MCE Buddy

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mikey1273

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MCE Buddy

#1

Post by mikey1273 » Thu Jul 28, 2016 11:41 am

So now that I have the zino happy again, I'm looking at other add ons. one that caught my eye was MCE buddy. I see it can remove commercial breaks from programs and transcode them to smaller format video containers but sadly not able to do that with DRM recordings like those from HBO so I cant archive my Game of Thrones recordings with it to a different file type :-( but for other shows like that brit sitcoms I record on MPT's Afternoon Tea it would be cool. Also for a few others i pick up sometimes. So who is using it and how well has it worked out for you?


Changing to EPG123 might be on the horizon too.

Altitudinous

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#2

Post by Altitudinous » Fri Jul 29, 2016 1:49 am

I am using it, and I recommend it. For several years, I've had a Win 7 dedicated Lenovo Thinkpad E520 as my HTPC running WMC.
I started using MCE Buddy in December 2015. Once you have the monitoring folders set up, and your filtering criteria, I find that it is
quite reliable. And what a great job it does in stripping commercials. There are times that I wonder why it didn't process some of my
latest recordings. I think it is usually related to lack of free space on my drives. Even when that happens, you can drag and drop your recordings into the MCE Buddy window to get them processed. I have not been using it to transcode to other formats. I set mine up to simply strip commercials but keep the WTV format, because I don't want to lose any quality due to compression, and storage space is not a big deal. I might in the future try transcoding to save space and compare the perceived video quality. I think it is a great piece of software. I just use WMC and MCE Buddy to record and process over the air DTV broadcasts.

Embiggens

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#3

Post by Embiggens » Fri Jul 29, 2016 6:00 pm

yeah, it's good, like really good. I have it set to dump some series & most copy-freely movies over to my file server for playback via Plex. Kids watch commercial-free paw patrol all day, we basically don't even have to parent anymore.

Really, MCEBuddy is robust and tons of features for different scenarios. You should switch to EPG123 as well.

mikey1273

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#4

Post by mikey1273 » Mon Aug 01, 2016 12:27 pm

I did switch the PC in my little office to EPG123 to try it out. The data seems more complete but there were 2 line ups for Comcast in my area. Both were not 100% correct. missing one hd feed of a channel and listed a local side channel they don't carry yet.

I'm really only interested in MCE buddy to shrink and archive some series shows that are not copy protected, some are older shows so I'm not really worried about he quality on shows from the 1990's they weren't HD then and I can deal with a small loss on shows from a few years ago

mikey1273

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#5

Post by mikey1273 » Thu Aug 11, 2016 3:30 pm

I'm trying MCE Buddy on one of my systems seems to working ok. I want to try it on the other one that I been using for most of my recording lately. Question is how will it deal with copy protected (HBO) files? I know it cant convert them but what will it do if those files are in the folder I have it monitor?

Wilky13

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#6

Post by Wilky13 » Sat Aug 13, 2016 6:30 am

Check the wiki, but putting a ~ in front of the file name in the what recordings to convert area, will skip any show you put a ~ in front of.


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