Yeah, the title looks like a spam post, because (for some reason) there's an inordinate amount of shady-looking video conversion software on the Internet.

It's precisely for this reason that I'm asking here.

How do I (on Linux, preferably, but I'll deal with Windows or Mac solutions) convert my Windows Media Center recordings (WTV format) to something more useful (such as MP4)?

I'm going to be retiring the Windows Media Center box in the next couple of weeks (I've got an HDHomeRun arriving tomorrow), but I'd like to keep my recorded stuff.

I think both ffmpeg and handbrake support WTV. The .wtv file is a media container format. Depending on what the audio and video are inside, you may not even need a transcode -- just re-wrapping from one container to another. If you're not familiar with media files, it's sort of similar to converting from a .zip file to a .tar file.

I'm not really familiar with WTV files -- doing more digging, it seems likely that the WTV files contain raw uncompressed video frames, so a transcode may be necessary.

See here for a sample ffmpeg command line.

Just reading the thread title, I predicted Handbrake was going to be in the first reply. Either that or the original post was going to say "I tried handbrake but...".

I totally forgot about the existence of Handbrake, tbh. I'll play with it once the kids are in bed (i.e. once I can get to the Media PC).

The thread that Canuck linked says that FFmpeg is the better tool for this particular job. It's a thread that indeed starts with "I tried handbrake but...".

TmpgEnc converts everything I’ve ever thrown at it.

http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/tvmw6.html

I have found VLC to be flexible and surprisingly powerful. While nominally a video player, it also has elaborate transcoding capabilities.

tanstaafl.

I'm racking my brain but for the life of me I can't remember the site I used to use for these exact questions. There was a site that was almost entirely devoted to video and audio conversion, and had an extensive database of all the software out there. It even had a tool where you could enter the source and target formats and it would return a more-or-less accurate list of tools that could do the job, with links to the sites that hosted them.

It's been ages since I did much encoding at all, so I can't recall what the site was. I think that once I discovered Handbrake that took care of most of my conversion needs.

I believe the website is http://www.doom9.org/ but it isn't responding for me, but https://forum.doom9.org/ is up.

FFmpeg seems to do the job. Thanks everyone.

Congratulations on getting an HDHomeRun gizmo. I have been using their dual OTA receiver boxes (North American ATSC versions) here since they first came out with them. Nice bit of kit, those. I hope the version you are getting is at least as good.

Cheers
-ml

I don't think that was it. I think it was something with a more boring name but I can't remember at the moment.

Could someone lay out the HDHomeRun concept for me? I've only read about it on tech blogs but never really got a primer.

The basic HDHomeRun unit is a tiny little plastic box with an RF-input (for coax from antenna or cableTV), and an ethernet port. The box typically contains two TV tuners, and a microprocessor to control them.

Other devices on the same LAN/Wifi can communicate with the HDHomeRun, directing either of its tuners to tune to specific digital channels in the OTA or CableTV bands, and to stream a near-raw digital capture from those channels out over the network connection.

Applications on the other devices (eg. VLC, mplayer, MythTV, Kodi, etc.) can convert the digital broadcast stream into video on a computer/handset screen, or save the stream to mass storage for later.

So basically, the HDHomeRun is a pair of network connected TV tuners that are "driver free" for use by software on other devices.

Fancier HDHomeRun products include more/different tuners, and/or transcoding to smaller stream/file sizes within the little box.

Silicon Dust (makers of HDHomeRun) also offer a "PVR Service" which uses their tuner hardware along with small apps they can provide for handsets/PCs to implement a full Personal Video Recorder (PVR) setup without much technical know-how required.

I suspect Roger is most attracted by that last one, not that he in any way would be lacking on the technical know-how side!

Recently Live TV and DVR functionality has been added to Plex as well, and it has support for HDHomeRun tuners.

https://www.plex.tv/live-tv-dvr/

This is the route I'm taking: HDHomeRun -> Plex Server (on Synology NAS, probably) -> nVidia Shield (Android TV, basically).


I've got the 4-tuner HDHomeRun.

A friend of mine uses MCEbuddy with Plex to convert the mpeg2 files to mp4 and remove the commercials.

HDHomeRun acts as a UPnP AV server, but it's a "dumb" one just offering the streams -- it doesn't implement the Tuner or EPG extensions. (Which isn't a big surprise, as the company offers an add-on EPG service via subscription -- though you don't need a subscription to just watch/listen live.)

There's also a dedicated client library you can use, instead of UPnP; I haven't played with that yet, so I don't know whether you can just tune it to channel 0x12 and get the raw DVB-T EPG.

Peter

Ok cool. Doesn't seem for me, but I like the idea. Thanks for the explanation!

Apparently MythTV supports EIT (DVB name for the EPG tables) extraction via HDHR tuners. So it's possible, just depends on whether your DVR software supports it. But looking at Plex, that's probably a no.

Yeah, EIT extraction does work for the ATSC versions of the HDHR tuners. Presumably also for DVB-T.

Ya know, I remember a time when setting up my home theater meant deciding whether to put the aluminum foil strips on the rabbit ears shiny-side in or shiny-side out.

It seems a bit more complicated now.

tanstaafl.