Converting a WTV file while it is still recording?

[Scott R]

I'd like to begin the conversion process of a .wtv file (Windows Media Center 7 TV recording) to an MP4 file while the .wtv file is still "open" and being recorded to disk. I attempted an experiment where I loaded the .wtv file into Handbrake and started the conversion process, using a threads=2 advanced setting to ensure that conversion process would run slower than realtime (< 30fps). The show was to be a 30 minute recording, but was still in progress and had only recorded about 8 minutes worth to the .wtv file at the point that I loaded it into Handbrake. Handbrake reported it as an 8 minute long file. It let me start the conversion process and, as I feared, it completed once it had converted 8 minutes worth. At the point that it stopped, the .wtv file now had about 20-25 minutes in it.

Is there any way to make this work?

My goal here is to have MC-TVConverter running and watching my WMC "Recorded TV" folder and kicking off a Handbrake conversion for every .wtv file that appears, such that an .mp4 file will be produced and playable within a few minutes of the TV show ending.

FWIW, even better would be to be able to start watching the .mp4 file before the .wtv->.mp4 conversion has completed as well, but I asked about that in another thread and was instructed that the current libraries that the HandBrake devs are using don't support that.

[Deleted User 11865]

No, HandBrake doesn't support piped input.

Look into ffmpeg/avconv, or AviSynth. Both can use x264 to encode H.264.

[Scott R]

OK, thanks. As a matter of fact, ffmpeg is one of the tools that MC-TVConverter is designed to plug into, so I'll play around with that when I get some spare time.