Mini Display

The Mini Display plug-in in Media Portal now works in version 1.1 RC6! My Antec iMON LCD display for the first time very display MP titles and messages!!

MediaPortal version 1.1

It is all very exciting at the moment with the build up to the release of MediaPortal, version 1.1.0. This is due around the 16th of July. But in the meantime, the release is up to RC6, and is available to download and test MP here. The lastest Streamed MP (with MovingPictures and TV Series) is available here.


The menu has now shifted from the center to the left.

The new central horizontal menu looks interesting.

The categories facilities described yesterday is only available in MP 1.1.0 and the lastest Streamed MP for this build.

Moving Picture Categories

I've just discovered the ability to customise MovingPictures - the plug-in for your movies in MediaPortal - mainly the ability to sections your movies. See this thread.

This is handy for me as I wanted to section out my kids movies with our more 'adult' movies.

So entering MovingPictures now present you with the following:

Three subfolders or sections, with Olivia's Movies, All Movies and Unwatched Movies. The latter is a dynamically generated folder that is quite handy, I think!

Converting H264 recordings to MKV format

So what do you do once you've recorded all those World Cup matches, producing 11-15Gb of files that is filling up your hard drive? Well, you need to convert them into a compressed format but at the same time as keeping the quality of the video. DivX HD is one such format, but the one I'm going to use is the MKV container format. I'm just going to see what file sizes I can achieve by leaving the video and audio in their native formats and putting them into the MKV container.

Here are the free tools that I am using to transcode to mkv:

1. Edit .ts file using H264TS_Cutter: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/H264TS_Cutter (save as .ts)
2. Process .ts file to mkv using MeGUI: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/MeGUI (following these instructions)


A sample clip (Visa World Cup advert using Pixies Isla de Encanta) is available here.

A full set of instructions by myself will appear on a nearby wiki soon! Two initial problems were solved here and here.