For quite some time now I’ve been trying to take Windows Media Center content and pair it down, edit it, or make it more suitable for use on DVDs (the DVD burning function in Windows Media Center has NEVER worked for me). Since a few weeks ago I’ve been doing my video editing with Sony Vegas (a program that I find far superior to Adobe Premiere). Since it was cold and snowing today I decided now is as good a time as any to sit down and figure out how to take Windows Media Center’s dvr-ms format to manageable formats for use online and to burn to DVDs.

Since Sony Vegas can’t directly import the nefarious dvr-ms format you need a tool that can import the dvr-ms file. Such a tool could be a straight converter but who needs a straight conversion when all you want is a portion of the Windows Media Center recorded show? Enter Nero Vision Express. I’ve actually had Nero Vision Express for quite some time now but never really knew what it was for until I stumbled upon this thread detailing how it can be used to convert, edit, cut, stylize, and tweak your dvr-ms based files.

I fired up Nero Vision Express and took a Colorado Avalanche that one of my troops participated in a color guard for and chopped out the part that I wanted. It took a little getting used to the controls in the program but I chopped up the file the way I wanted it and exported it as a DVD ready MPEG file. The key advantage here is that you can take a show and chop the commercials out then upload it to your iPod or import it your favorite video editing program (in my case, Sony Vegas) and tweak it until you’re happy with the finished product.

Let’s keep in mind that I’ve been working with Vegas for what would amount to a total of hours and not days or weeks. Here is my finished product after chopping an 8.08 GB dvr-ms file to the desired length. You can also see it at Conservative Thinking.

[tags]Nero Vision Express, Sony Vegas, dvr-ms, Windows Media Center, video editing[/tags]