While most DVR-MS files work fine with DVD Catalyst, there are some complications with HD DVR-MS files as well as WTV files.
Due to the way DVD Catalyst was created, it’s possible to “hack” or trick DVD Catalyst into getting these to work properly. Please note that while the information below has been reported to work without any issues, it does not mean that there are no issues.
First some information on WTV files. WTV files are simply DVR-MS files, which in turn are MPEG2 files. WTV is a wrapper around DVR-MS to add some additional information, similar to ID3 Tag information in MP3 files, or the tags in MP4 files.
While most video file formats can contain some basic information, cool things like Album art, cover images and such are only found in a few. DVR-MS does not have the capability for this, so, rather than to modify the whole Media Center f0rmat, Microsoft simply created a shrinkwrap around the files that does support additional information.
Unfortunately there are not many programs that can handle this wrapper. Thankfully, Microsoft did implement an “unwrapper” method to transform the WTV files into normal DVR-MS files again.
WTV to DVR-MS : just rightclick on a WTV file, and an option to “convert to .dvr-ms Format” shows up. Left-click on that, and a DVR-MS file will be created of the WTV file. Since it’s just copying the file without the WTV wrap around it, this process is fairly quick (depends on your harddrive speed)
Now to get better DVR-MS support in DVD Catalyst, you will have to perform the following steps:
#1: Download and install the DVD Catalyst Boosterpack
http://www.tools4movies.com/dc3b.zip
#2: Start DVD Catalyst 3 and close it. This activates the Boosterpack in DVD Catalyst.
#3: Download a special DVR-MS fixed version of mencoder from the following website:
#4: Make sure DVD Catalyst 3 is not running and do the following:
In Windows, click on Start > Run (or for Vista/Win7, hold down the windows key on your keyboard and tap the R key)
In the Run dialog, type in:
%appdata%
and click OK.
#5: Extract the files from the downloaded Mencoder file, and copy ONLY mencoder.exe and libx264-56.dll into the “DVD Catalyst3″ folder
It will ask if you want to overwrite the mencoder file, which is OK (it needs to)
#6: Close everything, and start DVD Catalyst. All should work fine now.
What does this trick do?
The Boosterpack is incompatible with all DVR-MS files, so as of 3.81, DVD Catalyst uses a work-around for them. When you use DVR-MS files with DVD Catalyst and the Boosterpack installed, it will use the Boosterpack for all conversions except DVR-MS files. When it converts a DVR-MS file, it falls back to the original conversion engine.
By replacing the original conversion engine (the steps in this post), the work-around for DVR-MS files will use the replaced conversion engine, and for all other conversions, DVD Catalyst will use the Boosterpack.
The reason why this cumbersome method is required to make it work is because the DVR-MS version of mencoder does not support all of the options that DVD Catalyst uses. Certain DVD access methods are not available, as well as some conversion formats, so by using the Boosterpack, those missing elements will not cause any issues.
