Clicking Citrix link bring up open or save dialog

With the user logged open a command prompt and change directory to C:\program files\Citrix\ICA Client

Run this command from that directory: wfica32 /setup

Momentarily after running the command there should be a citrix setup completed message.

When clicking to launch citrix apps it should now work.

Cannot play my DVR-MS movies on Zune HD

It's confusing that microsoft does not support their own proprietary file type on the Zune HD. I know you can play some dvr-ms files, like SD tv shows recorded on Media Center, but not movies that have been coverted to dvr-ms. I converted my whole collection to dvr-ms to get away from transcoding, to have better support on the extenders. It would have been nice for these movies to work on the Zune HD.

From reading it seems like the Cucusoft product is good for converting dvr-ms for Zune. Anybody else got any recommendations? I did do one by using VideoRedo to convert it from dvr-ms to mpg using QSF (so only took a couple of minutes) then I converted it to wmv using Windows Media Encoder. It took a long time and came out looking crappy.

Preparing your movies with VideoRedo TVSuite

As you may have noticed in my other post, I've pretty much had it with Transcode 360. The last straw for me was its tendency to end a movie we were watching before the movie is over. It usually seemed to happen about 20-30 minutes from the end. Have that happen a few times and your are ready to through a brick through the tv.

Another point of interest is the new My Movies will no longer support Transcode 360. According to Binnerup, he does not want to include support because of the large number of problems people have related to it. So there's another sign to abandon this.

For a while there is was sorta nice but I've personally had it. I'm tired of supporting it. I'm tired of it flaking out on me. I'm going to leave all my blog stuff up for those of you who want to venture down that path but my new solution is just converting my movies, and with VideoRedo, the conversion process is very quick and very easy.

I've been asked to describe how to do it. I will present to methods.

A) The Batch Method
This is how I've been doing it lately. Since I have about 300 movies to convert I don't want to sit there and do them one by one. So I have been setting up batches of about 10 or 20 to do. Here's how to do it.
1) Open VideoRedo
2) Go to File>Open Title from a DVD
3) Browse to the folder containg you movie. You don't have to go all the way to the Video_TS folder, the parent folder is fine. So say, go to C:\Movies\Happy Gilmore. Highlight the folder and click OK.
4) The next screen will show you the various titles on the DVD. You want to pick the big one, the one that is the actual movie. So highlight it. At the bottom you will see 'audio stream'. Pick the audio stream you want. Click Ok.
5)VideoRedo will now open a window with a timeline. That is fine. You don't need to do anything with that. Just go to File>Save Project As>pick a place you will remember and save the project.

Ok, you now have one movie ready to go. Repeat the process until you get a number of projects. I usually do 10 or 20.

Now that I've got some projects setup I'm ready to do the conversion.

With VideoRedo up, go to Tools>Start Batch Manager
In the first box "Source Project/File: click the elipses (...) and browse to where you saved all your projects. Select all the project files and click Open.

Next is the destination folder, this is where it will place all of your converted movies. Just pick a folder you will remember.

Leave destination modifier blank. Destination type: set this to what you want. I like dvr-ms because it has nice FF and RW features but if you prefer MPG select that.

Everything else you can leave the same.

Now click the Add Entry button at the bottom. All over you movies should show up in the big box. You will see the converted names, and the new extensions.

Click Save and Execute. It will ask you to save a batch file. Just say yes.

The conversion process will start.

If it has any trouble with any of the movies it should tell you. Mark them done and you can come back to the later.

B) Non-Batch Method
Say you just want to do one movie. Open VideoRedo. Go to Tools>Quick Stream Fix. In the first box browse to the folder containing the .vob files for your move. Select all of the vob files can click open. Notice the select stream button. If you have a movie with multiple languague track, you can click that button and chooose the language track you want.

Now for the Output stream. Again, click the elipsis and choose a location to store the resultant converted file. Give the file a name, and do the pulldown and choose the file type you want (ie: dvr-ms, mpg). Click Save.

Now just click Start Quick Fix. Once it is done test out your new movie.

VideoRedo is awesome because it does not re-encode the movies. Therefore, you can accomplish these conversions in a matter of minutes. I have done a couple hundred movies so far and had fantastic results with very little problems.

The VideoRedo folks did caution me on movies that use 3:2 pulldown. They will not turn our right. So if you do a movie that uses 3:2 pulldown your resultant movies will probably have a flicker to it.

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions let me know. Also, feel free to have a look at the VideoRedo forums. Good questions and answers on there. And, I've written their support with questions and they have responded quickly with helpful information. Good to see a product that does more than just take your money. These folks really want to listen to the community and make things better. Also, I don't remember if I mentioned this above but they also have a set of COM interfaces so if you are into scripting or programming, you can take advantage of the COM objects they have made available.

There are some scripts over at the MyMovies forum you can get and set them loose on your entire movie collection. I was not real pleased with how they were handling issues so I chose the batch method. Yeah it takes a bit longer, but I get to see what movies have issues, and I can usually fix them but skipping them with the batch method and using the quick stream fix method.

Why I like DVR-MS. When you are watching on the extender you can fast forward and rewind. On the xbox controller the right bumper starts fast forward. There are four speeds. Same goes for rewinding with the left bumper. And the the triggers still do the short jumps.
By the way, VideoRedo does a free trial of their product.

Transcode 360 - I will sorta miss you

I've had it with Transcode 360. 50% of the time when watching a transcoded movie it just ends about 20 minutes before the actual ending of the movie. This is very frustrating. I've been dealing with this app a long time now, trying to make it work for myself, and others. I've had it though. I'm tired of all the problems, I'm tried of movies stopping pre-maturely.

My new approach is to use VideoRedo TV-Suite.
http://www.videoredo.com/en/index.htm
With this application I can convert my ripped DVDs to dvr-ms format in about 7 minutes. The movie is NOT re-encoded. No quality is lost in the process. The .vobs are joined. The timestamps are fixed. The movies work beautifully on our extenders.

Other bonuses to going with dvr-ms format is you can actually fastforward and rewind! Using the bumpers on the xbox 360 remotes allows for up to 4 speeds for FF and RW. The triggers allow for 30 seconds jumps. Movies can be paused and resumed. The only thing missing are subtitles.

If people are interested I can write a guide for batch conversion of movies using VideoRedo. If you want to check out VideoRedo, there is a free demo available. VideoRedo supports more than what I am using it for. Movies can be converted to different formats, TV shows can have the commercials removed, and there is a COM interface for those of you who would like to program or script your VideoRedo tasks.

I'm going to leave up all of my Transcode 360 blog stuff, but I just wanted to let you know I've had it with t360 and I am giving up on it. The new MyMovies 3 won't even support t360. t360 has not been actively developed for years. The problems and issues are getting old and tiresome.