Converting DVR-MS Files Created by Windows Media Center

Now your Windows PC can also be your Personal Video Recorder.  Microsoft Windows Media Center lets you record television and radio shows and play them back later, when you want to watch them.  But what if you want to watch them on a different device, like an Apple iPhone or Palm Treo?  What if you want to archive the recorded video?  Digital Media Converter Pro can convert your Media Center recordings into almost any audio or video format you can imagine.

Windows Media Center uses the DVR-MS file format to record video and audio.  The DVR-MS format gets its name from DVR, Digital Video Recorder, and MS, Microsoft.  A DVR-MS file is encoded using MPEG-2 video and audio compression.  These files can also be copy-protected by their creator.  Copy-protected files can only be played back on the PC used to record them.

Windows Media Center can seek in, pause, and rewind a live video or audio stream without interrupting the recording of the stream.  Transitions between live and recorded content are seamless.  However, a major disadvantage of Media Center recordings is the large size of DVR-MS files.  A two-hour TV show recorded in DVR-MS at the Best quality setting can take up to 5.5 GB on your hard disk.  This is reason enough to convert your DVR-MS files to another format (such as WMV) for easy distribution and storage.  DVR-MS files also cannot be edited easily.  If you want to remove commercials or do other editing, it is necessary to convert your DVR-MS files to another format (like AVI) which can be edited more easily.  (Note that you cannot convert copy-protected files into another format.)

Conversion of DVR-MS files usually takes a long time, since they are high resolution and very large.  Digital Media Converter Pro makes it easy to convert your DVR-MS files to other video formats.  You can batch-convert all your video and audio files between MP4, M4A, AAC, MTS, M2TS, FLV, RealVideo, RealAudio, DVD, VCD, Audio CD, AVI (DivX, MS MPEG4, uncompressed, etc), 3GPP, 3G2, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (PAL, NTSC), MP3, MOV, WMA, WMV, DVR-MS, Ogg Vorbis, AMR, AC3, and WAV formats.

If you have an Apple iPod/iPhone/iTouch or Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP), Digital Media Converter Pro can add your converted files directly to their playlists for you after conversion.

DVR-MS file Conversion Requirements

Before converting DVR-MS files, you need to make sure that your PC meets the following requirements:

Your computer must be running Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7.  Older versions of Windows do not support DVR-MS conversions (or Windows Media Center). 

If you are using Windows XP, you must install Service Pack 2 or higher before converting DVR-MS files.

How to Convert DVR-MS files

Add your DVR-MS files to the conversion list by clicking File >> Add Files.  Choose a format for converting your files, say AVI.  Set the parameters of the AVI profile.  For instance, to burn the files on a VCD or DVD for viewing on a regular TV, set the dimension to 720 x 480.  The dimension can be 320 x 240 if you want to watch these videos on your portable media players.  Once you select the output format, start the conversion.

DVR-MS files are very large due to the high resolution video.  As a result, generally these files need to be compressed and converted.  This helps to avoid wastage of hard disk space when you want to store these files on your PC.  In addition, you can easily play them back on your multimedia device.

With Digital Media Converter Pro, convert your recorded DVR-MS TV shows to your portable multimedia players and enjoy them anywhere you go.