Anthony Buttino's Space Saver Profiles for Dvr-ms Toolbox


About these profiles:

The DTb SpaceSaver Profiles are a great way to archive your shows to save space on the hard drive or to integrate and play through to your favorite media browser. It is all dependant on how you decide.

Each of these profiles adds a certain amount of customizaibilty that you can configure your media center or media browser to. I will explain below each profile's function and hopefully you can decide which one is right for you.

In each download, there is an installer and Support Package builder that you can zip up and send to me with the address provided in the support package builder. If there are any questions you can email me directly at this address

  • All of these releases work with 1.2.2.0+ and cannot work with previous versions.
  • There are release notes for each profile below, also, remember to run all my executables as an administrator.
  • If you haven't already donated, please Donate if you like my profiles and use them.
  • When asking for support, you can email me with the address in the "SupportPackage" Executable or you can post which verison you are using here.
  • Please include the log from the failed show here or in the email.

Due to the immense amount of work that went into making the installer, the profiles and the amount of support, I would really appreciate a donation. Over 5 weeks went into making these all function perfectly.

I was considering the idea of having only certain profiles available for non-donators, but these are just too good to isolate.

Lets get to it: (click on the titles to download)

SpaceSaver Revision A

  • This revision will allow you to prompt for the archive while you are watching the show. This is very convenient because you can see how well the show did with the commercial scanner and decide to archive it when you want to.


  • Revision A will also allow media center to manage your WTV's automatically and won't fill up your hard drive with un-needed archives.

  • Press '4' while watching the show to prompt for reprocess and it will start cutting the show when you click "Yes"

SpaceSaver Revision B

  • This revision will automatically archive all of your recorded tv programs. I do not recommend this if you have a small hard drive. This will ALSO keep a copy of the WTV files so that you can go back to them if it was improperly cut (black screen, wrong slider).


  • Since Windows Media Center 7 (7MC) will not manage DVR-MS files, it will keep ALL of them until you delete them.

  • XMLRestore will allow you to revert to the original XML file that is created in this profile. Pressing '4' while watching the show will bring this back to life.That way you can continue to watch the WTV with commercial skipping and not have to wait for the commercial scanning program

SpaceSaver Revision C

  • This profile will automatically convert all of the newly recorded shows, delete the WTV file and place the DVR-MS in an archive directory.


  • Although this will save a lot of space, Media Center will not manage your archived files, so you have to decide which shows to keep or discard.

SpaceSaver Revision D

  • This profile will allow you to archive the shows to MKV. After extensive research I chose this container for the Recorded TV files because it will allow you to store the subtitles/captions in the file but reduce the size to 1/3 or less without a great loss in quality


  • The profile comes with very detailed instructions to set it up and here are more instructions:


    • First the show will get scanned and you'll get a commercial XML, but will still be using the WTV to view the file

    • When you want to remove the commercials from the file to archive it, play it and after a few seconds press '4' on the remote and you'll get a reprocess prompt, select "yes" to remove the commercials from the file

    • When the commercial removal is over you'll see two shows in the recorded TV library. Obviously the cut one is shorter.

    • If you would like to save it to MKV you can play the shorter file and after a few seconds press '4' on your remote and it'll begin the MKV Conversion

    • This is probably the best profile for someone that really wants to archive for more than just occasional use. This could include making a full series in one playlist on Media Browser or any other reason you'd possibly think up to turn your WTV's into commercial free MKV's

    • Basically the profile has 3 levels and you can use the 2nd (Cut Commercials out) or 3rd (convert to mkv) at any time you want. It's all on your call.

Tools:

  • Deletebxml.cmd will delete your old bxml files. You should create a task in Computer Management on your computer to run this at least once per week. This must be placed in the recorded tv directory to work. (Click on the file name to download it)

  • ShowAThenComSkip - This profile will find the commercials while the show is still recording then after the show finishes recording, it'll erase the file built with ShowAnalyzer and build a new XML with ComSkip that can be a little better with finding commercials. Change the 5th line of it to a subdirectory on your second hard drive (if you have one) such as "processingshow" and make sure the Find Commercials at the beginning of the file (when you edit it) says "SAV1" and the second says "Comskip" and you are all set. Use this profile for your WTV Condition or "All files" condition and don't forget to re-start the FW service