How to get Media Center content on to an iPod

Last week on The Media Center Show a listener asked what is the best way to transfer TV shows recorded on Windows Media Center to an iPod, on the show I asked for recommendations and long time listener Brian Frost sent me some detailed instructions of how he does it that I thought its well worth documenting. So here is Brian’s set by step instructions:

First, I have found no completely automatic solution. For me, with around 15-20 files a week to port across, the conversion procedure MCE to ITunes takes about 2 minutes of actual ‘work’. The process is actually quite simple though. Originally I used a method involving DVRMS Toolbox. This works but does not handle the ‘tags’ that you will need in the resulting mp3 files for a nice iPod display. This method below takes care of all that and should work for the Zune as well I guess.

This solution is extremely simple and is designed to get DVR-MS files from your Media Center machine right into your IPod via ITunes. This description covers the production of *.mp3 files (for example for recorded radio programs under FreeView in the UK) but should work equally well for media center video material to be displayed on the video IPod.

1. Obtain and install a copy of Digital Media Converter (DMC) from DeskShare (http://www.deskshare.com/dmc.aspx). We will need this to convert the DVR-MS file format to mp3. Note – there is also a free utility called ‘SUPER’ which I have just been trialling – this can convert your DVRMS files to mp3. In fact any tool will work here that is able to do batch conversion.

2. Copy the recorded DVR-MS files into a working directory for processing – for example “c:\Scratch”. We will call this WorkingDir.

3. Select all the DVR-MS files in WorkingDir and drag and drop them into DMC. Configure DMC to convert to MP3 and your desired bitrate (I use 128k because I like to preserve the Freeview radio quality).

4. Start the conversion which may take an hour or so. After this you will now have basic useable mp3 files of your recordings. At this stage it is not necessary to have mp3 tags in the files, hence any way of getting to this mp3 point is fine.

5. Obtain and install a copy of Tag&Rename from SoftPointer (http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm). We will need this to set the tags inside the mp3 files so that they display nicely on your IPod and in ITunes. (You can skip this step if you wish and simply drag and drop your mp3 files into your mp3 player locating and organising them simply by title, but ITunes works best if you have tags).

6. Right-click your folder WorkingDir and select ‘Open in Tag&Rename’. All of your mp3 files are listed.

7. Click the ‘Get tags from File Name’ tab. In the ‘File Mask’ control, enter the code “%3_%1_%d” (without quotes). This tells Tag&Rename to take various parts of the mp3 file title and treat them as the tags that you want. Click the ‘Preview’ button and you will see the effect. If you’re happy with the tags, click the ‘Write Tags’ button.

8. Click the ‘Multi-File Tag Editor’ tab, click the ‘Genre’ and ‘Year’ tags and enter the tags that you require – for radio I enter ‘Spoken Word’ and ‘2007’ respectively. Click ‘Save Tags’.

9. Click the ‘Get tags from File Name’ tab again. In the ‘File Mask’ control, enter the code “%2” (without quotes). This tells Tag&Rename to take the entire mp3 file name and use it as the title tag. Click the ‘Preview’ button and you will see the effect. If you’re happy with the tags, click the ‘Write Tags’ button. Close Tag&Rename.

10. Your mp3 files are now ready. Move them to a ‘Spoken Word’ folder in your ITunes library, select all of these new files and drag them into ITunes to add them to your library. ‘Lo – they will show up and be fully searchable by tags, name etc. When you sync your IPod, they will also be easily findable there too.

This procedure sounds fiddly but since Tag&Rename remembers your tag codes, it is very quick the second time. Tag&Rename is an excellent acquisition anyway because you can also use it to sort out your music collection.

Many thanks to Brian Frost for allowing me to post his steps!