Help with DVR+MCEBuddy?

General Discussions
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So I’ve been fiddling with some things after I got the DVR setup on Sunday… I decided to try using MCEBuddy to convert those files, remove commercials, and make them smaller.

Here’s what I’ve noticed:
Plex records file into .grab folder, as it’s supposed to, once the recording is done, it seems to take plex sometimes 5 minutes to move into a folder tree and it does so as follows:

Showname (year)\Season XX\Showname (year) - SXXEXX - Episode name.ts

That all works well and as advertised. The part I am having trouble figuring out is the MCEBuddy. I have set it to view the root of my TV Shows library, and it looks for any new .ts files, and then it transcodes, here’s where the problem lies:

Problem 1) Sometimes, Plex isn’t moving the file from .grab into the tree fast enough, and so MCEBuddy attempts a transcode from within the .grab folder… After plex moves the file, the process starts over again, NBD since this happens over the course of 5-7 minutes… But it would be nice if it waited for the files to get moved to their proper show folder tree in the first place.

Problem 2) Inside of MCEBuddy, I have set the following naming convention: /%Showname%/Season %season%##/%Showname% - S%season%##E%episode%## - %episodename%"

please note there are \ in the above they just don’t show up on the forum so I used / instead

In the box that is representative of what this is supposed to look like I get:
Title\Season 01\Title - S01E02 - Subtitle.mkv

So far so good… But what actually spits out is:
Criminal Minds (2005) - S09E12 - The Black Queen\Season\Criminal Minds (2005) - S09E12 - The Black Queen - SE - .mkv

So it doesn’t seem that the naming convention is working as it should. It’s using ‘Criminal Minds (2005) - S09E12 - The Black Queen’ As the Show name, and then it’s not adding in the Season and Episode numbers because it can’t find them?

Does anyone know how to fix this so that it goes to the proper folder locations?

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Fixed issue number 2, didn’t realize there was an option to not rename at all, and just use same filename and folder, with that out of the way… Anyone got any idea for how to avoid problem 1?

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If you have the paid version of MCEBuddy use this tutorial:

The script I programmed works seamlessly between Plex and MCEBuddy, ergo all your problems will be solved since a monitoring location isn’t necessary anymore.

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@Wiidesire thanks for that, I have not made the plunge to paid yet… Is it worth the $40.00 (to upgrade for both MCEBuddy and ComSkip) for someone who is only going to record about 7 shows a week maximum with an average of 2 shows a week?

Is the comskip any more accurate in the paid version?

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I’ve been using MCEBuddy for nearly a decade. There are few things in life you feel you got what you paid for. With MCEBuddy I feel like I got way more than I paid for.

The pro version of Comskip doesn’t work any better, but it may work a bit faster. Automatic ad removal isn’t a science, it’s a guess that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. In 10 years I have learned you can fine tune Comskip for one channel so it works nearly perfectly - then it’s off on another channel.

Advice: Stay pretty general and shoot for ‘fairly good’ across the board. If you want frame accurate ad removal, buy VideoReDo <— and there’s another product I feel I got what I paid for and more.

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@JuiceWSA thanks! I will skip on the comskip then. Just need to download @Wiidesire’s script, but when I click the link for it in his guide all of the “download” buttons are ads… So need to figure that out next…

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Nevermind, I got it, had to click the download button nearly 5 times before the correct file downloaded… lol

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Just FYI. I have switched from the mcebuddy post processing script to just allowing mcebuddy to monitor folders. You should be able to specify in the Expert Settings on the Monitor Location settings to ignore the grab folder.

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The main advantages I have found to using the monitor locations instead of post processing is that Plex now 1) immediately adds the recording to the library, 2) the play icon on the recording schedule immediately appears, and 3) the tuner is immediately released when looking at the DVR in the Plex Settings.

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@johnm_ColaSC Unless something changed with the switch from Gracenote to TiVO this will delete all recording metadata (Plex sees the converted file as a new file), so if the recording cannot be matched with e.g. TVDB you will lose all metadata for the recording. So I wouldn’t recommend your way.

@JasonNalley you can get MCEBuddy for $20 here:


So with comskip it would be $30. Since Plex includes comskip premium I’m pretty sure you can just copy the comskip.exe from Plex to MCEBuddy? Unless they build a custom exe just for Plex, haven’t tried it myself.

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@Wiidesire thanks for your help, unfortunately I had already purchased for $30 by the time you posted that for $20. The $20 link on your walkthrough was broken, so I just bit the bullet and bought it after Juice explained that it isn’t any more accurate, and you now advising plex comes with comskip premium makes me even happier hehe.

When using your batch though, I do get an error that says “An error occurred while post processing the recording”, the conversion definitely happens, and the file gets placed where it needs to, but for some reason it errors out in the plex client and shows the little yellow triangle. So I’ve opted to use Johns solution as a workaround. Unfortunately, when I click the yellow triangle to see more info on that specific error (like what actually happened) I get no more information. So, until I have time to log the events and look through it, I will just use John’s method. I do thank you for all your help though, I am pretty stoked with the Live TV and DVR capabilities over here…

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@JasonNalley, depending on what MCEBuddy profile you’re using (particularly HW acceleration), it won’t work without a logged in user and running MCEBuddy in commandline mode (vs a service).

I’ve been using MCEBuddy for about a decade (Windows Media Center originally) and it’s a great pairing with Plex. In my case, I use it to transcode all the recordings I make into H265 on the NVidia card I have in my PMS box.

FWIW, in my experience, having Plex monitor the libraries in addition to the post processing batch file catches any missed .ts transcodes. Definitely follow the guidance above to exclude the .grab folder. Make sure you include the trailing forward slash so it understands .grab as a directory.

Good luck! Will.

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My wild guess here is that you didn’t remove the destination path from your conversion profile. Destination path has to be empty. You do not want MCEBuddy to move the recordings, instead the script tells Plex the conversion is done and then Plex moves the file to the final destination.

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