab make sure that the Directory Watcher feature is enabled and the autostart service is installed. Then press the Add Directory button to add your Recorded TV directories to the service.

Next, under the Output tab make sure that the location of the DVRMSToolbox files being created matches the Commercial Path in your DVRMSToolbox settings from above. Then open up Windows 7 Media Center ad ensure that the DTBAddin is listed and enabled under Settings –> Start Menu and Extras –> Extras Library. Finally, you may want to restart your system to ensure that the newly installed services have been started properly.

That should be all there is to it! By default pressing the right arrow on your Media Center remote should skip commercials for any program with a commercials XML file. Depending on your settings in DVRMSToolbox and ShowAnalyzer it may take some time before the XML file is available for a particular recording.

To get the latest version you’ll need to be a registered member of the Dragon Global Forums and download the latest version from this thread. Once installed run the ShowAnalyzer User Interface from the programs menu and you’ll immediately notice the improvements over previous versions.

This revision of ShowAnalyzer comes with a very well done and easy to use interface. Usability has greatly improved over previous versions allowing even novices a reasonable chance of mastering the basics in a mater of seconds. Even better for beginners is the addition of a Directory Watcher service built in.

Inside Tools –> Settings.. you’ll find the option to enable a Directory Watcher service that will monitor your recorded TV folders for new recordings and add them to the process queue automatically. No more fussing with DVRMSToolbox’s FileWatcher service priorities and settings.

Under the Output tab you’ll find the options for processing your recorded TV files including support for DVRMSToolbox’s MCE plugin to support skipping commercials during live TV.

Getting started with a single file or even whole directories is extremely simple. Just open up the File menu and select single file or directory. ShowAnalyzer will add the shows to the queue to be processed and get down to business. Depending on the number of analyzers you set in the Scheduler options you’ll see a number of tasks appear in the Active tab.

Processing a single hour long WTV file took just over seven minutes to complete. A cursory check of the output indicates that the program was fairly accurate in determining the location of commercial breaks as well although some fine tuning may be necessary.

That’s all there is to getting started with ShowAnalyzer with brand spankin’ new WTV support. Be sure to stick around as we’ll most definitely go further in depth with this amazing product in the near future!

If you’ve ever paused a show in Media Center only to have the end of the show cut off once you resume watching it or have the show simply start playing again while you’re taking care of more important business, you likely need to increase your buffer size to avoid these problems in the future. Luckily solving this problem is relatively easy.

To get started open up regedit by typing “regedit” into the search box in your start menu and pressing enter. Next navigate through the hierarchy to get to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Video\Tuners

Then add the following as DWORD entries by right-clicking the right hand pane and selecting New –> DWORD:

1. BackingStoreEachFileDurationSeconds
2. BackingStoreMaxExistingBackingFiles
3. BackingStoreMaxNumBackingFiles

Now the default values for these entries is 300 seconds and 8 files. To increase the buffer length you can increase the length of each file or simply increase the number of files to be created. Using many small files can save hard drive space while using fewer large files may increase performance, though likely only marginally.

To edit the length of each file double click BackingStoreEachFileDurationSeconds and change the base option to Decimal. This will allow you to input a regular value instead of a hexadecimal code.

The length of your buffer will be equal to the number of seconds times the number of files able to be created (300 * 8 for example). Entering a value of 900 in this DWORD would increase the buffer length from 40 minutes to 2 hours. This can be a much better value for those of us who watch shows that run an hour or longer and frequently pause for long durations.

To increase the number of files allowed to be created edit the other two values in the same manner. The BackingStoreMaxExistingBackingFiles value assigns the maximum number of files that can be created for the show currently being viewed while BackingStoreMaxNumBackingFiles refers to the maximum number of files allowed to be created total before a cleanup is performed.

Next, restart your machine for the changes to take effect. That’s it, you should now have a longer buffer length in Windows 7 Media Center. I haven’t had time to test this on extenders but would hazard a guess that it would in fact work as the buffer resides on the main Media Center.

Be sure to return next week for a regularly scheduled Reader Question and Answer. If you’ve got a question for next week drop us a line below!

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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!

First thing you’ll need is a file or two to test comskip detection on. To get these you’ll need to convert a few recorded shows to DVR-MS. The comskip guide suggests using a small and large file, say a 30 minute show and an hour one. You may also want to check to make sure you have the latest version of comskip from the official site.

Once you have your test files create a shortcut to comskip and then open the properties for that shortcut. In the Target input box add “-w” without the quotes and save the shortcut. Now drag and drop your first test file onto the shortcut. Comskip will begin to process the file with a window displaying a number of graphs and the show in the background in black and white.

After the process has completed you’ll be able to navigate the timeline by clicking this screen. The far left being the beginning of the timeline and the far right being the end of the time line, navigate through and find point where commercials begin and end then note the graphs at these points.

Take a look at the image below for an idea of what some of the graphs represent. This is how we will determine which methods to use when detecting commercials. If you notice that the channel logo detection and aspect ratio change on each commercial change those may be good methods of detection for you.

Here you can see that there are a number of areas where various graphs drop out. The aspect ratio changes and channel logo is no longer detected at these positions and may provide a reliable detection method for this channel or show (default comskip installs include a “PostProcessing.bat” that demonstrates per channel ini loading).

To set these as the default detection methods open up comskip.ini in a text editor such as notepad. The first line of your ini file should include a variable called “detect_method”. This method should be set to a number which is the sum of the detection methods you’d like comskip to use. For instance, Aspect ratio is 32 and logo detection is 2 so the detect_method would be 34. Here are a list of available detection methods in the current comskip distribution:

1=black frame, 2=logo, 4=scene change, 8=fuzzy logic, 16=closed captions, 32=aspect ration, 64=silence, 128=cutscenes, 255=all

If you notice that comskip is routinely cutting off a few seconds of the show before or after a commercial break there are a few settings to help you easily adjust for this. First the “padding”setting allows you to add a certain number of seconds to the beginning and end of commercial breaks that will not be cut. If you want comskip to remove more instead of adding assign remove_before and remove_after with the number of seconds to be removed.

You may also want to alter the minimum amount of time for a block to be considered a commercial. To do this find min_commercial_break and max_commercial_break, these two variable define in seconds the minimum and maximum times to consider a block as commercials. For instance, if a commercial break is only 25 seconds and min_commercial_break is set to 30 seconds this wouldn’t be considered a commercial break.

These basic tips should have you on your way to fine tuning your comskip settings to suit your recordings. For even more information check out the official guide to tuning comskip or the comskip tuning forums. Also, be sure to check back with Hack7MC for more tuning guides in the future!

Changing the skip intervals isn’t a difficult but still seems to be a little more trouble than it should be to edit the registry values. Luckily now I won’t have to. Below you can download a series of registry files with various skip interval settings. Just double-click and allow the registry modifications. The following are included in the pack:

1. Default Intervals
2. Both 29 Seconds
3. Both 1 Minute
4. One Minute Forward and 30 Seconds Back
5. Two Minutes Ahead and 1 Minute Back
6. Two Minutes Ahead and 30 Seconds Back

Just download the file below and run whichever registry file best suits your needs. Alternatively, if you don’t like those intervals you can set your own using dword values in a registry file or check out this more complete guide using regedit.

Download: skip_intervals.zip (2.47kb)

The best method for getting the job done at this point is DVRMSToolbox, a free piece of software from Andy VT’s Blog. This handy application can practically do handstands by itself for all the features it has built in. The one to focus on today is it’s ability to monitor new files in your recorded TV folder then execute a set of commands on the file.

We’ve covered this before here on Hack7MC but thanks to abuttino on Andy VT’s forums we have access to a more refined set of profiles for converting WTV to DVR-MS automatically. To accomplish this you’ll still need to download and install DVRMSToolbox from Andy VT.

Once you’ve got DVRMSToolbox installed download these updated profiles from the forum post made by abuttino and extract the files to your profiles directory. The profiles directory will be located under either Program Files\DVRMSToolbox\Profiles or Program Files(x86)\DVRMSToolbox\Profiles depending on the version of Windows 7 you’re running.

Next you’ll need to create some folders under the C:\ root drive named “Processing Show\Cleanup\”. If you are using a different drive or a recording directory other than the default “C:\Users\Public\Recorded TV” you’ll need to edit the profiles to match. You will also need to setup File Watcher for “.wtv” files and make sure only one worker at a time is being run. To do this open DVRMSToolbox MPEG Settings and locate the profiles.

Once you have found them make edit the profile by select it and press “Edit Profile” at the bottom. Then edit entries by double-clicking the lines that contain the incorrect entries and make the changes. If running an x64 version of Windows you’ll also need to edit the “Program Files” location to “Program Files (x86)”. Save the profiles once you’re done and enter the File Watcher tab.

Under the File Watcher tab you’ll need to check to make  sure that only one (1) worker is set to run at a time, due to restrictions of the profiles. Also add “.wtv” to the watched extensions input box.

Now, save those settings and close DVRMSToolbox MPEG Settings and open Processing Conditions. Here you will need to add conditions for detecting new “.wtv” files and tell it to use one of the new profiles, “WTV to DVRMS Converter for FW by abuttino”. Select New Condition on the right on enter “WTV Files” in the description. Press “Add” on the right and select “File Ext” in the first dropdown box, “equal” in the second and type “.wtv” in the third (no quotes). Save the condition and move it to the top of the list using the “Raise Priority” button on the right.

After this you can enable automatic commercial detection by DVRMSToolbox by editing your “Every File” processing condition and selecting the “Find Commercials in WTV Converted DVR-MS File” profile in the dropdown box. This profile will guarantee that the file conversion has completed before continuing to process the file. After this restart your machine to make sure everything is restarted correctly with the new settings.

If you happen to need more information or just want to stop by and thank abuttino for all his hard work stop by the Andy VT forums and let them know. Most of the information here was taken directly from his guide to setting up the profiles.

Thanks to both Andy VT and everyone who has helped develop for DVRMSToolbox, especially abuttino, for the ability to finally get commercial removal working smoothly on Windows 7.

Stick around Hack7MC for the latest hacks and plug-ins for Windows  7 Media Center. Subscribe to the RSS Feed or Follow on Twitter to be alerted to new posts!

The first step to getting Lifextender to work is getting your WTV files converted to DVRMS. To do this automatically you will need to download and install DVRMSToolbox and follow the guide on Automatically Converting WTV to DRVMS. However, since Lifextender will be handling the commercial removal you should remove .dvr-ms from the watched file types in the FileWatcher tab. This will prevent files from being scanned by both DVRMSToolbox and Lifextender.

To convert WTV files manually you can follow this guide on Converting WTV to DVR-MS. Alternatively, newer betas (7048) of Windows 7 include this feature natively from Windows Explorer by right-clicking the WTV file and choosing Convert to DVR-MS.

Once you’ve gotten your dvr-ms files and Lifextender installed, setting up Lifextender is an extremely easy process. Make sure the Lifextender program is running then right-click the blue orb icon in your system tray. Selecting options will bring you to the configuration, selecting Scan Media Center Library will scan your default recorded TV directory for unprocessed dvr-ms files. Scanning can be automated from the options as well.

Once you’re in the General Settings tab of the options you will be able to set a custom path for your recorded TV if you need Lifextender to scan a directory other than the Media Center default location. There are also option for automated scanning at scheduled times or even when new files are detected. Below that you will find the configuration for how the files should be handled after processing.

Lifextender will remove commercials from the output .dvr-ms files instead of using a plug-in for Media Center as DVRMSToolbox does. While this removes the necessity of having a working 7MC plug-in (something DVRMSToolbox doesn’t quite have yet) it does permanently alter the files. For this reason it’s recommended that you send original files to the recycle bin not delete them immediately, incase there are problems with commercial removal clipping parts of your show. There are also options for removing incomplete recordings and duplicates from your library.

Under More Settings, you will find basic program settings. For automatic scanning Lifextender should be run when Windows starts. Unlike DVRMSToolbox, Lifextender needs to be running in order to do any scanning. This tab also provides tools and guides for tweaking comskip which is the default commercial scanning software. Lifextender also includes support for ShowAnalyser though if you choose to use this you will need to download and install the program separately.

Check back to Hack7MC for future guides on using and tweaking comskip and ShowAnalyser. 

Under the Media Center tab you will notice that Lifextender does come with a Media Center plug-in. This plug-in doesn’t operate the same as DVRMSToolbox however, Lifextender uses this to notify users when a recorded show has completed commercial removal. This is convenient when waiting for commercial skipping to complete before starting viewing your recorded TV. If you should happen to be viewing a show during commercial removal Lifextender may not be able to remove the original when completed. At this time however, enabling the Lifextender plug-in presents errors in Windows 7 Media Center.

Lifextender also includes the ability to add advanced rules to match against show metadata before processing. For example, if you want Lifextender to not process shows with a certain title you can setup a rule for that action. On the advanced tab you will also find options for copying metadata and thumbnails from the original file as well as a file blacklist. Blacklisting a file will tell Lifextender to ignore the file during scanning.

That should get you started with Lifextender, ripping commercials from your converted dvr-ms files. Compared to DVRMSToolbox, Lifextender can be a breeze to setup. Unfortunately, we still need to use both programs to get dvr-ms files to process. Hopefully a simple, commercial free future awaits al
l who want it from their Windows 7 Media Center.

Stay Tuned to Hack7MC for upcoming guides to Comskip and ShowAnalyser! Subscribe to the RSS Feed or Follow on Twitter to be alerted to the latest articles.