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dCut for Media Center Edition 0.95 - Chris Lanier's Blog

dCut for Media Center Edition 0.95

dCut is a great applications that allows you to edit and/or compress DVR-MS recordings via your remote!  That's right, edit out whatever you want without getting up or touching a mouse. (I've got screenshots to upload, they will be posted a bit later)

 

Changes:

  • A full MSI installer. The installer will lay down bits, install the registry, register all the dlls & assemblies you need, and even choose the right settings based on your NTSC or PAL settings. Should do everything you need to be up and running.
  • All new compression engine with support for multiple profiles. Allows you to create jobs that compress a DVR-MS to more than one profile. This way you can create a version suitable for TV watching and one suitable for a PocketPC or even Smartphone. Profile names appended to file names.
  • Rule-based automatic job creation. Wanna setup dCut to always compress your favorite show? No problem. Full support for rules which can be independently configured to trigger off of file names matches, compress to one or multiple profiles, and output to the directory of your choice.
  • Source and Destination File Linking Support. This feature lets dCut keep track of source input files (DVR-MS files typically) and the output WMV file(s) which were produced by it. When any one file is deleted, all the others are deleted too. Why is this useful? Here's why. Let's say you configure MCE to record a series and keep 5 episodes. And you configure dCut to always compress the show (via rules.) Well, now when MCE decides to delete the old show to make room, dCut will delete the WMVs as well. Or, if you watch the show on MCE and delete it, dCut will delete the WMVs as well. Makes housekeeping much (much) easier.
  • Support for Edit only, Compress only, or Edit & Compress options. This will let you choose what you want to do with a file. And, this provides the oft-requested feature to edit a DVR-MS but not compress it.
  • Full-blown Configuration application. Not 10' UI-based, but the WinForms configuration app will let you configure everything in dCut, from setting profiles and paths, to creating rules. It's all in there. Much nicer than regedit :).
  • Support for Media Center Extender devices, including XBox Extendes.  (Nice!)
  • Support for a proper working directory, so temp files won't be left in inconvenient places.
  • And several bug fixes, including a fix for hangs during editing.

 

 

Note: Remember, this is still in beta people.  You might not have a 100% success rate just yet.

Published Tue, Mar 1 2005 12:49 by chrisl
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Comments

# RE: dCut for Media Center Edition 0.95

One word. WOW.

Tuesday, March 01, 2005 2:18 PM by chrisl

# re: dCut for Media Center Edition 0.95

I used this to do an edit and compress, which worked phenomenally by the way. Anyway, after the operation, I was left with a file that didn't contain the "meta" data (I think that's what it's called). The videao "name" looked like a GUID, there was no info about the movie, no cast, etc...

Let me know if you need any info...

Love the product. Tried to use a previous version with no success. Glad to see it's coming along and still being developed.

Thursday, March 03, 2005 12:19 PM by chrisl

# re: dCut for Media Center Edition 0.95

I wanted to uninstall dCut and reinstall so everyone could use it as I didn't see this option in the config manager. It uninstalled cleanly but now I cannot install dCut successfully. There were a lot of entries still in the registry after the uninstall. I removed all of them, rebooted my PC and tried to install again to no avail.

The error I am getting is

DCutservice.exe - Common Language Runtime Debugging Service

"Application has generated an exception that could not be handled"

Process id=0xb98 (2968), Thread id=0xab0 (2976)


The only change during the install is to select "Everyone" which is what I should have done originally.

I wamted to continue using dCut but unfortunately if I go back and try and select "Just Me" I get the same erro (of course different process and thread id).

Select CANCEL to view debugging info also got an error as the debugger could not be found.

DCutService.exe - No debugger found.

Registered JIT debugger is not available. An attempt to launch a JIT debugger with the following command resulted in an error code of 0x2 (2).

cordbg.exxe !a 0xcc4

I would like to get dCut back in an operational state again as I appreciate the compress capabilities and seamless integration with MCE. Especially being able to set a rule to automatically compress. Very useful.

Thanks
Jonathan

Saturday, March 12, 2005 10:41 AM by chrisl

# re: dCut for Media Center Edition 0.95

Left my email in the Url setting in case you wanted to contact directly.

Saturday, March 12, 2005 11:03 AM by chrisl

# re: dCut for Media Center Edition 0.95

Loaded dCut 0.95. Editing worked fine. But when I went to burn a dvd in Media Center, it hung at about 3%. The unedited version burned just fine. Tried again using MyDVD, and it hung bringing the edited file into the project. Again, the unedited version imported as a project and I was able to create a DVD. I didn't see a email link on the dCut page to post this. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Gary

Monday, March 14, 2005 9:03 AM by chrisl

# re: dCut for Media Center Edition 0.95.1

This program is great. Integrating it with MC makes cutting videos intuitive. I was using DVRedit from TGB which uses a mouse for editing and it was tedious. The one thing that dCut does not do is to cut the captions as well as the video from a DVR-MS file. Since I am hearing impaired, closed captions are a big part of every show I watch. I would appreciate you including a mechanism to cut captioning screens at the same time as it cuts video screens. DVRedit is cluncky, but it does include the captions in the edited video. I would greatly appreciate this fix.

I think this is a great product and I would be interested in using it if my editing shows contain captions, as they do when I record with regular MCE.

Monday, March 21, 2005 7:56 PM by chrisl

# re: dCut for Media Center Edition 0.95

All suggestions/problem should really be reported to the developer. Starting or posting in a current dCut thread at The Green Button might be another idea. :)

Monday, March 28, 2005 8:34 PM by chrisl

# re: dCut for Media Center Edition 0.95

I'm confused - dCut is supposed to allow me to edit my recorded TV programs (e.g. to cut out the commercials) before burning them to DVD. Is that right?

If so, what do I do to actually edit a video? I haven't found an edit button anywhere in Media Centre yet.

Wednesday, March 30, 2005 7:10 AM by chrisl

# re: dCut for Media Center Edition 0.95

Editing is added by dCut, that half of what it does.

Wednesday, March 30, 2005 7:19 AM by chrisl

# re: dCut for Media Center Edition 0.95

Silly me, I found it on the More Programs menu. Can't think why I didn't look there first!

My only problem with it now is the screen display. [I'm sure I posted this before, but it doesn't appear.]

Have a look at <img src="http://www.trumphurst.com/dolphin/dCut.JPG">">http://www.trumphurst.com/dolphin/dCut.JPG">

http://www.trumphurst.com/dolphin/dCut.JPG

It shows how my display is all jumbled up

Wednesday, March 30, 2005 11:11 AM by chrisl

# re: dCut for Media Center Edition 0.95

The dCut Service window is open, but I can find it in the More Programs (Suppléments in the french version of MCE).

Any idea ?

Tuesday, April 26, 2005 2:36 PM by chrisl

# re: dCut for Media Center Edition 0.95

I still have shown the dosbox window open when I start my pc, it shows:
dcutservice starting...
Remote object initialiased, waiting for calls


is it normal ?

Thursday, May 05, 2005 8:01 AM by chrisl

# re: dCut for Media Center Edition 0.95

I'm not as fortunate as the rest of you!

I have an installation issue. The program almost installs itself, but I get the following error:

"There is a problem with this Windows Installer Package. A program run as part of the setup did not finish as expected. Contact your support personnel or package vendor."

I did google the error, but did not get anywhere. I've tried it on 2 PC's now and I get the same error. Any ideas?

Sunday, September 11, 2005 4:12 PM by chrisl

# re: dCut for Media Center Edition 0.95

anyone know of a page with instructions on how to use?

Saturday, August 05, 2006 5:24 AM by aye