Automated DivX;-) Recorder


I was so excited about the Paul McCartney T.V. special, I could hardly contain myself. As I tripped over all my VHS tapes laying around the room, I frantically searched for a blank one. Then it hit me: Why don't I record this in DivX;-)? Well let me tell you, this started a whole train of thought.

First I'd have to record the t.v. show manually using my favorite program VirtualDub. I'll need to tweak the picture brightness & contrast prior to recording so it will look good on my p.c. afterwards. Then I would have to record the audio portion using the uncompressed PCM wave codec. After I recorded the entire show, I can bring the DivX;-) video into a program called Aviutl. There I can delete the commercials manually. Then I can take the file & open it up in Sound Forge. There I can normalize the audio & even tweak the audio so it sounds really good. Then from there I can take what I've got so far, open it up in VirtualDub once again, set the video to be a direct stream copy & set the audio to the compressed codec of my choice which would be 128 / 44.1 Mp3. Once I have the final video in DivX;-) I can burn it to a cd for archiving & even use one of those free autorun utilities.

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Gosh - what a hassle. I'd rather just pop in a freakin' tape & hit record. But DivX;-) is so superior & I'd much rather be archiving the shows on Cdr than Vhs at this point. So I write this article to plead with some of the best 'coders' out there, if that's what your title is. I do not know code. I know audio inside out but I do not know code. Why doesn't someone make a program that will have all those functions along with a timer for recording when I'm away from the pc?

This is what the program would do. You'd be able to set the timer. It should have its own video quality tweak settings like luminance, gamma, brightness, etc. It should have a little producer type utility so once the show has been recorded you can tweak the audio before burning the Cd. It should really have a way of scanning the entire file looking for a black screen in the video & then give you the option to delete everything up to the next black screen. Or it can allow you to mark certain points & then it would batch delete. Most of the commercials have a black screen for a moment before & after them. With one program I should be able to set the timer, walk away & come back to a burned cdr with autorun on the cd, all automatically. The audio tweaking is usually the same tweaking for almost every tv show I do record manually so I should be able to preset that & let it do it in an automated fashion. The whole procedure can be automated with options to hand tweak it manually if desired. You should definitely have an option with the commercials because not always is there a black screen before & after - but most of the time there is.

I think you catch my drift. DivX;-) is on the rise & not going away. Some people are even trying to rewrite the codec so they can own it (argghh). The broadband and wireless community are considering using the DivX;-) codec & a very inventive fella has already made his own dedicated set top DivX;-) player for his T.V. I give anyone total rights to use my idea. Just pass me a copy of the program when it's done. If someone doesn't do this now, someone else is definitely going to do it later. They already have dedicated VCD recorders for your tv/hifi rack. But we all know darn well that DivX;-) is superior to VHS & to VCD. So inclosing, I submit - who out there in code land has the know how & is willing to be the first to make such a program?

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