Convert DVR-MS to Xvid and remove commercials using freeware tools.

Background
If you record TV on your pc using Windows Media Centre the recorded TV will be saved as a DVR-MS file. DVR-MS files are big, depending on the quality of the TV broadcasted in your area an hour of digital tv will take up 1.5gb to 2gb+ of hard drive room. Converting DVR-MS to Xvix files massively reduces the file size, many standalone DVD players can also play Xvid back.

Tools used in this guide
DVR Edit
DVR-MS to MPEG
Auto GK

Let’s begin
First we will use a program called DVR Edit to cut the commercials out of your recorded tv.

Load DVR Edit and open the file you wish to convert



Looking at the screenshot below use the slider to find the start of the program



At the start of the program click the button to mark the start, now browse through the program until the first set of commercials come on then mark the end, you have now created a segment. Now scroll through the commercials, when they have finished press mark in. Repeat this until you get to the end of the program. You should now have segments for all the parts of the program as can be seen below.



Now go file save as and save the segments of the program somewhere.



Click ok to the attributes window that opens, the cut segments will then save.



You now have a DVR-MS file containing just your program, all the commercials have been removed.

Now load up DVR-MS To MPEG converter, this can be downloaded here
Browse for the DVR-Ms file you saved in the previous step and click convert



When you click convert a command prompt window will popup, let this run, it will close when the DVR-MS file has been converted to an mpg file.



Now load up Auto GK, this is the program we will use to convert the mpg file we obtained from the previous step to an Xvid encoded avi file.
Select the mpg file as the input, auto GK should automatically show an AVI file as the output.



The file size you select here will depend on howling the program is, these are the sizes i would recommend depending on the length of the program.

2hours = 1400MB
1 hour = 700MB
45 mins = 350MB
30 mins = 233MB
20 mins = 175MB

Now click advanced settings in step 4, for widescreen programs I’ve found fixed width of 640 works best with 128KB VBR MP3 audio. The codec you want to be using is Xvid.



Once you have done the settings here click ok, then add job.
If this is the only file you want to convert click start.



Various different programs will appear in the taskbar such as VirtualDub and Lame, thats noting to worry about... both VirtualDub and Lame are encoding programs for audio/video that Auto GK uses to encode Xvid Files





AutoGK will do a 2pass encode, once both encodes have finished you will be notified in the AutoGK log window



It’s hard to say howlong the encoding will take, it all depends on the speed of your processor.
As you can see from the above image it took 17 minutes to do the first encode on my Core2Duo which is overclocked to 2.93ghz and around the same amount of time again for the second encode.

I have included a DVR-MS and Xvid sample of the encoding I did to create this guide.
The DVR-MS file is 29.8MB where as the Xvid file is only 10.8MB big, if you watch both samples you will see that there is little difference in quality. I think its defiantly worth encoding your Recorded TV to Xvid, for very little quality loss you saving you’re self a lot of disc space.

DVR-MS Sample (29.8MB)
Xvid Sample (10.8MB)

 

I had the trial of TMPGEnc 4, I could never get it to take a DVR-MS file even though it supports them (apparently)

This is my tried and tested method which has been working perfectly for me, the best bit is all the programs are free