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How MythTV Detects and Flags Commercials

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the gotta-love-the-bugs dept.

peterdaly writes "Automatic commercial detection is the "killer app" feature that none of the commercial DVR's dare to include. MythTV's automatic commercial detection does a great job of properly separating commercials from content. Here's how the commercial flagging works."

6 of 403 comments (clear)

  1. From the summary... by darien · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Automatic commercial detection is the "killer app" feature that none of the commercial DVR's dare to include.

    A sentence that (I think) neatly points up the big problem with the USA's legal system...

    1. Re:From the summary... by feld · · Score: 5, Funny

      the coolest thing is that they've said on the mailing lists that if they start forcing / flagging commercials so you have to watch them and you can't skip through them, MythTV will use those flags to skip the commercials entirely.

      Ahh, the power of chee^H^H^H^Hopen source.

  2. Another check by renfrow · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Another thing they might try is to look at average loudness. It seems like commercials are pumped up a bit from regular shows.

    Tom.

  3. For those who run Windows... by abscissa · · Score: 5, Informative

    Videoredo edits mpeg files without re-encoding them a la adobe premiere. ( == lightning fast)

    It also has extremely sophisticated commercial detection (never failed me), based on blackouts, duration of blackouts, duration between blackouts, percentage of screen changed to black, etc.

    http://www.videoredo.com/

  4. I wonder how many people will point this one out? by necrodeep · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Automatic commercial detection is the "killer app" feature that none of the commercial DVR's dare to include."

    Ummm, no.... I'm sure many people here are already aware, but if not - check out Beyond TV (http://www.snapstream.com/). The guys over at Snapstream have been doing automatic commercial detection for a while now, and Beyond TV is in the category of a Commercial DVR. And, I'm pretty sure that other companies have been doing it too. This is nothing new - and hasn't yet been a 'killer app'.

  5. Re:Does it just skip them or cut them from the fil by Nos. · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, it depends on how you set things up. It can be set to remove them, but personally, I just let it mark the commercials. Basically, it puts timestamps in the database for the start and end of a commercial. You can then set myth to automatically skip them during playback, or, as I do, play them, and then I use the remote to skip the commercial. I find myth to be probably around 85% accurate on its detection. Pretty good, but far from perfect.