[bluenote]

Is anyone here doing in place transcoding to cut down on file size? Using MPEG-2 and having it take up all that disk space really keeps me up at night

All solutions Ive seen end up with the result of the recordings not being considered tv anymore, but videos, and therefore not in the database, lost the description, and so forth. I don't want to have to futz with renaming and re-scraping when the info was there to begin with.

I tried MCEbuddy briefly but again it didn't end up with an inplace seamless conversion even though it outputted a .wtv file.


Is the holy grail solution out there somewhere?

[krustyreturns]

It seems weird that mcebuddy would transcode to another wtv file but lose the metadata tags - so that all the info on the episode is lost. I don't know of a solution to your problem but the mcebuddy idea seems like it should have worked. Did you look at the properties of the created wtv files to see if the episode info was there?

We have discussed having an option to auto generate nfo files for the recordings that are created, these could be used to provide metadata to xbmc if you add the files as video.

Or you could buy a bigger disk .

[bluenote]

I'm going to give this another go and I'll report back. But in the meantime if anyone has this working (through whatever method) I'm happy to hear about it.
thx

[bluenote]

Reporting back that (oddly) as bad as my first experience was with MCEBuddy, my second attempt several versions later was easy peasy and worked well.

Using WTV unprocessed profile, and selecting to remove commercials, files are reconstituted without the commercial video (so about 2/3 original size on disk), and by not selecting a rename/folder option, the file is simply overwritten as the original title, with metadata, so WMC never appears to know the difference.

For bonus points you could use the WTV profile that re-encodes MPEG2 to H.264 but I found that was a little too time intensive for my tastes (results were very good though).. I dont need my main box burning away doing that for all the daily news crap that I dont always watch and that gets deleted within a couple days automatically.

I find the interface just a little clunky, but mousing over everything for help does make things a little easier.

[krustyreturns]

Cool, thanks for the info.

[bluenote]

I've discovered that this seems to break "keep until" functionality, or really, any MCE-based library management that is done automatically.
So far I haven't been able to fix it or determine where the fault lies. The media itself shows up fine in MCE as if it was the original untouched file. (runtime does not match the metadata of course though).

I might have to go back to just using comskip and not messing with the files like I have done with mcebuddy.

[krustyreturns]

If the trancoded files show up in wmc, what does wmc show as the file deletion time?

[tolax]

"I've discovered that this seems to break "keep until" functionality, or really, any MCE-based library management that is done automatically." - this mirrors my experience as well.

I'm using the MCEbuddy/Comskip route as well. It works really well for culling adverts (I'm running donor versions of both products) except as you mention for the lack of WMC automatic pruning. As I'm running a dedicated 2TB drive it is a once a month chore to prune out the old files. If you find a solution though let me know.

Tolax

[krustyreturns]

I am still curious, if these wtv files show up in wmc, what does wmc say about when these files will be deleted?

If wmc says they are all 'keep until delete' and the original wtv was not set this way, then it seems like this is a problem with mcebuddy not setting this meta field properly.

[peetee07]

I have the same setup with MCEBuddy(paid version), that detects commercials transcodes them to h264 then transfers them in my TV Shows library folder in which xbmc scrapes and gets season,episode..etc all while deleting the original once done. There's a command line within MCEBuddy that will export it with proper season etc... after transcoding.

[bluenote]

I am still curious, if these wtv files show up in wmc, what does wmc say about when these files will be deleted?

If wmc says they are all 'keep until delete' and the original wtv was not set this way, then it seems like this is a problem with mcebuddy not setting this meta field properly.

I wasn't able to find metadata (file-properties) that said anything about when it would be deleted.
Inside MCE, doing details on the particular episodes didn't seem to say anything about that either.
I will confirm when I have an un-modified file to check later on today.

Inside MCE the "Keep X episodes" property seems to only show up at the series level. (But I'm a relative MCE newb, so I'll have another look after a recording is finished unmodified).

[krustyreturns]

I don't think that's true. In wmc go to recorded tv, then select a recording, when the synopsis screen opens, go right to 'actions'. Then under additional commands you should see 'keep until'.

[bluenote]

You're right, I wasn't even aware of that 'actions' screen. Thanks
You surmised correctly, that the MCEBuddy edited files show 'Keep Until I Watch' , while my normal unmodified files that are usually deleted correctly are set to 'Keep Until Space Is Needed'. (I'm not sure if there are other hidden file-level fields that would incorporate my series level "keep latest 3 episodes" info .. are you aware of anything like that at the file level?)

I'll pass this on to MCEBuddy support and see if they are now in agreement that this is something they can fix.

thanks Krusty

[krustyreturns]

No problem. Not sure, but I think episodes of a series are marked 'keep until space is needed' if you choose that setting for a series recording.