In WTV Files: A Better Way?, I mentioned trying out LifeExtender to remove commercials from WTV files converted from WTV format to DVR-MS format. I noted at the time that it seemed to work pretty much all right.
Well, yes and no. It reminds me of the “little girl with a curl, right in the middle of her forehead… ”
There was a little girl who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead;
When she was good, she was very, very good,
And when she was bad she was horrid.
When LifeExtender works, it works well. But at other times, it simply… stops working. Or, it doesn’t “find” DVR-MS files to decommercialize… when there definitely are some in the folder to find. At other times–and this is the most irritating issue–it just hogs CPU cycles to the point that using my computer for anything else is an exercise in futility.
I do have a solution (a kludge) for that last issue, though. I start taskmgr.exe using admin privileges and lower LifeExtender’s priority to “Below Normal”. (I have to run taskmgr with admin privileges, because LifeExtender MUST run with admin privileges, and so it refuses to have its priority modified unless I run taskmgr with the same privilege level.) Strangely, it seems to actually work better that way.
BTW, I’ve been able to reduce the size of recorded TV files by almost 1/3 by decommercializing them. Somethiung between 25% and 33% reduction in file size, edging toward the upper number. Not bad.