Help with DVR-MS Conversion to AVI

[gazoo]

I have a bunch of dvr-ms HD mpeg2 recording that I'd like to convert and shrink to divx. They are already comskipped. Can I use skiptool to do that? I know I used to be able to use it on SD MPEG files but don't know about the new dvr-ms hd ones.

[gazoo]

anyone do this?

[dan7827]

I have managed to do this with 1 recording so far:

• Convert dvr-ms to mpg
  
• run comclean on the mpg (may need to rename the comskip txt/edl files to match)
  
• convert the cut mpg to avi using mencoder or autogk
  

It seems that was just luck though, all other recordings fail at the first part...the mpg file is out of sync so no use.

Did you manage to do this in the end? Does anyone have any ideas?

[GlowTube]

Support for dvr-ms files was added to the ffmpeg transcoder awhile ago. This command-line tool can convert dvr-ms into .mpg, .avi, .mp4, etc., and maintain video quality and lipsync. The parameters may be confusing at the start, but there are plenty of examples on the web. There are also various graphical front-ends for ffmpeg (like WinFF, for example) that make using the tool a bit easier. In fact, if you look at the presets file furnished with WinFF, it's a nice way to see some parameter sets that are effective.

Another thing you might consider is to change your GB-PVR settings to record to .ts files (transport stream) instead of .dvr-ms. I find that .ts is much better supported in the tools community -- converters, players, analyzers all tend to recognize and accept .ts, but .dvr-ms is more spotty.

It's also possible to get GB-PVR to record to directly to .mpg files, but this requires you to locate some 3rd party materials that, anecdotally, may have some bad side-effects on your system (never tried this myself).

[dan7827]

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, I just tried ffmpeg and instead of it being out of sync like the converted files from mencoder they have audio only. I have also tried the presets in WinFF to make sure and I get the same results when converting dvr-ms to anything else I try (AVI or MPEG).

I changed the settings a long time ago in GB-PVR when I noticed problems with DVR-MS files so I get nice mpg files But I'm stuck with some nasty DVR-MS files than need putting right.

Any ideas?

[willyperkins]

You might try iPodifier. It uses FFMPEG, but I've had some success converting dvr-ms files to avi's for portable viewing. You can custom set the resolution to whatever you want.

It's not got a particularly active following at the moment, but when it works it's quite pain-free...