Strip Out Commercials and Convert MCE Recorded TV to WMV or MPG with DVRMS Toolbox

By | February 2nd, 2006 comments icon (5) Comments


dvrms toolbox mceI’m constantly amazed at what is freely available on the internet. I was only looking for a way to get a 2-hour episode of 24 on a single-layer DVD for a friend who had missed the first night, but the commercials pushed the file over 5GB making it too big for a single-layer disc. After hitting the forums at the Green Button, I found DVRMS Toolbox, a free tool that takes a DVRMS file (the file type that Media Center uses for recorded TV) and makes commercial stripping dirt simple. After automatically stripping out commercials from “24″, the resulting mpg file was 4.2 GB, which fit comfortably on a single-layer DVD. But wait, it gets better.

Then, I find out through Tim Coyle at The F-Stop Blues that there is a MCE Version of DVRMS Toolbox that you can download from Media Made Easy. Additionally, the tool integrates with DVR2WMV to convert your TV to WMV files, which take a lot less space than DVRMS files for the same quality. So, not only can you strip out commercials and convert to MPEG or WMV, but now you can do it from within Media Center.

For those wondering, commercial stripping was extremely quick and spookily accurate. The 2-hour episode of “24″ finished in less than 30 minutes and the commercials were stripped perfectly. If you’re running MCE, you need these tools.





Filed in: Software

  • Genius74

    From the size of the file that’s being stated, I take it that this was a SD recording? This should work on HD feeds (I don’t see why not), I just wonder how small it will get.

  • David Walker

    Genius74 said: From the size of the file that’s being stated, I take it that this was a SD recording? This should work on HD feeds (I don’t see why not), I just wonder how small it will get.

    It was SD, although I did have a HD recording available as well. From what I’ve seen, an HD recording at one hour (720p) comes in at a little over 6GB, while SD comes in around 3GB. I’m going to experiment and see if the commercial stripping will work on HD and how much smaller the file will be. I’ll report back here on my findings.

  • Genius74

    Sweet, I’ll do the same.. I’ve had issues with certain MCE plugins, but if this works for me, I can at least save 25% on storage. I’m more of a watch-n-erase guy, but I would like to back a few things up on Single Layer DVD-RW.

  • ciregnol

    Yes, I love DVRMSToolbox. I have been using it for several months now. It has a great feature set.

    The only downside I am experiencing now is that any file that I have tooled through it will not record via the MCE DVD recording feature. I would love to find a way around this limitation.

  • Manitos

    Howdy,

    From what I am reading, the DVRMS Toolbox fit my desires perfectly except the link is broken. :(

    After googling the DVRMS Toolboox, I found DVRMSToolBox by babgVant on GreenButton. This application is not as straightforward as the OP’s images. Is the babgVant the same application as the application referred to by the OP?