Developer Peter Lawrow has created a new tool for helping to bring Windows Media Center TV files into Plex, Emby and Kodi. The tool doesn’t rely on metadata servers as it takes the information directly from the WTV file and creates a file structure containing the metadata that is compatible with Kodi and Plex. The reason for doing this is that the servers don’t always have all the data especially for restricted rights events like Champions League Soccer.

At the moment the tool is in beta testing and the developer would like feedback from the Windows Media Center community. It looks like it could be a handy app for Media Center users wanting to move their content over to Plex or Kodi.

Header over to mpcdigitize.com for the download and more details.

The reason I started working on this converter is that I wanted to bring over some recordings from Windows Media Center to other platforms like Kodi and Plex.  There are other tools that can do the job, however they rely on external services like thetvdb.com. Basically, these tools convert video file and fetch metadata from other websites. The problem is that some TV Series do not exist in thetvdb.com and they will never be allowed over there due to some licensing restrictions. I’m talking mostly about sports events or competitions. So what to do when you would like to archive some of your recordings and create necessary metadata? This is where mpconverter comes in.  You can easily convert entire series or sport event and add it your library.

My second concern was the quality of encoding. In a sense, I wanted to have greater control over this process. I tried out some other tools and I found it to be little bit too complicated and unpredictable. I do most of my conversions using Handbrake and its built in encoding profiles. Therefore I wanted to have this ability in my application. I also included FFMPEG as second option.   During the testing, I discovered that running FFMPEG in silent mode is more reliable than Handbrake. As a result FFMPEG became default encoder. However, if you would like to try Handbrake, you simply make that choice in settings. Just to clarify that we are using HandbrakeCLI. In the future I would like to use actual handbrake library

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