Software Guide

In this guide we will cover some of the software tools available for Cordcutters.

We will focus primarily on desktop tools that will help in the viewing of live or prerecorded video, video editing and conversion tools and library management tools. There will be an emphasis on free and open source projects over commercial software unless it is the best solution for a task. There are no real limits to this guide however we won't be listing every plugin or add-on for major projects or every last app for Android or Apple devices since they can change quite often.

TV Tuner Software

Windows Media Center - Available for free on Windows 7 or as a paid add on for Windows 8. This tuner software is still the best option out there for people that want to record TV shows and movies from an antenna or cable TV. It comes with a free TV guide or you can purchase a third party guide to display what is on for the next few weeks and schedule recordings either as individual shows or as series. Where this software shines is in its ability to make use of up to 6 tuners which can be USB, PCI cards or network tuners. There are a variety of support tools to allow you to watch live TV remotely on your set-top device and manage your recorded files.  
 
MythTV is a free open source TV Tuner project that can run on a variety of operating systems including Macs, Windows and Linux. It is an option for many people if your tuner card is supported. It is a two-part solution with a backend for the tuner setup and a frontend for viewing. A PVR Client is available to allow you to watch from within Kodi both locally and over your network.

Video Conversion Tools

Handbrake - This is probably the most popular and full featured application for converting video from one format to another. Many if not all major file formats are available which makes it great for preparing your files for many types of devices or optimizing them for posting to sites like YouTube. Of important interest for cordcutters is the ability to process files for h.264 and h.265 codecs.  
 
TEncoder This is a very basic tool for converting videos from one format and codec to another. You can change sample rates and video output sizes to reduce the video file size while maintaining the quality.  
 

Video Editing Tools

Avidemux is a basic video editing tool that will allow you to cut commercials out of your TVsShows by hand or merge video into one file. There are a variety of filters that can be used but the most useful is the cropping tool that will allow you to crop the black bars on the top and bottom of videos that are often found when a wide format video is broadcast in a square box. It can input and output a variety of file types. This is not a full-featured editing application. It is basic, but useful for many tasks.  
 
Sony Vegas This is a full featured software application for video editing. It is a commercial product and it has all of the features you will need to produce highend videos. It is probably one of the best professional applications and its learning curve is not too high. If you are interested in producing videos for YouTube, or personal/professional videos, you should check this tool out.  
 
MCEBuddy is a tool that can work with Windows Media Center or as a stand-alone app to process your TV shows and movies. It makes use of Handbrake for file conversion and optimization, Comskip to strip Commercials automatically and it can also preserve any meta data in your files or search the internet for show or movie information and add it to your file properties. It is a really great product that will save you an amazing amount of time over hand editing your recordings. It will run in the background and then when new shows are completed recording it will watch that directory and then move them to a processed folder. You can also drop files in that directory manually or drag them on to the front window and they will be processed in order received. This software has a free older version and a pay new version. Both are good but the new version increases speed by many times if you have an Intel processor.  

TV Episode Renaming Tools

FileBot This software is pretty straight forward. With two panes you can drop your files from file manager on to the left window and then select an online guide to help rename shows to include the season and episode number in a variety of formats. After the information has been looked up, the suggested new file name will appear in the right pane where it will also alert you to previous episodes with the same name that have already been recorded. This is useful when you are recording TV series and may have a partial show of the same episode already recorded so you don't overwrite it without knowing.  
 
 

Audio Editing

Audio Coder This is a batch file encoder to change the format and properties of a single or a group of files to a different type.  
 
Audacity This is a decent quality audio editor that will allow you to cut and paste audio clips and process audio for better quality. If you are editing videos this is a great tool to have around for editing your audio independently.  
 
 

Multimedia Viewing

Plex This package is both a client and a server solution which allows you to access the server with other developer's clients if you wish. It can also run directly on a NAS server and provide services for a variety of set-top boxes like Rokus, Android Boxes, computers, tablets, and phones. Unfortunately, many of the better features of this solution such as recording television require payment (via either monthly or single lifetime subscription).  
 
Kodi is a multimedia viewer which can view both local video files and remote streams. There are a number of ways to configure this application which also include the ability to watch live television from your TV tuner. Kodi does not have a server component so your files must be directly accessed from a local drive or network share or through the use of a separate server application which can display live TV such as the SiliconDust DVR or Microsoft Media Center with ServerWMC running on the tuner computer. Kodi runs on a variety of platforms, including Windows, Apple, Android, Linux but it is not available on proprietary devices like the Roku.  
 
VLC is a video stream viewer which runs on a variety of devices and operating systems. This tool will allow you to view almost any video stream that is not encrypted and it can also allow you to view files and remote streams off your network or the internet. If you are having problems viewing video files then you should try this tool to see if it is possible to view the content.