As mentioned in the PVR article, I find the list view of NextPVR harder to use than the grid view that Media Center offered. I also wanted to move a lot of the children's programming and movies out of the recorded TV view so we limited it down to the current recorded programmes or anything within the last two weeks.
Added to this, I had already installed a media server and it would be an advantage for portability if I could convert my TV shows to MP4.
Finally, we had a load of Media Center recordings that needed converting so they were available for any media player.
And Media Center conversion is where all of this starts.
MCE Buddy is an application that started life doing just that, taking .wtv files that other applications and devices didn't like and converting them to a format where you could edit and trim them, but also view them on any device. If you thought NextPVR was flexible, you may be overwhelmed with the amount of options in MCE Buddy. I don't understand all of them, but what follows is a recounting of how I got MCE Buddy to work for me.
MCEBuddy is another Windows Service which runs with a front end application. Within the front end application, you can set up multiple folders to monitor and multiple different conversion tasks. You can use MCEBuddy to convert a file multiple times for different devices, or even just to rename files with details it has downloaded from the internet for better indexing.
It appears to be an application that has grown and had many different functions added as time has gone on. If you trust it, it can even remove commercials for you. I don't trust it that much!
MCEBuddy is actually a suite of free applications in itself and the Windows Service handles the workflows required for taking your input files, converting them to your desired output and carrying out any post-processing on the files. Since much of this processing is processor intensive, you can even fine tune down to the amount of processor cores used, the priority the computer will give to those tasks and the times that it is allowed to carry out the tasks.
Many people set MCEBuddy to churn away overnight, using some spare processing time to convert files - I had to do that to get through my Media Center backlog, but now that is cleared I've managed to tune the application to comfortably convert files in the background and at the point that they are available for conversion.
Older versions of MCEBuddy were entirely free and although you can still download an older version, if you want a supported version, it has now gone to a premium only model. $30 for the functions MCEBuddy provides really isn't a great deal.
MCEBuddy's strength is definitely also its weakness. In attempting to be everything to everybody, the application has ended up with multiple configuration screens, all with advanced settings screens. I found that it was best to try a load of settings and push one or two video files through. After checking the output (for quality, naming convention, lip sync etc) either make more changes and repeat, or then set it free on your files.
Fortunately, MCEBuddy will archive the files it has converted to allow you to reconvert anything that has failed or converted incorrectly and you can also configure it to not overwrite any of its output files, which will do away with the risk of overwriting good converted files with bad ones.
While MCEBuddy will automate a process and lighten your load in the long run, don't be surprised if it takes a little taming first!
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.
My Configuration
My Monitor Locations
I have requirements to move/convert video files from five different locations on a regular basis on my computer:
- NextPVR default folder - to pick up normal TV recordings two weeks after the recording finished, acting as an archiving system for things we've not got round to watching.
- NextPVR fasttrack folder - to pick up files 1 minute after the recording finished, mostly used to pull kid's TV shows out of NextPVR on the day they were recorded and put them into a single location for watching.
- NextPVR movies folder - again this takes recordings two weeks since they were made and archives them into the media server. This is used to filter the files to a different destination in the next step.
- Google drive tv show folder - allowing me to drop files into my system wherever I am.
- Google drive movies folder - for the same reason that I separate out NextPVR tv shows and movies - this also allows me to pick up MP4 files wherever I am and get them processed into my media server.
Obviously, I've not been specific on where the monitor locations (watch folders) are located on my computer here as this will likely be different for everybody. The process for setting them up is pretty simple, just giving them a clear name, selecting the location they are to monitor, selecting whether subfolders should be monitored (in my case, they are in the NextPVR folders as every recording is saved to a series/movie folder, but in my google drive folders, I specifically don't want MCE Buddy to monitor subfolders as my movies folder is within the videos folder used for tv shows) and adding any file filters that might be required (if you want to ignore certain files).
After that, click into Expert Settings, which in this case really aren't that expert.
Here I've selected my options for whether the original file gets archived, deleted or has no further action, selected an archive folder and added any folder exclusions - to avoid getting into any loops, I've set my MCEBuddy archive folder as an exclusion here.
As a side note - I've set my NextPVR files to be archived so I can reprocess them if necessary. In the unlikely event of something going wrong with a conversion, that allows me to pick the file back up and drop it back into the original folder and reprocess.
This was useful when I was configuring the system, but has now just resulted in an extra housekeeping task to keep the archive folder empty after I'm happy with all conversions.
Since getting all of my settings correct for my own requirements, I've not had to reprocess a file (the most significant use of this archive in the past was to reprocess files that had been output with the same filename - I've now corrected this in my MCEBuddy settings so duplicate filenames get numerated rather than overwritten).
Next is the section where I've selected the delay before a file gets processed.
The delay entered here is the delay from the last time a file was written to - it's sensible not to have this too short (especially in the case of files transferred in from an external computer), but locally generated files really can have a short delay here.
This is also where you can restrict files from being reprocessed.
The first tick box (Monitor converted videos) allows you to decide whether MCEBuddy should convert a file that has been output from MCEBuddy. It's suggested that this can be used for daisy chaining conversion tasks, but if those conversion tasks re-encode the video, it is better to always work on the original. Keeping this box unticked will help avoid quantisation errors due to reprocessing the same video again and again.
Where you are archiving/deleting correctly, you can safely use the Re-monitor recorded videos - this will keep processing the same file every time it appears in the monitor location and is very useful for reprocessing files that didn't convert correctly.
If you are struggling to reprocess a file that has previously gone through MCEBuddy, check your settings here.
So after I'd set up all of my monitor locations with their various delays, I just needed to point a conversion task at them
My Conversion Tasks
Initially, I didn't fully grasp how powerful this section is and I ran a single conversion task for everything.
Since then, I've worked out how to apply certain tasks to certain folders and get use MCE Buddy as a filtering tool.
I have four conversion tasks set up:
- Convert to MP4 - this takes tv shows in most video formats and converts them to a common output format.
- Move MP4 - this applies no conversion, but just renames and moves tv shows to their correct final destination.
- Convert movie to MP4 - used in combination with the movie folders above, this does the same conversion task, but moves the movie to a different desination.
- Move Movie - again, no conversion here, but drops movies into the right place after renaming them in a common format.
Starting with the most simple ones - the Move MP4/Move Movie tasks have very few settings.
After giving them their names, I have to have a profile selected, but later on I will tell the task not to carry out any conversion, so what is selected here is irrelevant.
Following this, I've set my destinations - this is why I've got what appear to be duplicate tasks for tv shows and movies. There is probably a complicated way of getting round this, but the method I've used doesn't cost in terms of performance, so I've left it there.
One move task has /videos/ as its destination (for tv shows) and the other has /movies/
I've chosen not to remove any ads as I'd rather manage that myself. I found in testing that ad removal added a lot of duration to the overall task and I was never confident in the work it had done - there wasn't an easy way to confirm it had removed the right things and not the wrong things. I'll cover my ad removal process in a later article.
Then it's into Advance Settings where most of the work happens in these tasks. Both of my move MP4 tasks have the following options selected: Rname and sort by video information - this gives me a common filenaming format. Rename without converting - this disables the profile that was selected earlier and just does a move operation.
A little further down, I do a filename match and specify *.mp4, so only MP4 files get picked up (this allows me to be more generic in my monitor location config, in case I use those for multiple tasks).
Then I go into Expert Settings for the next step.
I've left Download Information as selected, it allows MCEBuddy to download programme data from the internet.
In the Selection Filters box, I've selected Select Monitor Locations and restricted the monitor locations down to the relevant folders. This would stop MCEBuddy from processing an MP4 that has been dropped into the wrong folder and also allow me to separate off the movies and tv show conversion tasks without one jumping in and working on the others files.
Since I want these quick move tasks to complete as soon as possible rather than waiting behind a queue of .TS > .MP4 conversions, I've ticked the "Insert at top of queue" box here.
Finally, at the bottom of the window is where I've selected "Do not overwrite files" to ensure duplicate files get numerated rather than overwritten (an essential in my opinion).
The two conversion tasks are similar in set up - I've chosen to go with MP4 High Quality for both, with no ad removal and the two tasks directing their outputs to /videos/ and /movies/ as necessary.
In Advanced Settings, I've made sure that Rename and sort by video information is selected, but Rename without converting is not.
(At some point early on in my experience with MCEBuddy, I inadvertently had this selected while I was processing Windows Media Center recordings. While I was impressed with the speed of not converting files, it meant that I had a load of files pushed into my media server which is simply couldn't read!).
I've set my filename match to .ts and set my Max video width to 1920 (preserving pixel count on HD material), selected Detect and optimize video quality and also selected Select best soundtrack (to ensure I don't accidentally end up with just the audio description tracks!).
In Expert Settings, I've gone for the same (standard) Media Information Management settings, selected the relevant folders (NextPVR movies for the movie conversion task and NextPVR default and fasttrack for the TV show conversion task).
I've selected "Disable Cropping" and "Hardware Acceleration" and again Selected "Do not overwrite files".
General Settings
There's not a great deal I've done in here for my long-term configuration. As previously mentioned, I used the Scheduling options to get through the bulk of conversions from Media Center overnight, but since I'm into normal operation, I just process files as and when they are available. I've set the CPU options reasonably low, so I don't have such a massive throughput that this causes me a problem with day to day tasks.
Into System settings at the bottom of the window, all I've done is select "Limit processor utilization" and selected the first three tickboxes (I think this means I'm using 12 (of 16) cores max, but in reality I could lower this at the expense of conversion duration).
Finally, in the main window, I've set MCEBuddy's priority to Normal. Sometimes I will put this up to high if I want to push a conversion through, or drop it to low if it is interfering with general computer use, but Normal generally does the trick.