Mailing List Archive: commercial skip/flagging - how well does it work for you?

commercial skip/flagging - how well does it work for you?

Aug 10, 2003, 8:26 PM

Post #1 of 7 (2479 views)

I was playing around with the commercial flagging settings, and began to
wonder what others' experience of it is... Until tonight, I had it enabled
to flag them, but not auto skip... I turned on auto skip to be experimental
and see how well it works.

Anyway, my flagging seems to work perfect on almost every show, except for
Cops? Sometimes it will not flag coming back from the commercial, and
therefore it will skip the commercials, the show after, and resume at the
commercials. The title graphic (where its all black and just has the "COPS"
must be mixed with a black frames or something?) ... Is there a way to
tweak the settings (and/or disable skipping) on a per-show basis, or is this
planned? (or has anyone written any patches for something similiar?)... I
have this happen once or twice (happened on Hey Monie tonight), but not
frequently enough on other shows to be of concern. Is there a setting I
should look into?

-Dane

_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users

Re: commercial skip/flagging - how well does it work for you? [ In reply to ]

dunc-mythtv at rcpt

Aug 10, 2003, 8:54 PM

Post #2 of 7 (2427 views)

Permalink

Dane Kantner wrote on Sun August 10, at 22:26 -0500:
> I was playing around with the commercial flagging settings, and began to
> wonder what others' experience of it is... Until tonight, I had it enabled
> to flag them, but not auto skip... I turned on auto skip to be experimental
> and see how well it works.
>
> frequently enough on other shows to be of concern. Is there a setting I
> should look into?

I've got a related problem and an idea for a solution. My problem is
that the commercial flagging is incredibly unreliable, so I flag, but
do the skipping manually with Z and Q. My problem is that if the
flagging hasn't worked, it skips way ahead, and I have to navigate back
manually (if Q doesn't take me back to where I was). I wonder whether
it would be sensible to have an upper limit for skip - say about 300
seconds (commercials don't usually last longer than that).

Another idea I've been thinking about is writing commercial flagging
based on the channel logo appearing - about 5 seconds after
commercials, we always get a subtitle showing the name of the show
along with the channel logo. In theory it should be a lot more
reliable than blank screen detection. However, it would be difficult to
configure, requiring a picture of the logo to look for, for each
channel.

,dunc

Re: Re: commercial skip/flagging - how well does it workfor you? [ In reply to ]

webmaster at dddane

Aug 10, 2003, 9:56 PM

Post #3 of 7 (2410 views)

Permalink

> manually (if Q doesn't take me back to where I was). I wonder whether
> it would be sensible to have an upper limit for skip - say about 300
> seconds (commercials don't usually last longer than that).
That seems like a good idea to me....

> Another idea I've been thinking about is writing commercial flagging
> based on the channel logo appearing - about 5 seconds after
> commercials, we always get a subtitle showing the name of the show
Do you mean the logo that Myth displays? You couldn't base commercial
detection off of this--that would be circular. Though i really don't know
what you're talking about anyway--I don't get a logo/info after each
commercial. If you mean on the station itself, station identifiers vary too
much I think to search for that... Though, what might be interesting is to
do a search in the span of the 30 minute show for identical frames and from
that formulate some logic on if its a station identifer type frame.

-dane

_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users

Re: Re: commercial skip/flagging - how well does it workfor you? [ In reply to ]

dunc-mythtv at rcpt

Aug 10, 2003, 10:02 PM

Post #4 of 7 (2469 views)

Permalink

Dane Kantner wrote on Sun August 10, at 23:56 -0500:
> > Another idea I've been thinking about is writing commercial flagging
> > based on the channel logo appearing - about 5 seconds after
> > commercials, we always get a subtitle showing the name of the show
> Do you mean the logo that Myth displays? You couldn't base commercial
> detection off of this--that would be circular. Though i really don't know
> what you're talking about anyway--I don't get a logo/info after each
> commercial. If you mean on the station itself, station identifiers vary too
> much I think to search for that...

Hmm, OK. I did mean the station id/subtitle. In Australia at least,
it doesn't vary too much, so the logo is always in the same place and
would be easy enough to look for in an image. I guess it might be
different in other countries.

,dunc

Re: Re: Re: commercial skip/flagging - how well does it workfor you? [ In reply to ]

lists at forevermore

Aug 10, 2003, 10:14 PM

Post #5 of 7 (2457 views)

Permalink

> Hmm, OK. I did mean the station id/subtitle. In Australia at least,
> it doesn't vary too much, so the logo is always in the same place and
> would be easy enough to look for in an image. I guess it might be
> different in other countries.

very different in other countries. In the US, it's up to the station. some do,
some don't. some do for some shows, or some commercials, or do it in the middle
of the commercial (splitting up a long commercial), or... you get the idea.

I think the length threshhold is a great idea, though. put in a max and a
minimum (since some times for me those station identifiers get blocked out as
commercials or not-commercials, breaking up a commercial, or extending it into
real-show).

-Chris

-------------------------------------------------
This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/

_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users

Re: Re: commercial skip/flagging - how well does it work for you? [ In reply to ]

jmorris at beau

Aug 11, 2003, 8:10 PM

Post #6 of 7 (2429 views)

Permalink

On Mon, 11 Aug 2003, Duncan Sargeant wrote:

> manually (if Q doesn't take me back to where I was). I wonder whether
> it would be sensible to have an upper limit for skip - say about 300
> seconds (commercials don't usually last longer than that).

Uh huh. What planet are you watching TV on? I might wanna join you. :)
Here on mine, late nite TV often goes over five minute commercial breaks
in the back half of a movie. Better up that to seven or eight minutes.

> Another idea I've been thinking about is writing commercial flagging
> based on the channel logo appearing - about 5 seconds after
> commercials, we always get a subtitle showing the name of the show
> along with the channel logo. In theory it should be a lot more
> reliable than blank screen detection. However, it would be difficult to
> configure, requiring a picture of the logo to look for, for each
> channel.

Good idea but as you already noted it would require looking for a
different logo on each channel and they are prone to twiddling the logo on
some channels. For US broadcasters there is a better way. That darned
annoying ratings logo they paste up a few seconds after coming out of a
break is nice high contrast black type in a square white field, at a
perfectly regular government specified size and location. Gotta be a way
to use that against em. Only problem I see is they only display it coming
out of breaks so it only helps half of the detection problem.

--
John M. http://www.beau.org/~jmorris This post is 100% M$ Free!
Geekcode 3.1:GCS C+++ UL++++$ P++ L+++ W++ w--- Y++ b++ 5+++ R tv- e* r

Re: Re: commercial skip/flagging - how well does it work for you? [ In reply to ]

dunc-mythtv at rcpt

Aug 11, 2003, 9:17 PM

Post #7 of 7 (2433 views)

Permalink

John Morris wrote on Mon August 11, at 22:10 -0500:
> On Mon, 11 Aug 2003, Duncan Sargeant wrote:
>
> > manually (if Q doesn't take me back to where I was). I wonder whether
> > it would be sensible to have an upper limit for skip - say about 300
> > seconds (commercials don't usually last longer than that).
>
> Uh huh. What planet are you watching TV on? I might wanna join you. :)
> Here on mine, late nite TV often goes over five minute commercial breaks
> in the back half of a movie. Better up that to seven or eight minutes.

Heh. I was dreaming of a config option, but it wouldn't kill me to
press the skip button twice.

> Good idea but as you already noted it would require looking for a
> different logo on each channel and they are prone to twiddling the logo on
> some channels. For US broadcasters there is a better way. That darned
> annoying ratings logo they paste up a few seconds after coming out of a
> break is nice high contrast black type in a square white field, at a
> perfectly regular government specified size and location.

That's cute! I just looked it up, and unfortunately (for us) the
Australia equivalent isn't regulated as strictly :-(

http://www.aba.gov.au/tv/content/codes/commercial/facts_code2.htm#Display%20of%20Classification%20Symbols

> Gotta be a way to use that against em. Only problem I see is they
> only display it coming out of breaks so it only helps half of the
> detection problem.

I wouldn't mind!

,dunc