MC-TV Converter: How Archiving your Media Center Programs gives you HD when there is none (1 Viewer)

[mattCR]

One of the biggest complaints I have about TV box sets is how often they don't provide you the option of buying in HD (Blu). I mean, if you're going to broadcast in HD, but I can't buy it in HD?
With Windows Media Center, I can keep terabytes of recordings, going back years.. and I do that now and again. But what if I want to keep an entire series... without those pesky commercials?
It was simple in the age of VHS, when I would sit on the couch and press "pause" while I live recorded Star Trek, MST3k and other programs. But now with DVRs and time shifting, you're gulping down the commercials at the same time. But what if I want a transportable stream that is less commercials and contains the content as broadcast on my cable?
Well, that's where something like MC-TV Converter comes in.

Using MC-TV Converter you can do several things.. convert your recorded TV shows into iPad ready MP4, full content MKV, remove commercials, eliminate substreams.. it's also possible to set it up to automatically do this for you.
I've used MC-TV for YEARS. Frankly, it's one of the most useful tools in my little playbook, WTV (windows television recording) in, MKV with stripped commercials out.
I brought this up because one of the questions I get asked privately on this site is: what is up with storing TV? Well, I store a TON of it. And, for the most part I want in HD without commercials. But I can't always buy it in Blu. Not because I'm cheap, but they don't sell it. But I've got a DVR and MC-TV, and I can pretty much get exactly what I want, preserving a Dolby Digital sound and 1080I/1080P/720P video.
More on MC-TV Converter: http://mctvconverter.vivolum.net/content/site/en/home/index.html

 

[hunnypuppy]

MCEBuddy rocks, it does all this and more. It does things MCTV cannot do, like convert BACK to WTV files, select audio tracks, increase volume, embed subtitles and chapters, instead of cutting videos it can create chapters.
It can monitor converted files and delete the source when the converted file is deleted, it can send eMail notifications, it can create a schedule for conversion, you can select which CPU's you want to use, change priority and also importantly it support ShowAnalyzer along with Comskip.

Basically it ROCKS! and it's free

TRy it out, I never went back to MCTV after using MCEBuddy.

mcebuddy2x.codeplex.com or mcebuddy.com

 

[mattCR]

MCEBuddy rocks, it does all this and more. It does things MCTV cannot do, like convert BACK to WTV files, select audio tracks, increase volume, embed subtitles and chapters, instead of cutting videos it can create chapters.
It can monitor converted files and delete the source when the converted file is deleted, it can send eMail notifications, it can create a schedule for conversion, you can select which CPU's you want to use, change priority and also importantly it support ShowAnalyzer along with Comskip.

Basically it ROCKS! and it's free

TRy it out, I never went back to MCTV after using MCEBuddy.

mcebuddy2x.codeplex.com or mcebuddy.com

Also very good At the time this post went up, MCEBuddy was still getting kinks worked around in it for me, so I wasn't so eager to recommend But the latest versions have been quite good.

 

[hunnypuppy]

Basically after using MCTV Converter for a 1year, I switched to MCEBuddy. Now there's no looking back, it's got a much simpler interface to use, a TON of more features and best of all I love the new 2.3.15 release with Hardware encoding it cut down my conversion time by 80% for HQ encoding. (that's almost a 10x increase in speed).

Not that I have anything against MCTV but MCEBuddy developers just rock! Subtiles, TiVO, Hardware encoding, archiving, eMail notifications - I'm just in love with this program.

See this link for performance comparison:
https://mcebuddy2x.codeplex.com/discussions/395633

2.3.12 to 2.3.14 a 75% reduction in encoding time
2.3.14 to 2.3.15 I'm seeing another 80% reduction in time, it just takes me like 4 minutes to convert a 60 minute recording with 2.3.15 with hardware encoding!
Plus I like the fact that if 1 encoder fails for whatever reason (TiVO recordings are very flaky), it just falls back to a back up and I never have to worry about it.

 

[mattCR]

Yep, I use mostly MCEBuddy as well. At the beginnings, Buddy had more crash and stability problems, but now it's very steady and it really rolls. Easy to archive and it's Commerical remover works like a charm