Dondi,

Send me your email address at Grouperdave@hotmail.com and I will be glad to send you back a protected file for your hacking pleasure. I would sure appreciate the help.

   Dave

Well, Grouper, I meant for you to tell me what you have recorded and tell me how you have your MCE hooked-up to your source and maybe I can help. If you know of a movie that gives you that copyright protection thing, post it (the Movie, channel, etc.) and I will try and record it and see if I get it also. I havent gotten it yet, so I am not sure how to get around the problem you guys are experiencing

-- Dondi

Dondi, I looked for a way to post a file and couldn't see it. I'll try again.

BUT NOW I'M IN A WORLD OF HURT. Went back and tried to burn a DVD using the media center and got a message saying the DVD could not be burned because the file I was using was an unsupported file type or no recordings exist in the target directory. Well, what I was trying to burn was definitely a dvr-ms-file and existed in the folder. I tried a few files with the same results.

I fear that all the software I have installed has somehow changed my settings for the media center. Is there a way to specify the directory the center pulls from?

Gateway tech support has been useless so far.  They want me to do a full system restore. It'll take hours and hours to reconfigure my machine should I have to do a full restore.

I'm not a real happy camper right now!

 

Dave... couple of things here..... Don't try and post a DVR-MS file. I just wanted to know the Movie you are getting copyright protection errors on and I would try and record that same movie and see if I can replicate. Also, I wanted to know how you have your MCE hooked-up to the source -- settop box, satellite dish, coax basic cable connection, etc and what inputs are you utilizing on your PVR(s) -- RF, Composite, S-Video. Lastly what PVR(s) are you using -- Hauppaugue, ATI e-Home, nVidia etc. These may be factors in determining why you get copyright messages and why I do not.

Next, it seems you have mangled your system. Being a new MCE owner.... welcome to our world!!! Dave, consider this your inauguration into the world of basic backup & recovery protocol & procedures. Going backwards, the easiest thing to do is to use Microsoft's Sytem Restore. Search back to about a week ago.... or at least a day or two before you started installing Nero, etc. Back to a time when you KNOW the system worked and restore your PC.

START BUTTON >> PROGRAMS >> ACCESSORIES >> SYSTEM TOOL >> SYSTEM RESTORE

Go there and browse through the calendar to a point before you started installing all your cd/DVD burning software. Restore the system and then go back in and check to see if you can then burn a CD/DVD using the methods assumed before tinkering with it all.

If this goes bad, hopefully you have an OEM (Gateway) restore cd you can stick in to reformat the system to the point when it was first booted-up. Pain in the butt, yes, but sometimes you need to resort to starting from scratch in the beginning.

Once you get your system to a point where you are happy and feel it being stable and tweaked enough to your liking.... go check out NORTON GHOST. A Symantec product. Being that you have a DVD burner.... This product can image the current state of your SYSTEM onto a bootable and restorable DVD. This is good once you have drivers installed, played with resolution settings, messed with the registry, screensaver, desktop image, installed apps & games, played with Windows Explorer settings, IE bookmarks etc...... once you have your MCE environment setup, make a ghost image onto a bootable DVD... and I would also suggest, if you have enough space on a second drive other than the primary OS drive, making a duplicate image onto another hard drive as a backup.

Good Luck GrouperDave
-- Dondi

hello dondi,

"(me personally, I would import into after effects and resave as MPG) and then create a DVD using Adobe Encore..... "

I have not tried using encore or after effects in making DVDs of dvr-ms files, but I would like to know your experiences.  please tell me what you mean also by resaving as MPG.  as for using encore, is it easy to learn and quick to use?  My goal is to make the process as simple and quick as possible, but still having fast/precise editing.  however, i am open to new products with more features to develop a nice homemade dvd.

yes, hbo started using copy protection last year.  my fav show "the directors" on encore JUST started using it.  with no change in configuration of my system, suddenly i cannot convert these dvr-ms files without getting a copy protection message.  try recording this show or sopranos to make a test...

-ddog2k

Ok here are my two cents worth. The way I convert dvr-ms to DVD or mpeg2 is very easy. When I puchased my LG dual layer burner, I received a free copy of Cyberlinks Power Producer gold 2.0 and it includes a conversion feature to convert dvr-ms files to mpeg2, as a matter of fact when I access a dvr-ms file in Power Producer it automatically creates a mpeg file for me from the dvr-ms. I can then edit out the commercials etc and burn to DVD. It works so well that I upgraded to version 3.0. It is excellent and if you have hyperthreading P4 it can use those features to speed up conversion.

I am surprised that no one has mentioned this terrific product and no I dont work for Cyberlink but they have a good product for us MCE lovers that is not being marketed right.

 

---

sympatico system: Motherboard:Asus P5GD1, Intel 915P Chipset Based; CPU P4 - 3.0Ghz; Video:Sapphire X300SE, Ati X300SE Based; Microsoft MCE Remote; 1Gb Ram; Hauppauge PVR500MCE Dual Tuner; Nvidia DVD Decoder Post hand written using my TabletPC!

Hello all!

I'm a new MCE user and this a great forum. Thanks for the info I have gotten, I'd like to give some back. Recently, I built my own MCE machine and I wanted to put some recordedTV on a DVD to play in my standalone DVD player. I couldn't get the sonicencoders method to work within MC. When I did it ouside of MC it was slow and there is a noticeable drop in quality because it reencoded the video. Basically every other method I tried did some kind of reencoding that degraded the quality. Then, I tried converting to WMV first and it took a long time and the quality was horrible. So, I stumbled on this method on the Mediaportal forums when I was about to dump MCE. It works great if you have a keyboard and mouse hooked up to your MC or remote into your MC PC like I do from another PC. It might not be the fastest overall, and its very manual. But there is absolutely no re-encoding so the final DVD is exactly the same as the original .dvr-ms file. It doesn't really take all that long for me and I like the perfect transfer. My method is based around stripping the ASF wrapper off the .dvr-ms file and then editing and authoring the DVD. It has worked successfully with every .dvr-ms I have tried including ones from HBO.

1. STRIP: I Use a program called Graphedit(freeware!!) with the appropriate filters to strip the "metadata or ASF wrapper" off the dvr.ms leaving a DVD Video compliant mpeg of exactly equal quality to the original .dvr-ms. This takes less than 2 minutes(or almost as fast your HD can write) on my Athlonxp 3200 for a 30 minute show and the quality is perfect.

Below is a link to the post that details the method. It seems complicated at first, but after you figure it out it is very easy.

http://nolanparty.com/mediaportal.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1428

From here you can use your own method to edit and author the DVD, but here is what I use:

2. EDIT:  I use a program called MPEG Video Wizard from Womble video(don't remember where I got this one). Its a perfect little program for simple cutting that is very intuitive and fast. After I make my cuts it takes about a minute to write the edited file back to the hard drive. There aren't any options for adding effects or transistions. But, once again, absolutely no reencoding of the actual video files. Beware of editing software that takes a long time to save the cut video, its probably reencoding.

3. AUTHOR: I use ULEAD Movie factory 3 for this, but lots of other software will work. I use Ulead because it has the somewhat unique ability to create a VIDEO DVD without reencoding the compliant MPEG's I create with Graphedit. I then I have a perfect copy of the TV shows minus the commercials with a nice animated menu.

The entire process from beginning to end takes about an hour for 6 half hour TV shows or almost 3 hours of recorded TV. Seems pretty good to me for that many seperate shows and files edited and burned. Its a lot less for a continous movie file without commercials.

I found that recording the original show at "GOOD" makes a nice quality DVD because there is no loss of quality thru reencoding in the process of creating the DVD and I can easily put three hours on a single DVD. Also, you could use dcut to edit the .dvr-ms before you strip the wrapper.

I hope this helps. I am new to posting on any forum, so feel free to ask any questions and I will try to clarify.

I am back!

Dondi, I had to do a full system restore back to the day I bought the PC. Good thing I only had the new PC for about two weeks so there wasn't too much to have to back up. I am definitely going to look into the "ghost" program you mentioned.

So now that I can burn DVD's again from within media center I think I may just have to be satisfied with having to record HBO content on the old VHS.  Proost has some good input but I am too shellshocked at this point to destroy my computer again. Gotta take a break.

I do have another question, though. I am recording the dvr-ms files onto Maxell DVD+RW discs. After I make a DVD from within the media center and then watch it, I want to go back and overwrite the DVD with another program. The media center will not overwrite the DVD, and if I try to delete the files on the DVD using Windows Explorer I get a message telling me the files cannot be deleted because they are "read only". Now PLEASE don't tell me I can only use these rewritable DVD's one time. I may go out of my mind!

Grouperdave,

I, too, have had issues with HBO and MCE playing nice.  Got half a season into Carnivale before I realized I had to watch it at my computer.  HBO uses cgsm-a copy protection, which is 'copy once' technology.  Meaning, you can PVR it with MCE, but not burn it to DVD.  I purchased a Sima Copy This CT2 and was able to burn Deadwood, Carnivale, etc, which I was previously unable to do.  Tried it about a dozen times over the weekend.  I am going to order the much much cheaper CT1 and see if it works the same, I have heard that it does.  Now, I have not played around with it a lot, but I noticed a very slight signal degradation using the CT2.  This device runs in line with the s-video out of my satellite box, before going into the MCE PVR, only s-video and rca video sources are available with the CT1 and CT2.  This degradation is minor, however I will only use the device when watching HBO.  BTW, I am using Sonic MyDVD software.

Side note....during my experimentation, I recorded the same episodes of Deadwood on my MCE and on my Toshiba RS-TX20 Tivo/DVDrecorder.  I was not able to burn from my MCE, but was able to burn from the Tivo.  Go figure. 

Hope this helps.

-Febtober

Ok I will answer the last 4 posts here, all in one shot, hopefully:
As part of my job, I work with video, video editing apps and non-linear editing systems etc. So to recommend Adobe's Video Collection to the average MCE user or avg consumer is a bit overkill. Basically, the process cited by PROOST is correct. 1) Strip the native DVR-MS from its "protected" format. 2) Edit the file 3) Burn the file to DVD using an authoring app. How one gets to or from each one of these steps is subjective based on ease-of-use, success rate, speed & patience.

For speed, the ideal would be to get the DVR-MS file to an MPG file. Unfortunately, not many consumer-level apps can edit native MPG files (with the exception of the PowerProducer package, which contains PowerDirector 3; a subset of the PowerProducer package that rips the DVR-MS file to an MPG file very very very very fast; incidentally Sympatico, this app was cited exactly one page before your post).

An MPG file contains 2 parts: an MPV file (MPEJ video thread) and an MPA file (the audio portion of the video). These two files are the two files needed by an authoring app to burn a VIDEO DVD in its native form. If the source imported into the DVD authoring app is, lets say, an AVI or a WMV file, then the authoring app needs to TRANSCODE this file into the accompanying MPV & MPA files. This takes time. This is usually the waiting period when burning a DVD.... can take hours to accomplish this depending upon processor etc. So ddog, if I were to sit down and do this manually, instead of from the couch with a remote, I would use PowerDirector 3 to convert to an MPG file. Import the MPG into an editing app that can edit MPGs (Like Adobe After Effects or Premiere), save the After Effects project file without having to re-encode, transcode or render, then import the After Effects project directly into an Adobe Encore template and burn the image directly to disc. So, the only transcoding done would be the initial rip of the DVR-MS file to MPG, which is very very very very fast using PowerDirector3. The burn is fast because it is already transcoded and there is no render coming out of After Effects, because Encore reads the After Effects project file directly without having to have done another render of the edit points. Again, not stuff for the avg MCE user.

So, with the free stuff out there like dCut and the SonicEncoders.msi file that allows VIDEO DVD creation from within MCE and "squeezing" of the video to fit onto a DVD, I'd say these are bargains for the trade-offs; the comprimise may be speed, but you cant beat the ease-of-use.

And to answer Grouperdave, I am not altogether familiar with using re-writable DVDs. Maybe someone in this thread can shed some light on reusing a DVD with data files. Are the DVR-MS files getting burned onto the disc as data DVR-MS files or as a video DVD?? Yo may need an application that you can use to manage your CD/DVD burning outside of MCE, like Roxio's CD/DVD creator etc. Im not sure on this one.

-- Dondi
My MCE: http://www.dondi.net/MCE/
My MAME C.o.c.k.t.a.i.l. Cabinet: http://www.dondi.net

Ok, so ALL HBO broadcasts are protected?? or is it just a select subset of shows/movies?? I will try and replicate on my system if possible.

-- Dondi

Dondi, I am burning the DVD from within the media center environment, not transferring a dvr-ms file to the DVD.

But then when I couldn't overwrite an existing program from within the media center environment, I figured I would try to go to Windows Explorer and see if there were files I could delete and make the DVD "clean" for the media center to use again. That's when I got the "files are read only" and cannot be deleted message.

There are two folders on the DVD. One is named "OpenDVD" and the other is named "Video_TS".

There are three files in the OpenDVD folder: Clickme.htm, OpenDVD.pvm, and Untitled.dvd.

There are eight files in the Video_TS folder: Video_TS.BUP, Video_TS.IFO, Video_TS.VOB, VTS_01_0.BUP, VTS_01_0.IFO,VTS_01_0.VOB,VTS_01_1.VOB,VTS_01_2.VOB

None of these folders or files can be deleted using Windows Explorer. And the disc cannot be overwritten in the media center.

NOW GET  THIS> MAYBE THIS IS A CLUE. I opened the "clickme.htm" file and here's what it said:

"This OpenDVD-enabled DVD was created using Symphony with AuthorScript® by Sonic Solutions. OpenDVD-compliant DVDs (http://www.opendvd.com/) include unique technology that provides exceptional value.

With OpenDVD, you can revise the content at any time, re-edit video, and replace any element -- video, menus, buttons, text or navigation -- quickly and easily with something new, with the minimal amount of copying of content between your hard disk and the DVD. Or archive your DVD projects as a DVD with all of the content you need in a single, convenient location.

OpenDVD DVDs contain all the information you need to open and re-author this title with a licensed OpenDVD-compatible authoring application. They are compatible with the broadest range of set-top and PC-based DVD-Video players, so you can view the content almost anywhere you can play a DVD.

© Copyright 2005 Sonic Solutions.

The files that describe the contents of this disc ("descriptive files"), and are recorded herein, contain proprietary and/or copyrighted material of Sonic Solutions. These descriptive files may only be opened by a Sonic-licensed authoring application. No other applications may decode, open nor make use of these files in any manner whatsoever, for any purpose. Please note that these files are protected by technological measures designed to prevent unauthorized access to them.

All intellectual property rights in these descriptive files are owned by Sonic Solutions. The laws of the United States and the laws of other jurisdictions protect the rights of intellectual property and copyright holders and provide severe civil and criminal penalties in case of violations.

Sonic Solutions retains all rights not expressly granted. The descriptive files contain trade secrets of Sonic Solutions and Sonic Solutions explicitly prohibits any person from reverse engineering, decompiling, disassembling or otherwise reducing the files to human readable form or disclosing such trade secrets to third parties, except to the extent that such prohibition is expressly restricted by applicable law."

 

Is this saying that the files that have been burned onto the DVD can only now be manipulated or deleted with a certain kind of software? The program I recorded and burned on this DVD was just a half hour sitcom that was definitely not copy protected.

I would sure hate to think I can only use my rewritable discs one time. Somebody please slap me for believing the Microsoft hype. I've been around.  I should have known!

 

Ok, Grouperdave, youre a trooper here..... First off, what is you are trying to accomplish here?? I mean, in your previous post you cited that you wanted to get a tv show onto DVD, watch it and then replace it with another show.

QUESTION 1: Where do you want to watch it from?? Your MCE??
If this is the case, then you want to write to your DVD+RW as a data file; you want to copy the DVR-MS file, as it is, onto the rewritable as a data file not a VIDEO DVD. This will enable you to replace the file (because it is a data file) with another DVR-MS file and watch it on your MCE. I believe you would need the software that came with your burner; something akin to Roxio's EZ CD Creator. You should have some type of CD/DVD authoring software that came with your system. You want to make a DATA DVD (not a VIDEO DVD) in order to write & rewrite data files onto a DVD+RW (somebody correct me if I am wrong here, but I believe that this is the case for rewritables).

QUESTION 2: Do you want to watch from a consumer DVD player???
I am lost on this one. I wouldnt know how to create a VIDEO DVD onto a rewitable; I am unsure if consumer players can read them. I am under the assumption that rewritable DVDs are only for PC data files -- again, I may be wrong, someone please chime-in.

-- D

thanks, dondi, for the detailed info.  i guess until i need to make fancier dvds, i will stick with mydvd.  i like mydvd b/c it takes dvr-ms directly, lets you edit (not as fast as womble's mpeg video wizard, which i use when many edits are involved) then only transcodes if necessary, plus uses ac3 to maximize space.  so far, it best achieves my goal of "need to edit, but want minimum time involved."

only problem is that when i make in/out edits to crop a movie, then burn to DVD, sometimes i lose sync towards the end.  just upgraded to mydvd 6.1 (the one with tivo support) to see if they've fixed that issue...

about copy protection:  not all hbo shows are protected, depends on the channel.  hbo/signature movie channel does flag cgms for all movies, though, i think.  btw, you can see "copy protected" on mce2005's program info screen to know if it's protected.

question:  i want to buy a device like that sima ct2, but is there one that does coax input/output?  the reason is that since my pc tuner takes the coax, i'd rather not split off the video and audio....because i've disabled my onboard audio to use the usb audigy nx which already has a line in for my mic which is always connected for dictation...

ddog2k,

The CT1 and CT2 have rca and s-video only, there is a device called the Clarifier out there, do not know the input/output, do a yahoo search for it.

I have MyDVD6.0 and I cannot edit anything without having audio get out of sync.  Let us know if you have any luck with 6.1.  How does that work with MCE PVR?

Thanks,

Febtober