MCEBuddy2x

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Installation

Again, installation is a simple process. You will probably be asked if you want to install an extra component (I forget which now). Generally, the applications that come with MCEBuddy are pretty useful (although may not be the most recent versions), so there is no harm in installing everything - you'll probably come across a need in the future!

Once it is installed, the conversion engine runs as a Windows Service and there is a front end application that will live in your system tray.
The front end allows you to stop/pause/resume the conversion engine. Before changing settings, you need to stop the engine. This will result in any current conversions aborting. This isn't critical, they will start again when you restart the engine, but you will lose any progress made so far.

Setup

I'll cover the basics of setup here but due to the complexities of configuration, I'll add more pages to this article to go into detail on some of the config I'm using.

Monitor Locations

The starting place for any conversion is the Monitor Locations that you wish to use.

If you've got a backlog of content to convert (ie, a library of Media Center Recorded TV), you may want to set this up on a test folder first so you can process a file or two and then check the results. It's very frustrating when you have a minor change to make, but you may lose a few hours conversion processing.

Within the Monitor Locations(s), you can set file type filters (using standard *.mp4, *.TS filtering) or use a generic [VIDEO] filter (which will convert any video file that it finds). These filters are very useful as they allow you to perform move & rename functions on MP4 files which don't need conversion. It also helped me out where I mistakenly had move & rename on one of my conversion tasks, which resulted in a load of .wtv files getting to my media server. I was able to set the output folder (T:\video) as a watch folder, but only watching for .wtv files. This allowed me to reprocess all of those files without having to go through the root folder manually to move them back to their original location.

There's not a lot of configuration for Monitor Locations - just the directory to be watched, a friendly name for the directory and a file filter, which goes into the search pattern field.

It's this window where I've configured a number of Monitor Locations, all with different functions.
There are the three I mentioned in the NextPVR article (default, fasttrack and movies). I've also got a couple of monitor locations that are google drive folders (running the google drive sync application on my PC to automatically download files I've picked up from elsewhere).

The google drive folders have conversion tasks that just move & rename files and I'm filtering just to mp4 for those folders.

I did have a minor issue with this when I was setting it up, which was to do with file permissions. When Google Drive (or backup and sync as I think they've snappily renamed it) syncs a file to my PC, that file only has permissions for my user. Since MCEBuddy runs as a system user, it had no privileges on that file and effectively couldn't see it.

You can get around this by applying system privileges to any file that arrives (either manually or by running a script), and this is what I did for a day or two as I was testing my MCEBuddy conversion tasks and getting to the bottom of the privileges problem. But there is an easier way.

Go into Computer Management > Services and locate the MCEBuddy service. Open the properties window and go to the Log On tab. Here you will most likely see the service running as Local Service or System. Change this to your username and add your password below.

Restart the service and it now runs with your user privileges. This means it can now see the files that have been synced by Google drive and backup and sync.

The monitor locations window has some expert settings which may be useful for you, I'll cover this in a later page, but there are some settings worth looking at now:

Archive/Delete original file - I suggest not setting MCEBuddy to delete files until you are confident in what it is doing. I still have mine set to archive on most folder locations. I do delete from the google drive locations though as those files would be easier to retrieve.

Archive location - I've set this to the same location no matter what the monitor location is. That just makes it easier to locate files if I need to go back to them. Also easier for manually deleting them periodically.

Minimum age before processing is the setting which sets the period to wait before MCEBuddy attempts to convert. Initially I had this set quite high, but it does work reliably. It monitors the modified date and will only convert beyond modified date + minimum age before processing.
This is where I set my default recording folder to only archive after 14 days.

Then there are two options which could be dangerous, depending on how you use them. as I archive converted files to a different folder, I have selected "Re-monitor recorded videos". This means I can drop the source file back into the monitor location for any file that has been converted and MCEBuddy will reconvert it. Otherwise, that file would be ignored as MCEBuddy keeps a track of files it has converted.
It is useful to have this enabled for initial setup, where you might want to reprocess a file a few times to get your settings right, or for the cases where a conversion has failed or done something incorrectly. Then you can redrop the file to its original location and try a second attempt at the conversion.

Conversion Tasks

And the conversion tasks are the second part of the process. This is where things can get complicated, so I'll assume you are just setting up a conversion for a single folder and you are carrying out a standard sort of conversion task.

The standard conversion task here "Convert to MP4" works well, but there are a couple of tweaks that I've made.

I've set the Profile to MP4 High Quality. If you aren't so bothered about conversion artifacts, you may do well with the "MP4 Normal" or "MP4 Fast". There are also a wealth of different profiles in here that may interest you for specific devices etc.

Next, set your destination folder. Within this folder MCEBuddy will make a series based folder structure (and seasons below that if you set it) as it converts media.

Next is the Ad Remover. I've been told Show Analyzer works well for the UK. I did run it for a period, but I found that it slowed down my conversion (every file has to be analyzed as it is converted) and I was never sure what had been cut out. That's fine if it works well, but if it's grabbed some content that looks like a commercial from within a programme, that's not so good.
Also, If it missed any commercial content, I'm still going to have to go through the programme manually to remove the left over commercials. Finally, I tend to trim my MP4 files to top and tail the programme. If I'm going through this process and looking for any left over commercials, analysing and removing automatically ends up being inefficient.

So I've set that to None.

It's worth a glance through the Advanced Settings to check everything is as expected:

Rename and sort by video information is worth keeping selected, but make sure that Rename without converting is not selected (unless you are just moving MP4 files around).

If you want a folder structure that has Programme name\season number\, you can turn that on using the Organize by seasons checkbox.

I've used one of the Selection Filters to look just for .ts files as that is what NextPVR outputs. This means that any files that accidentally get dropped into folders will be ignored. This setting effectively doubles up on the filter in Monitor Locations, but it means you could run different tasks on different file types even if they are all in the same folder.

I've set my maximum width to 1920, so I preserve the resolution of my files. If you're not bothered about adding aliasing by reducing the resolution or you want to convert for a particular device which has a lower resolution, you'd specify the width of your output file here.

There is an Expert Settings window that goes beyond the Advanced Settings and there is one pretty important checkbox that could do with being ticked in here.

Right at the bottom of the window there is a setting titled "Do not overwrite files". I think this is a pretty essential setting as it means any files that our output with an existing filename will get a numerator on the end of the filename rather than just overwriting the existing file.
Where your PVR is able to apply correct show metadata, this is not always important, but I record some programmes from channels that don't seem to be able to pick this up. The resulting filename is then the programme title and the date/time that the programme was recorded. This generally is ok where it's a first showing, but repeat showings don't receive any metadata and MCEBuddy may incorrectly rename your file.

It did that to me, where it converted a whole series of a children's show, all with the same filename, so all overwriting the previous episode. With "Do not overwrite files" selected, this is no longer an issue.

There are some more features in this menu which are worth a mention, but I will come back to this on a later page.

Settings Window

Returning to the settings window, there are some General Settings that are worth looking at here.

First, Scheduling. If your PC can't manage converting files in the background - it's struggled to do normal operations or has slowed down significantly while a conversion is in progress, you can set all conversion tasks to be carried out overnight here.
Controls are quite granular and allow you to specify a start and end time for conversions and also the days that you want the conversions to be carried out.
This was useful for me when I was clearing the backlog of MCE recorded tv as I was able to max out the number of concurrent conversion jobs and number of processor cores used overnight to speed up conversion, without worrying about having to use my PC at the same time.

The next setting worth looking at is the number of Concurrent conversions. I've got this set to 3 now, but initially had 8 running at a time. If you are increasing this to the maximum, it's probably worth increasing the number of cores in use too.

Processor Management is in the System Settings window. You can chose to limit the number of cores in use, or use all cores. On my computer, I am comfortably able to use 3 cores for 3 concurrent conversions without seeing any impact.

After those settings are done, go back to the main window.

You'll have to press the Start button toward the top of the MCEBuddy window. If you have files to convert, it should all burst into life after a brief pause for file scanning.

There is one more setting that is worth a mention though. In the bottom right corner of the MCEBuddy window, there is a drop down box for priority. You can chose Low, Normal or High. Setting this to high will definitely speed up conversions, but if you are using too many cores, it will massively impact your computer. While I had settings maxed out, if I set this to High, I would be unable to use my PC at the same time as it was converting.

It's a good thing to know about though. I now have it running on high priority as I've managed core usage and number of concurrent jobs, but if I see an impact on playing back video while something is converting, I can drop the priority to normal or low and sacrifice the amount of time it takes to convert a file instead.

You can click the red cross to close the window while the engine is running (IE after pressing the start button) and the window will minimise to the system tray. If you have stopped the engine, clicking the red cross will close the window entirely.

If you have a schedule set, you can use the pause and resume buttons to manually override that schedule. They are also quite handy if you have maxed out your conversion jobs and you want to stop everything without loosing your conversion progress so far. You cannot change settings while the engine is paused though.