Automate mpeg2 capture convert to xvid?

[EcchiNut]

Not too positive this is the best thread to ask this, so admins feel free to move it to the proper area.

This really isnt for me, but rather a friend (no really - I dont even have a capture card).

Presently he captures his tv-shows in WinDVR on "Real time best" (mpeg2, 640x480, 29.97fps, 7200Kbits/s, mp2 audio). He's fairly busy guy, and uses the scheduling software to record it. As you can imagine though, this eventually eats up all his Hard Drive if he doesnt start converting it. Is there any toolsets that after WinDVR finishes capturing it (or just run a win cron job a minute after the show ends), to automate the conversion into a more size-friendly file with xvid and mp3? Without user interraction (as mentioned - busy guy)?

I dont think he can capture directly to Xvid - either WinDVR doesnt support it? or it results in too many dropped frames (i forget which at the present moment; I'd have to ask him).

[Mug Funky]

you can try batching with shell extensions, and maybe get windows scheduled tasks into it (i haven't tried this yet).

DGindex and mencoder are both commandline capable, and an avs file can be generated with the ECHO command (like "ECHO mpeg2source("%~d1%~p1%~n1.d2v",idct=7,cpu=4,ipp=true) >> "%~d1%~p1%~n1.avs") quite easily.

i've already got a pretty good system worked out for turning videos into PAL, top-first, MPEG-2 using batching. you could do the same with maybe a few days research (get your friend to do it...).

one thing (off topic)... if your mate hasn't got much time, is he really going to have time to watch all the stuff he records? i've got some iron chef and mythbusters stuff that's weeks old that i haven't watched yet :).

of course a quick solution is more hard disks - you can never have enough...