I have a windows media center computer with MCE2005. I have been using a creative Zen PMC. I want to get the Ipod Video. Which looks like it supports MPEG-4 only.

Will MPEG-2 Videos or wmv videos play on an MPEG-4 supported device?

If not is there a conversion utility for DVR-ms to MPEG-4?

Are MPEG 4 files necessarily larger then WMV files?

Thanks.
Scott

The iPod Video can't play either mpeg2 or wmv, but you can convert dvr-ms to mpeg4. I would recommend using "ArcSoft Showbiz DVD 2" to convert dvr-ms to mpeg2. It's a very quick and easy process. Once you have the mpeg2 file, I imagine you could use QuickTime Pro to transcode it into mpeg4. It's been a really long time since I've used Quicktime to convert anything, so in case it doesn't handle mpeg2 files, you can use Showbiz DVD 2 to further convert the mpeg2 file to mpeg1 or even .mov format and then use quciktime to encode it into mpeg4. I don't know if the iPod will only play videos of a certain bitrate and resolution, but that's something I'd look into before I start converting.

BTW, if the iPod video will play any type of mpeg-4 video reagrdless of bitrate and resolution; use a program called PSP Video 9 instead of Quicktime Pro. It's free so you'd save $30 and can convert files to mpeg4 just as well as Quicktime.

The Ipod will play 320x240 H.264 750-Kbps video combined with 128-Kbps audio.  Set PSPvideo9 to do AVC encoding with those settings

Does PSPvideo9 support command line conversion between formats? I'll start working on a integration app for iPod video and the MCE. First plan is to automaticly pull out the recently recorded list, convert to ipod video format and create a RSS feed. Once the video podcast feed is up and running i can simply let itunes take care of downloading/synchronizing the video with the ipod.

No, I've never heard of PSPVideo9 supporting such conversion.

I actually spent this morning figuring out how to do this and wrote up a quick to-do on the subject - check it out: HOWTO: get TV from Windows Media Center onto your video iPod, commercial-free. It takes a little time, but it works.

Ok i tried that, but Quicktime wouldnt convert the file, saying it wasnt a movie.

Are you using QuickTime 7 Pro?

Quicktime 7.0.3 Pro

This article on engadget should be helpful to you. Not tried it myself though;

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000723066031/

Martin

I do not think the engadget article will help as ffmpeg does not recognise the format :-

"While Videora works great for many source file formats, it seems ffmpeg is unable to properly capture the audio track from DVR-MS content"

I have a PSP and I use PSPVideo9 to convert my DVD's. I have read that the DVD-MS format which microsoft uses to save its video files in MCE is based on MPEG2 (So much so that it is actually possible to simply chnage the extension of the files from .DVD-MS to .MPG) - then take a traditional DVD->PSP MPEG2 ----> MPEG4 trtanscoding route.

I find PSPVideo9 is good (and free), but I have not tried it with the renamed MCE files.

The following method does work and has been tested  :-

http://www.jakeludington.com/project_studio/20051104_convert_dvrms_to_psp_automatically.html

If you do get PSPVideo9 to work by renaming as in the above URL - please let me know.

try MyTV ToGo

http://www.mytvtogo.com/site/index.html

works from the MCE interface for iPod, PSP, and more.

Interesting, but it is $50 and there is no indication anywhere of how long the transcoding process takes. I would be very suspicious given that this is probably the most important factor using software based MPEG2 --> MPEG4 conversion.

Heath - Can you tell us how long it would take to trancsode a high quality 30 min long MCE recorded TV .DVR-MS file to PSP MPEG4 using MyTVToGo (on a reasonable spec PC) ?

the regular version is $30. The newer version is going to be $50. On my machine, an Athlon XP 2700 with 768 mb ram, the shows take around 1/3 of the show length. So a 30 minute show takes around 10 minutes. I do wish it would use a hardware based encoder so things would be near instant. Maybe in the future.