Hands On: Shrink video files, plus how Eee is used

DVR-Edit also offers recompression options, but we’ve never had much joy with them, so we’d advise just using the chopping side.

It’ll also save the final file pretty quickly since there’s no recompression taking place.

The result is files that look identical in playback and include all the meta data describing the show, but which could occupy up to half the space of the original.

It really is amazing to see how gigabytes of free space reappear after editing a few files.

Compression
Of course editing can only go so far, and unless you have stacks of storage free, you’ll be looking into recompressing your recordings (edited or otherwise) sooner rather than later.

Until recently, the most common route to take with DVR-MS files was to compress them into Windows Media Video, WMV files. WMV can be a great format, but we’ve never been very impressed by the quality when converting from UK DVR-MS files.

An alternative involves stripping out the raw MPEG2 data and recompressing that into a format such as DivX, but again the results (in size and quality) can be less than impressive with existing tools.

Now there’s another option, exploiting the latest H.264 compression. This is a very efficient compressor used for delivering many high-definition files, but it’s equally useful for recompressing standard-definition TV recordings.

There’s also a free utility that will do it for you: MCE Buddy is designed to recompress into a variety of formats and can optionally delete ad breaks automatically, thanks to a third-party plug-in. As with many utilities, some parts work better than others. So instead of relying on the complete service it can be worth cherry-picking the parts that work best for you. For us, those were the H.264 compression options.

We found its ‘best quality with no resize’ H.264 setting could compress existing DVR-MS files to around 40 per cent of their original size, with very little compromise in quality. This compares favourably against WMV, which at best quality typically halves the size of an MPEG2 original using most tools.

MCE Buddy runs in the background, consuming spare CPU cycles and can be set to monitor folders for automatic conversion. You can also configure it to convert during idle times. It can also be set to make two different conversions of the same file into different destination folders, perhaps using high quality for archive and another for use on a portable – a number of profiles are offered.

With MCE Buddy running in the background of a 2.66GHz Core2Duo E6700 system used for general office tasks, best quality two-pass H.264 conversions with no resizing took two hours and 18 minutes to recompress a 1.56GB 60-minute DVR-MS file into a 600MB AVI file – and the result was virtually indistinguishable from the original.

The single-pass conversions also looked good and took half the time. To put that in perspective, a WMV conversion of the same file took only 20 minutes, but measured 800GB and upon close inspection arguably looked slightly poorer.

H.264 conversions are clearly more time consuming even for single passes, and you’ll also need software to play them back, along with a sufficiently quick computer. But 2.4GHz Pentium-class systems should be up to the job, and by installing ffdshow’s codecs, you’ll be able to watch the files in Media Player.

Like most recompression options though, you will lose the tagging of DVR-MS, so name the file clearly. Also perform some tests first to ensure your PC can decode the files smoothly before deleting the originals.

So, if your MCE recordings are consuming more disk space than you’d like, but you can’t bear to delete them, then consider DVR-Edit to cut out the unnecessary material and recompressing the result into H.264 with MCE Buddy. You’ll be surprised by the storage savings. If you have your own successful video archiving workflow, we’d love to hear about it.

Eee revisited
Just before wrapping up this month, here’s a quick look at some of your comments and questions following our coverage on the Asus Eee PC ultraportable laptop. A theme has been using alternative operating systems.

Martin Thomas is running the EeeOS, a basic Debian OS with a few additions such as Openoffice, Pidgin and Xcalc. “It is very fast, 50 seconds to boot to desktop, and so far very reliable. I have it running from a 4GB SD memory card split into 3GB/1GB for the OS and data.”

Tim Bradshaw’s using the optional full desktop mode, but wondered if it was possible to boot directly into it, rather than rebooting from the default desktop. The excellent eeeuser forum has a solution, although we haven’t tried it ourselves.

Stephen Stewart has installed Windows 2000 on his Eee as it has a smaller footprint than XP. He’s configured it for use with a GPS receiver to provide a powerful in-car navigation in remote places around the world – see his informative web page.

Finally, Nick Ellerby wrote to ask why bother installing XP on an Eee at all, especially as retail versions cost around £150 which clearly approaches the £230 price of the laptop itself. Well, in terms of price, OEM versions of XP Home and Professional will work just fine and are available for just over £50 and £80 respectively.

As to why, there are many applications, utilities and devices (such as mobile phones) that are much better supported in Windows than the Eee’s Xandros, and of course some people simply prefer to use a familiar OS. Indeed, recognising the popularity of XP as an option for the Eee, Asus has already announced that some models will come with it pre-installed.

The Eee continues to be one of the most fun and useful devices released in recent times, so if you’re using yours in an unusual environment or with a different OS, we’d love to hear from you.