unhandledexception.net

I was watching something on TV using Windows 7 Media Center. I wanted to record it, but it started before I had a chance to press record. I figure there’s no problem, I have a pause buffer, right? Unfortunately, there’s no supported way to save the Live TV Pause Buffer. What a BUMMER!

So, I Binged, Googled… nothing. So I started playing around, and I came up with something:

The live TV buffer is stored along with your TV recordings in the Recorded TV folder, which by default should be C:\Users\Public\Recorded TV. In that directory, there’s a hidden folder called TempRec\TempSBE. To see it, you must enable hidden folders. In that folder, there are a bunch of files with weird (GUID) file names with DBF extension. Use the date of the file to figure out which file is the one you want…

Copy that file somewhere else (you don’t want to muck with this folder-it’s probably hidden for a reason). Rename it with a WTV extension. Windows Media Player should be able to play it now. I tried with VLC and MPC, they both won’t play it. Using the built in converter to convert that file to DVRMS will also fail. I suspect this isn’t a true .WTV file and as such isn’t very portable.

Fortunately, you can use Microsoft Expression Encoder to make it into a WMV! Expression Encoder is the former Windows Media Encoder and the free version will do the job just fine. Once it installs, launch it, select “Transcoding Project”. Use File > Import and browse to the WTV file, set the desired WMV settings on the right pane, and when you’re done, select File > Encode.

You should now get the pause buffer in a nice small WMV file The default output location for Expression Encoder is “Expression\Expression Encoder” in your documents folder.

Again, I found this on my own, so of course this method is probably NOT supported by Microsoft.