Hacking Windows7 MediaCenter

Even though the last build of Lifextender predates the Windows 7 beta itself it’s still possible to use this app to remove commercials from your recorded TV shows. Lifextender provides a number of benefits over DVRMSToolbox, providing a much simpler configuration of file monitoring and commercial removal. This simplified experience can prove to be the most important benefit to many users.

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 all 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.

Written by MHealy | 9 comments

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Tagged As: commercial skip, dvrms, plugins, programs

While being able to skip commercials in your recorded TV shows is a big deal with home DVRs, when your Media Center does it for you automatically that’s huge. This is the kind of feature many previous users of Media Center have become accustomed to using DVRSMToolbox. Unfortunately, with the advent of Windows 7 Media Center there is a change in the format of recorded TV shows from DVRMS to WTV. This has caused a bit of trouble in getting DVRMSToolbox working again.

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 Files\DVRSMToolbox\Profiles” 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 Files\DVRMSToolbox\Applications\todvrms.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 ‘\DVRMSToolbox\profiles\” 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!

Written by MHealy | 12 comments

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Tagged As: commercial skip, dvrms, programs, windows 7

Presently there is no program to automatically remove commercials from Windows 7 Media Center recorded TV files. With a little bit of manual work though we can get rid of those pesky commercials though. The first step is to convert the WTV files to DVRMS using this guide.

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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Tagged As: commercial skip, dvrms, programs, windows 7

WTV is the new file type created by Media Center for recorded television shows. The problem with this file format is that it isn’t compatible with older commercial removal tools. It’s also incompatible with DVRMSToolbox, which can be used to convert DVRMS files into other formats such as Mpeg or AVI.

The first step to converting WTV files is to download ToDVRMS, a tool that will convert the files to the older DVRMS format. This is a free tool provided by Andy VT. The file will include both a command line version as well as a GUI version. Extract the zip file to your hard disk and run “todvrmsgui.exe”.

The next step is simple, just double-click the in file dialog box to select the original WTV file you want to convert. Then do the same for the output file, choosing a file name to save the DVRMS file as. The program also gives you the ability to assign some basic metadata to the output file as well, such as title and date. Once the input and output files are set press “Go” to start the conversion.

A command windows will open during processing. Unfortunately, at present, there is no percentage complete display in the command window. Luckily, however, it doesn’t take more than a few minutes to do the conversion.

That’s all there is to converting those WTV files to something more easily manageable. Andy VT’s Blog also has tools such as DVRMSToolbox which can be used to convert DVRMS files to other formats such as MPEG and AVI.

For more on DVRMS and removing commercials from recorded TV shows read this article!

Written by MHealy | 4 comments

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Tagged As: commercial skip, dvrms, programs, windows 7