Guide: Automated compression after x days (Crunchie) (1 Viewer)

Brocklander

Retired Team Member
  • Premium Supporter
  • September 15, 2004
    347
    2
    Wellington
    Home Country
    New Zealand New Zealand
    While there are a ton of programs out there for compressing DVR-MS files, Crunchie best suits my needs. Crunchie differs from other tools in a couple of ways that will be explained as we go along, and compresses to Xvid.


    1. Download and install Crunchie.


    2. Run the configuration utility, there's a shortcut placed on your desktop. Below you can see my settings.

    crunchie.jpg


    The official Crunchie thread has a full explanation of all the functions, so I’m just going to cover the important ones for me.

    'MPEG Only' Selecting this will allow Crunchie to process normal MPG files, handy if you use AutoDVRConvert (see my guide) or another MPG program.

    'Create Subfolders' and 'Rename DVR-MS Files' If a processed program has this exact name format ‘Doctor Who_Channel 2_23_06_2005_18_00_00.dvr-ms’ then the output file will be renamed to ‘Doctor Who (20050623).avi’ and placed in a folder called ‘Doctor Who’. Handy for keeping track of your compressed recordings, and now achievable with a recent CVS release that lets you rename MP output files (Setup - TV - Recordings - Custom Paths and File Names).

    'Include' Funnily enough, only files with the text in here are included for processing. This is great as it uses the file name rather than metadata, which Media Portal includes very little of.

    'Only compress files that are more than x days old' This is my favourite feature!

    Save yours settings and click exit.


    3. Open the main Crunchie application to start conversion, or run the application from Task Scheduler. It takes a while to convert files even on my system (it uses Mencoder), and 30 minutes of PAL TV ends up at about 600mb.


    Do more with your TVâ„¢
    Record to MPG & stream Live TV (AutoDVRConvert)
    Automated Ad Removal (DVRMS Toolbox)
    Automated compression after x days (Crunchie)
    Manually crop DVR-MS length and remove ads (DVR Edit)
     

    jcee

    Portal Pro
    November 23, 2004
    282
    1
    As far as I know MP keeps its recordings in a database.
    So when I use Crunchie and get new compressed files of my recordings, do these links inside the database get updated to the new files?

    Or do I have to remove the old files or will I have the new compressed files in addition?
    What is the mos handy way?
     

    Brocklander

    Retired Team Member
  • Premium Supporter
  • September 15, 2004
    347
    2
    Wellington
    Home Country
    New Zealand New Zealand
    There's no good way to do it unfortunately. While Crunchie can delete the recorded DVR-MS file, it has no way to tell Media Portal that the recorded file has been deleted.
     

    jcee

    Portal Pro
    November 23, 2004
    282
    1
    Understood!

    You seem to have quite a bit of experience with crunchie and Xvid conversion.

    So how does crunchie compare to MPs built in functionality of compression to XVID? (maybe also othe user could share there experience?!)

    As far as I understand crunchie can compress after several days..

    To be honest I didnt get MPs internal conversion working and I also would not like it to compress while I am watching TV.. so maybe that is a good reason to look into crunchie..
     

    Brocklander

    Retired Team Member
  • Premium Supporter
  • September 15, 2004
    347
    2
    Wellington
    Home Country
    New Zealand New Zealand
    I think MP can only compress to WMV, Xvid requires the Elecard stuff?

    The main attraction to me of Crunchie over the built in compression in MP is the automated flexibility - compress after x days, only compress or exclude files with x in their name, and so forth, without having to touch a thing.

    To be honest I haven't really looked through MP's compression since if was introduced, it just seemed too clunky and akward to figure out.
     

    jcee

    Portal Pro
    November 23, 2004
    282
    1
    Sounds suitable for me too....

    I followed your configuration instructions, but it comes up with an error..
    Can you help me?

    Sat Feb 18 01:16:48 2006 : ( INCLUSION)VOX_Manual_200601262014p147.dvr-ms included for processing.

    Sat Feb 18 01:16:48 2006 : ( FILE SCAN) Found X 312 - Flug zur ÷lle_2006-2-18_00_55.dvr-ms.

    Sat Feb 18 01:16:48 2006 : ( INCLUSION) X 312 - Flug zur H÷lle_2006-2-18_00_55.dvr-ms included for processing.

    Sat Feb 18 01:16:48 2006 : ( CONVERSION) Processing All About the Money_2006-2-17_22_00.dvr-ms.

    Sat Feb 18 01:16:48 2006 : ( RENAME) Non standard dvr-ms naming convention (All About the Money_2006-2-17_22_00.dvr-ms), storing file to C:\Mediashares\TV\AVIs\All About the Money_2006-2-17_22_00.avi

    Sat Feb 18 01:16:48 2006 : ( DVRMS->MPG) Converting All About the Money_2006-2-17_22_00.dvr-ms to mpeg.

    Sat Feb 18 01:16:48 2006 : ( CROPDETECT) Unable to stat C:\MyVideos\All About the Money_2006-2-17_22_00.mpg : No such file or directory

    Sat Feb 18 01:16:48 2006 : ( FINISHED) crunchie Completed.
    Sat Feb 18 01:16:48 2006 : -----------------------------------------------------
    --------------------------------------------------------

    It seems that it does not find a file, which it should have created before ...
    :-(
     

    jcee

    Portal Pro
    November 23, 2004
    282
    1
    Found out myself:

    It was a old version von DVRMtoolbox..

    I downloaded a newer version.
    Now it works :)

    Still one question:

    In MP I selected to not add recordings to the movie database.
    So when I record a show I can see it under "recordings".

    After having run Crunchie my DVRMS files are replaced by AVIs. Same folder, same name.

    Obviously in MP they are still listed under "recordings". Though I cannot play them. Beacuse there postfix hast changed from .DVRMS => .AVI

    Is there any workaround? What are you doing?

    Of course I can play the movies via the movies dialog in MP.
    But what I am missing is the nice description then.

    I guess there is no way for MP to just refer to the AVI instead of the DVRMS.. which is gone?!
     

    broadband412

    Portal Pro
    April 20, 2005
    84
    0
    New Yrok
    Sure glab I stumbled onto this thread. Please make this a sticky so users can check out the available tools that are very useful for dealing with DVR-MS files.
     

    Brocklander

    Retired Team Member
  • Premium Supporter
  • September 15, 2004
    347
    2
    Wellington
    Home Country
    New Zealand New Zealand
    jcee: There's no way that I can think of to get MP to change the extensions when modified by an external program...

    I think the only reasonable answer would be a better MP compression plugin, for example meeting criteria (x days old, unwatched, contains certain words, etc) then compressing, and replacing the DVR-MS file with the compressed one and modifying the database accordingly, all automatically. You would just wake up in the morning and everything would look exactly the same - except with compressed files 8)
     

    petermcc

    Portal Member
    July 5, 2006
    20
    0
    I figured a nice way to do this. I found a program that lets you edit the media portal database. You can just go to the field in there and change the dvr-ms extension to avi. It works I have done it! You can also update things like the names of programs, or the dates and times.

    The program is called SQLLite-Analyzer, and it is shareware.

    http://www.topshareware.com/SQLite-Analyzer-download-36030.htm

    I cannot quite remember where I downloaded it from, because I have version 3.0.4 build 21.

    Anyway what you do is install the program, go to the file menu and click on 'new database registration'. Then you navigate to your media portal database folder (backup the database first!!!!) select the file 'TVDatabaseV21.db3' (you have to select files *.* to see that file because the extension is not db) then it will appear on the left. Select the database and expand it out so you can see the table names. Select the 'recorded' table. On the right you can update any of the entries in that database table, one per recording that MP has done. You can update the times (funny format there, but it is not hard to work out), the names, or the file names and paths.

    Remember to tab out of a field after you have edited it, because it updates the database when you leave the field you are editing.

    Hope that works for you all. Backup you database just in case you get in trouble, but it is all pretty easy to work out, and helps a lot with tidying things up.
     

    Users who are viewing this thread

    Top Bottom