Another Call For Help: Does anyone manually edit the commercials on a lot of their recordings?

[eric]

No, you can run it at any time (now).

[Ryuzaki]

Im here to help. I have recorded so many shows for the family. I have edited commercials many times. the thumbnails are misleading. but I have not ever played with the comskip or any of that, cause I dont know how to and I dont want to mess it up.

[chDVRuser]

@Ryuzaki

the thumbnails are misleading

These posts should help you decipher what you are looking at when you see the thumbnails for a block in the commercial editor.

Trying to find tutorial on editing commercial feature

Looking at this post Commercial editing images broken unable to edit It appears that the first image is from about 2 seconds after the start of the block and the last image is from about 2 seconds before the end of the block I do remember that Aman answered the question, but my search fu is broken right now Actually if you look in the comskip log folder for the recording it has the preview images with the filenames having the number of seconds in them. [Capture] [Screenshot 2023-08-01 at …

Trying to find tutorial on editing commercial feature

So it appears that Channels DVR generates these commercial editor preview images for each block displayed. First image at 25% of the way into the block, second image at 50% and third image at 75%. |o|o|o|o|o|¼|o|o|o|o|½|o|o|o|o|¾|o|o|o|o|o| Using a 100 second block, marked in 5 second intervals |0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|1| |0|0|1|1|2|2|3|3|4|4|5|5|6|6|7|7|8|8|9|9|0| |0|5|0|5|0|5|0|5|0|5|0|5|0|5|0|5|0|5|0|5|0|

[tree2369]

Sent you a DM regarding what you’d like me to do after the fingerprint scan.

[tluxon]

I'd be interested in helping, but I haven't had any experience using the Edit Commercials function. The vast majority of my recordings I have get copied into other folders where I'll typically use the VPRJ file as a head start for VideoRedo to edit the in and out points or to just remove the commercials.

If someone could give me a brief description of how the Edit Commercials function is supposed to work (it seems much different than VideoRedo), I will be happy to use it for a number of programs I don't plan to move to import folders anytime soon.

[Jordan_Gerber]

I completed the fingerprint scan. I have some files with commercials edited, not sure I have enough to qualify as "a lot" but figured I'd send it in and let you decide. Pretty decent number of files from a variety of sources.

[jsfullam]

@eric

If you'd like to participate, please go to Settings -> General -> Maintenance and select Generate Media Fingerprints and then comment here and I'll respond to you privately to see if you can be of assistance.

I have over 17000 recordings. Primarily Movies and TV series. Most are TVE, or ADBTuner captures. Some are imported from PlayOn and other sources.

Unfortunately, I have never manually edited or verified commercials on any. I haven't modified comskip.ini or recorded files.

I'm willing to help and learn.

[Jordan_Gerber]

It had paused, so I thought it was completed. Its actually still running, 3 days later... Synology 224+, ~ 6000 recordings. Is this normal?

[eric]

Yes, it’s meant not use resources even the DVR has any other activity to prevent it from overwhelming the system, so if you were recording or viewing the fingerprinting would pause until those were completed.

[mathwhiz]

I have about 68 shows with verified commercials (or as best as I can since sometimes the auto detected break points aren't fully correct). I've run the Media Fingerprints step and I believe it is complete (by looking at the log file and the status indicator).

[mjitkop]

I just ran a small script to count the number of verified items using the API end point "http://127.0.0.1:8089/api/v1/all?verified=true":

C:\Users\mjitk\Documents\Scripts>python cdvr_verified_items.py
Number of items: 2339

That includes items from a few years ago until today.

Earlier, I started Generate Media Fingerprints but my DVR is busy now. I will let you know when it's done, if you are still interested.

[eric]

We’ve made a big improvement to how we collect commercial edits to streamline the process for the future.

Please update to the latest pre-release:

@fancybot

v2025.12.10.0406

• NEW: Share Commercial Edits to improve commercial detection

and then go to the Live TV & DVR settings and enable Share Commercial Edits:

This will automatically share all edits that have been made and any new ones as they are done.

[MikeBear]

Done!

[eric]

As of this latest build it is no longer required to run Generate Media Fingerprints. It will be handled as part of the process of sharing commercial edits.

@fancybot

v2025.12.10.2205

• IMPROVED: It is no longer needed to Generate Media Fingerprints before enabling Share Commercial Edits

All that is required now is to enable the Share setting. Looking forward to seeing this data. Thanks everyone for assisting us in this endeavor!

[mjitkop]

My DVR is still in the process of generating fingerprints when it's not recording.

I have an upgrade pending but it's always busy because of fingerprints. Is it safe to force the upgrade if it's in the middle of processing a video?

[eric]

@mjitkop

Is it safe to force the upgrade if it's in the middle of processing a video?

Yes it’s totally fine to force it.

[AeroR1]

@eric how often does it send the data? I do 4 edits a day of each nightly news and watch them and then delete. Is that enough time?

I turned it on.

[eric]

@AeroR1

how often does it send the data?

If there isn’t a backlog of pending submissions (which there generally should not be) it should submit within a few seconds of saving.