To get started download and install the latest version of DVRMSToolbox which includes the new todvrms and a profile to convert MKV TV shows to WTV. Since we’re converting movies and not TV shows we’ll need a profile as well, download this premade profile and extract it to your profiles directory under C:\Program Files\DVRMSToolbox\Profiles or create your own by opening the DVRMSToolbox settings program. Select the Convert MKV TV Show to WTV profile and press the New Profile From button.

Then give your profile a name and description and remove the extra methods that aren’t needed for our simple conversion. Since we don’t need to retrieve and save TV series metadata we can remove most of the existing profile. Those experienced with DVRMSToolbox can add other actions such as removing the original file and moving the file to an alternate location at this point as well. Save your profile and close the settings application.

Now that we have a profile to do our conversion open up the DVRMSToolbox GUI program to get started with the conversions. Determine whether you’d like to process a single file or a complete directory and select the appropriate tab. Select the proper input and output files/directories and our new profile from the dropdown box and hit run. Simple as that the profile should start converting our MKV to a more Media Center compatible WTV.

It’s also possible to run the entire operation from the command line though the DVRMSToolbox GUI provides a graphical interface that most uses will find much easier to use. Once the conversion has completed, that’s all there is to it. You can now open your movie inside Windows 7 Media Center with full support of the built-in codecs including Dolby Digital audio and audio support on first level fast forward. No more fussing with codec packages and settings.

Remember, there is slim support for the WTV format from third-parties at this point however and if you’re accustomed to viewing movies outside Media Center or Windows Media Player you may want to hold off on converting until your favorite third party programs add support for the format. This is likely to be a fairly popular solution for those who are Windows 7 Media Center exclusive however.

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.

Using the FileWatcher feature is a lot like having an extra set of hands (and eyes) to maintain your Windows 7 Media Center’s file system and take care of tasks like converting your media from one format to another without any actual day to day work from you. All you need to get started is to download DVRMSToolbox and install it. Be sure that the FileWatcher service is enabled during installation and you’ll be all set to get going.

Once installed you’ll need to restart your machine to start the FileWatcher service. Afterwards you can begin to edit the functions of FileWatcher through the Processing Conditions Editor which can be found in the programs menu.

Once open you’ll see a few of the preset conditions already established to determine whether or not a file has already been processed by DVRMSToolbox. Creating new conditions above or below these existing conditions is important. Creating a new condition below Processed Files means each file will only be processed once. Once FileWatcher determines the file has been processed the Processed Files condition tells it to move on to the next file.

If you’d like a condition to be run on a file every time be sure to change the priority to raise it above the Processed Files condition. The Every Sage File condition tells FileWatcher to move to the next file if the current one is marked as a SageTV file. Finally, the Every File condition instructs FileWatcher to move on to the next file as long as the file size is above 0.

Keeping these conditions in mind, create a new condition by selecting New Condition on the right hand side. Here you’ll be able to assign an action from any of DVRMSToolbox’s profiles to be used on any file matching your set conditions. The possibilities are practically limitless, with the right profiles and conditions you can setup just about any file modification you can imagine with DVRMSToolbox and FileWatcher.

For example the condition above will convert any show containing “NCIS” in the title to an iPhone format. In the shot below you can see that we placed the condition below Processed Files so that each file is only processed once.

One last thing you’ll need to setup is in the DVRMStoMPEGSettings program. Open the program from the programs menu and switch to the FileWatcher tab. Here you’ll need to setup the watched folders and output directory that you want FileWatcher to process. Double click the input boxes to open a folder browse dialog and select the output folder as well as the folders to monitor for new files.

You may also want to adjust the video types monitored by FileWatcher in the Video Types and Watched Ext input box if your using a type not listed. Afterward you’ll need to restart the FileWatcher service, either through the services application (start –> “services” –> enter) or by restarting your machine.

That’s all there is to it! Save yourself sometime by automating those repetitive tasks with DVRMSToolbox’ FileWatcher and free up some time to spend actually watching your shows!

To get started you’ll need to download and install DVRMSToolbox from Andy VT’s blog. This handy little program can go a long way toward enhancing the behind the scenes experience of your Windows 7 Media Center. During installation be sure to enable the FileWatcher service to be installed as it will be required to automatically process new files added during the operation of Media Center.

Once you’ve got DVRMSToolbox installed run the DVRMStoMPEG Settings application from the programs menu. Select the FileWatcher tab and make sure that your desired “scratch” disk is being watched. This is also the location you should set as the default recording location inside Windows 7 Media Center. Under Watched Ext you should also be sure that .wtv is listed as a file type to watch.

Next we need to create a profile to move files from the recording location to the storage location. Select the DVRMSToolbox tab and press the New Profile button on the bottom. Give the profile and name and description then press the Add button on the right and select Durrant.Plugins.FileOperation and Durrant.Plugins.FileSizeWait. Press the Select button to continue.

A configuration dialog will appear for each plugin. Configure the File Operation to Move the Input File to your storage drive location as shown below. The FileSizeWait operation can keep the default settings.

After you’ve configured each plugin make sure that the FileSizeWait plugin is listed first in the profile. This will ensure that the recording has finished before trying to move the file. You can change the order by selecting the entry and using the Up and Down buttons located at the bottom. Then Save this new profile.

Afterward, Save your settings with the Save button at the bottom and then open Process Condition Editor from the programs menu. Then create a new condition by pressing the New Condition button on the right hand side.

Now enter a description for this new condition and select the new profile you just created from the dropdown box. Below that you’ll see an empty box and a few buttons on the right. Click the Add button to establish a set of rules to check on each file picked up by FileWatcher.

For example, to move all .wtv files, which are the default recorded TV format, add a FileExt equals .wtv condition. This will move all .wtv files to your storage location unless you define more conditions. When FileWatcher determines that all the conditions are true the profile you’ve selected will be executed. Save your conditions to return to the condition editor.

If using DVRMSToolbox for other things you’ll likely want to ensure that files are moved to storage last. Use the Raise and Lower Priority buttons on the right to move the new condition to the bottom of the list then hit the Save button.

That should be all there is to it! If everything has gone correctly FileWatcher will routinely check your recorded TV location for new recordings then move them to a permanent storage location once they’ve completed. Check out this guide for details on using a Ram Disk as a recording scratch drive!

First we will need to get the tools to do the conversion. For this job we’ll use DVRMSToolbox, one of the most useful applications out there for Media Center users. Download and install DVRMSToolbox from Andy VT’s blog and then (if running beta 7048 or earlier) download todvrms as well. One last thing you’ll need is the profiles from Coyote on Andy VT forms. Just download the package and extract it to your DVRMSToolbox install directory.

Unfortunately, in order to convert WTV to an MP4 we’ll need to get a DVR-MS from it first. Recent versions of the Windows 7 beta include the ability to convert .wtv files from Explorer by right-clicking the file and selecting “Convert to DVR-MS”. If you don’t have this option however, you can also use todvrms to convert the file. There is already a detailed guide on Converting WTV to DVRMS using todvrms here.

As soon as you’ve got a DVR-MS file to work with from the original WTV file open DVRMStoMPEGGUI from the DVRMSToolbox programs menu. This process is fairly straight forward. Double-click the Input File box and select your DVR-MS file, then do the same for the Output File selecting “.mpg” as the file type.

You may or may not want to select Normal or High under Process Priority depending on the time frame you would like the conversion to be completed in. Setting this higher will use more system resources but should complete the conversion faster than the default setting. Setting this to RealTime isn’t recommended as this can cause system instability in some situations.

Under Profile you should select the one labeled “Export to iPod using mencoder”. This will use a combination of mencoder and ffmpeg to convert the DVR-MS file into an MP4 file. There is also an included ability for importing the MP4 file into iTunes automatically. If you don’t want this to happen or if this part of the process gives you trouble you can edit the profile in DVRMStoMPEGSettings and set it to “Continue on Fail” or delete it completely.

There is also a profile included in the default install of DVRMSToolbox called “Export to iPhone with FFmpeg” created by Ben Drawbaugh of EngadgetHD. This profile has some bugs in it, however, including one affecting 720p60 content.

Once complete you should now have an MP4 file compatible with most portable video players. Some players will still need to convert this file into an AVI, such as the Creative Zen, but this should be able to be completed as usual with the software provided by the player. That’s all there is to it!

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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.

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Get the Tools

To do this conversion we’ll use DVRMSToolbox which can be downloaded from Andy VT’s Blog. The latest version of DVRMSToolbox will include all the programs we need to do the conversion from MKV to DVR-MS for our Media Center Extender.

The profile for DVRMSToolbox was developed by Ben of Engadget HD with help from Warren Wiltshire of Seagull Consulting. Be sure to head over there and check out Engadget HD as they have lots of great home theater related articles each day.

Let’s Get Started

Once you’ve downloaded and installed DVRMSToolbox launch DVRMStoMPEGSettings from the start menu programs. We will need to tell the profile that we aren’t just working with TV series files and instruct it to not send all the files to Recorded TV.

Since we aren’t exclusively using TV series’, locate “Convert MKV to DVR-MS – mencoder” in the profile listing then press the “Edit Profile” button. Select the line that reads “Read metadata from TvDB and build Sage XML file” and click “Configure”. Check the “ContinueOnFail” checkbox and click OK.

Next locate the line reading “Move file specified in Context(‘OutputFile’) to …” and select it then hit “Configure”. Uncheck the “UseRecordedTVPath” checkbox and double-click the DestinationPath dialog box to set the output directory. This will prevent each converted file from being moved to the Recorded TV directory. Alternatively, you could also simply remove this step from the conversion profile. Once this is done, save the profile and exit DVRMSToolbox Settings.

After saving the conversion profile you should be able to convert non-TV series files to DVR-MS. Open DVRMStoMPEGGUI from the start menu programs. Once inside, double-click the Input File dialog box and select the MKV file you want to convert (you will need to change the file types dropbox to “All Files (*.*)”). Then set the output file name by double-clicking the Output File dialog box and setting the “Save as Type” dropbox to DVR-MS.

Inside the main window set the Process Priority, the higher the priority the faster the transcode should take place. Setting the priority to “Realtime” is not suggested, however, as this can cause system instability. In the Profile dropbox select the “Convert MKV to DVR-MS – mencoder” profile and make sure the “Use Selected Profile” checkbox is marked.

Press “Run” to begin the conversion. This process can take quite a bit of time to complete and doesn’t scale well with multiple core systems. The resulting DVR-MS file will most likely take up more space than the original MKV file as well. Any MKV files that have been converted can be deleted after the process is completed.

That’s all there is to converting your MKVs to DVR-MS using DVRMSToolbox. You should now be able to play the converted file on any Windows Media Center Extender.

Be sure to leave a comment on your experience and tips for using DVRMSToolbox and Media Center Extenders below or in the Google Friend Connect at the top of each page!

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.

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Luckily, with the latest version of DVRMSToolbox (1.2.1.6) the Media Center Commercial Skipping Plug-in has been  updated to install and work on Windows 7. Now all we have to do is deal with that pesky new file format. The easiest way to do that is to just convert it back into a DVRMS format.

Download the Tools

To get started you will need a copy of DVRMSToolbox 1.2.1.6 or greater installed from Andy VT’s blog. Then you will need to download the WTV to DVRMS profile from right here. Extract the .dpc file to the “Program FilesDVRSMToolboxProfiles” directory (“Program Files (x86)” for x64 users).

Configure DVRMSToolbox and the Profile

Next open DVRMStoMPEGSettings from the start menu. In the DVRMSToolbox tab scroll down and select the “wtv to dvr-ms” listing and press “Edit Profile”. Find the line marked “Run C:Program FilesDVRMSToolboxApplicationstodvrms.exe” and double-click to bring up the configure window. Double-click the “ProcessName” input box to bring up a file dialog to select your “todvrms.exe” file.

Now, open the FileWatcher tab in the main DVRMSToolbox windows. Make sure that all the directories you will be recording to are listed under the “Watched Directories” box. If not double-click to add them. Under the “Watched Ext” input box add “,.wtv”.

Depending on the power of your computer you may also want to increase the number of available workers to speed up processing of multiple shows at one time. Conversely, if you have a less powerful PC you may need to increase the “Wait Time” if you notice your DVR-MS files are being scanned for commercials before they are complete. Save your settings then open “ProcessingConditionEditor” from the start menu.

Once inside the ProcessingConditionEditor, press the “New Condition” button on the right. In the Description input give the rule a name such as “wtv to dvr-ms”. Then in the dropbox select the “wtv to dvrms” profile that we downloaded earlier. If you don’t see it listed double check that it’s in the ‘DVRMSToolboxprofiles” directory in your Program Files.

Now press the “Add” button on the right of this window. In the first dropbox select “FileExt”, in the second select “equals” then enter “.wtv” in the last box. Press OK then save this new entry. In the main windows select your new entry and press the “Raise Priority” button on the right until it’s at the top of the list.

Now once the show has finished recording (auto-detected when the file’s size has stopped increasing for 10 minutes) it will be converted to dvr-ms. It should then be picked up by DVRMSToolbox as usual and scanned for commercials. To adjust the time to wait after the recording has finished you can edit the profile from DVRMStoMPEGSettings. For more on commercial scanning be sure to check back to Hack7MC soon for another guide.

Now that you’ve got your commercial free content why not share it through-out your network with Sharing Recorded TV Between PCs!

Once you’ve got a DVRMS file it’s much easier to scan and remove commercials from the file using DVRMSToolbox. First, download and install DVRMSToolbox.  Once installed, open DVRMSToolbox’s DVRMStoMPEGGUI from the programs menu. The GUI tool has a very simple interface.

Just like in ToDVRMS’s GUI double-click the Input file dialog box to select the input DVRMS file. Do the same with the output box, naming your new DVRMS file to save. Keeping the DVRMS file format is the simplest solution, allowing the shows to appear under Recorded TV in Media Center.

Next you will need to select a profile from the dropbox to process the file with. Selecting the “Cut commercials out of a DVR-MS file and output DVR-MS” will output a DVRMS file minus the commercials. As you can see there are also a large number of other profile options to suit any needs you might have. At the time of this article, I couldn’t get the DVRMS to transcode to MPEG successfully in Windows 7 however.

Once the correct profile has been selected press the “Run” button and DVRMSToolbox should proceed to scan for commercials and then re-mux the DVRMS file outputting a commercial free version of the recording. All the tools used are available for free from Andy VT’s Blog including DVRMSToolbox 1.2.1.6, the newest version.

That’s all there is to it! It’s not quite as simple as we would all like it to be but there will likely be improvements over time and probably even automatic commercial removal in the future.

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