DVR-MS support?

[iNFO-DVD]

Just asking if it's possible to get DVR-MS support at some point in DGIndex?

I had someone email me and ask for it for avi.NET, to be honest, I'd never heard of DVR-MS.

The guy who emailed me, in response to my question of what is DVR-MS, said:

Dvr-ms is a new Media Center file format that Microsoft has recently introduced. Basically any programs recorded off digital tv capture cards using Media Center 2005 edition are stored in this dvr-ms formatted files. Apparently it is a Microsoft bastardized Mpeg-2 streaming format, which is not entirely compliant with any standard Mpeg2 - Avi encoders.

neuron2 - I can upload a sample to your FTP if you need it (when you return).

[zambelli]

It's not "bastardized". :) It's a regular ASF container containing elementary MPEG-2 video and MP2 audio. Extracting the MPEG video and audio streams shouldn't be too difficult - just use the existing ASF source DirectShow filters to open the ASF and then use the raw video and audio as you wish. The only exception to the rule might be recorded TV broadcasts where the "copy protect" flag (CGMS-A) has been flipped - I'm not sure how easy or possible it would be to read those files with standard filters.

I'll second the request though - it would be nice to see DVR-MS support in DGMPGDec.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnwmt/html/dvrfilechanges.asp

[Jim_IT]

Considering MS has said they have sold 6.5 million MCE PC's (Most without tuners), there is going to be a whole bunch more requests for the capability to convert DVR-MS file to the viewers choice.

I would definitely like something easier that my current route. There are a lot of commercial apps which say they can convert DVR-MS file, but most cannot handle ATSC HD Content, or do it quickly.

My current conversion process.
Record ATSC HD content via MCE2005r2.
Remove commercials via MSDN addin. (5 Min)
Run DVR-MS output thru Graphedit using Moonlight M71 muxer to get transport stream MPEG2. (5 Min)
Import new TS MPEG2 into DGIndex. (5 Min)
Manually change either of 2 AVS files (720p & 1080i) with new d2v and audio files. (1 Min)
Import new AVS files into PSPVideo9 or Quenc depending if I want to go to PSP or DVD. (1-4 hours depending on source length)


Lazy DVD Alternative:
Record ATSC HD content via MCE2005r2.
Remove commercials via MSDN addin.
Run DVR-MS output thru Graphedit using Moonlight M71 muxer to get transport stream MPEG2.
Import new TS MPEG2 into HDTV2DVD 4.0.

Jim

[McoreD]

@zambelli, Just a simple question: Why not Microsoft use WMV9 (or at least WMV8) in DVR-MS? I have looked everywhere to find the answer for it but always come with empty hand.

Thanks,
McoreD

[zambelli]

@zambelli, Just a simple question: Why not Microsoft use WMV9 (or at least WMV8) in DVR-MS? I have looked everywhere to find the answer for it but always come with empty hand.
Easy: realtime hardware MPEG-2 encoding. All MCE-compatible TV tuners have onboard MPEG-2 encoding which takes a lot of stress off the CPU. Realtime WMV (or H.263 or H.264, for that matter) encoding is still not commonly available on PCs. Once that changes, I imagine MCE might support it and it would be pretty transparent - after all, DVR-MS is just an ASF container anyway.
Also, if I'm not mistaken, existing ATSC tuner cards receive purely digital signals in form of MPEG-2 transport streams so dumping those straight to a container is definitely the most efficient way.

Perhaps a feature more likely to happen sooner might be automated background transcoding of MPEG-2 recordings to VC-1 - but that's just my speculation, I haven't actually heard anything from the MCE team about it.

[Midzuki]

I know, this thread is too old, but now that my slow :o learning curve has made me find this topic, and also considering that mis-information should not be tolerated ;) ...

Dvr-ms is a new Media Center file format that Microsoft has recently introduced. Basically any programs recorded off digital tv capture cards using Media Center 2005 edition are stored in this dvr-ms formatted files. Apparently it is a Microsoft bastardized Mpeg-2 streaming format,

It's not "bastardized". :) It's a regular ASF container containing elementary MPEG-2 video and MP2 audio.

Well, according to the Multimedia Wiki (http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=DVR-MS), DVR-MS is a "bastardized" ASF file, not a "regular" one. :rolleyes:

While DVR-MS files do conform to the ASF specification there are are some unusual features that are not publicly documented. In particular the following are of note:

* Unlike in regular ASF files, the change of the media object number between video stream sub-packets does not imply that the frame has been completely read. The only way to detect the end of the video frame is to use a codec-specific process to analize the stream.

* All frames in a DVR-MS file are marked as keyframes which makes it impossible to write correct stream-seeking functions without resorting to codec specific code.

* The audio stream header in a DVR-MS file is stored in the header extension object rather than a standard stream header object. The GUID for the audio stream has never been published by Microsoft and this has made it difficult for open source programs to correctly play the format. However the GUID has now been discovered and several open sources media players are now finally capable of playing DVR-MS files.

This page was last modified 18:44, 25 September 2008

HTH :)