Hi all,

I'm looking for some advice and pointers as to what software works well, specifically for us here in NZ with FreeView encoding.

I'm wanting to :

• transcode my .TS files (NZ Freeview =mostly h.264+AAC audio) into xvid files (with mp4 or mkv wrappers) for playback on lower spec machines on my network.




• resize transcode according to some rules, e.g. only resize videos that are larger than 720p, down to 720p, else do not resize. (At the very least, just set a maximum size.)




• have this happen automatically, in the background, on low priority threads, so it doesn't interrupt other things happening on my mediaserver (not used as a workstation, only media/TV recording and viewing, transcoding, etc).




• have it happen when either a recording has been watched; after a certain number of days; or when the source disk is x% full.




• produce  a commercial skip file - either before or after transcoding - so that when watching the file, the player will skip over areas that are deemed to be commercials.




• after watching the transcode for the first time (preferably via MediaPortal) and being happy that the automatically-generated commercial skip file is correct, commit the file to a non-re-encoding cutting utility that cuts out the commercials for good from the file, and also removes the com skip file.




• when removing commercials, be able to specify a different tuning config/ini file for each different channel (maybe looking at the file name for substrings that identify the channel?)




• have the converted files be browsable in MediaPortal (maybe via the Videos page, in a folder called "Broadcast Archive"?)

How much of this is feasible, and recommended, I don't know. Just trying to set up my first HTPC at the mo.

I've done some browsing around, but alot of info is either out-of-date (perhaps?) or not NZ specific (seems like FreeView has some non-standard encoding perhaps?). I'm feeling like I could waste alot of time going around in circles, so I'd love to hear from anyone who has a similiar need, and who has got it all working - and preferably on WinXP.

So any advice is most welcome....?
Apparently:

MCE Buddy 1.x does not support decoding H.264. 
MCE Buddy 2.x does not have a GUI.

There has been some trouble using Comskip with NZ Freeview encoding, mainly due to the AAC encoding:
http://www.kaashoek.com/comskip/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=903

I'm assuming by this post here http://www.kaashoek.com/comskip/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=764 ,that some channels either can't be decoded properly, or a separate comskip.ini file is need to be tuned individually for each channel. If that's the case, how best to do this?

I'd be happy to use GBPVR, if that was easier to get all this done in, but I have had a nightmare time trying to get a good decoder for it, so I gave up and managed to succeed with MediaPortal.

Thanks,
Pete.