I wish that was available for the Mac!
Just get Parallels for your Mac! I used MCE Buddy on my old Mac mini for awhile with a Parallels disc that I got cheap on eBay. But then I just bought an older i3 Windows desktop computer on Craigslist and I use that now for my DVR needs.
I was able to get MCE Buddy to work, but how to get Channels to recognize the file? It creates an MP4 file and I think Channels needs to somehow register it.
Make sure to uncheck any of the renaming options or channels won’t recognize the files. And leave the “Destination” part empty. It will warn you that “No destination directory provided, converted file will be placed in original video directory.” But just push ok.
If you have enough space on your hard drive I would just choose the Profile “HDHomerun Unprocessed” if you want the best picture quality. The file size is huge though. All it does is strip the commercials and doesn’t convert the file format so it doesn’t take any time at all. Mine can strip the commercials for an hour program in about 25 min (click Show History on the main page in top left to see how long each one is taking to convert).
Thanks. Channels video file is an .mpg while MCE Buddy is .mp4. Are you saying I can select “HDHomerun Unprocess” in MCE Buddy? I don’t see that. Perhaps it is “WTV Unprocessed” or “VCD Unprocessed”?
1 Like
Hmmm that should be an option in the “Profile” section. Might be only available in the paid “donator” version then.
Here is a thread on it…
Thanks so much for your help on this. I am using the free version. Not sure I want to spend the $30 for the full version just to test it out, so I will forgo this for now. If I get antsy with the need to simply click the ATV button twice to skip commercials, I’ll revisit.
Once again, thanks for your help.
I have seen a huge degradation in commercial detection with the 2018 Winter Olympics - probably 20% accuracy compared with “normal” television. PBS also has none of the “ads” detected.
I agree completely about the automated removal - a double click to skip is better for my use & the moving target of identifying advertisements.
I would rather see the inclusion of transcoding the MPEG-2 files.
Back in my years with SageTV, we could run comskip, transcode to h.264 & the comskip files worked on the transcoded file, providing easy commercial skipping, but a much reduced file footprint.
1 Like
Brandonshire, your frustrations mirror my own. So as a developer who hates commercials I began working on a sideproject that is basically ‘Shazaam for ads’ with the aim to block 100% of LIVE TV ads.
The alpha version is impressive, it can detect ads in a Live TV broadcast instantly (in realtime) with very low false positives. Once detected it changes the channel for the duration of the adbreak. The system gets more accurate the more it is used and considers user error flagging, although I hesitate to call it AI - just a bunch of systems holding each other up.
Right now i’m building the prototype as an experimental IPTV player to gain access to the live stream’s future audio buffer… In future the ad detection system itself can be dropped into anywhere it is needed e.g. live streams or applied to recorded DVR files – where ever there is a microphone or access to raw audio data. Note that audio processing is magnitudes faster than MCEbuddy/commskip’s video logo and scene transition scheme (which also requires a complete file) but it will cost the user a tiny bit of bandwidth and short database searching time instead of heavy CPU processor time.
I have the same user handle on reddit where I provide updates to the project (anyone can check my post history for more info)
3 Likes
That’s awesome! I hope the project goes well. I’ll check in with your progress over on Reddit some time soon! It’d be great to at least have an alternative to ComSkip for this kind of thing (not that ComSkip is bad, I’d just like the option to try something with a differen approach to see if it might work better for the shows and networks that I watch).
Loving the advert detection in Channels, works well for me, but I agree that auto-skipping isn’t a sensible option until it’s 100% accurate.
However, how about automatically skipping to the start of the first non-advert block when you start watching a recording?
I’ve moved over to Channels from Freesat (UK). On Freesat I didn’t need to set DVR padding, as it seemed to automatically start and stop recording at the correct point, even if the program started early/late.
But with Freeview on Channels, I’ve noticed that without padding it regularly misses the start of a program.
So how about if Channels could automatically skip to the start of the program if it detects that it’s started inside an advert block? This way you could set 3 mins of start padding to be safe, but you wouldn’t have to manually skip them as Channels would do this for you.
I would vote to leave the commercials intact - simply because I have used the Plex DVR with its commercial removal switched on and while for the most part its good, it can be a little brutal/abrupt sometimes, combined with missing the markers sometimes. Have experienced this with the commercial detection in Channels DVR too, where it will occasionally miss a commercial or make a commercial boundary too ‘wide’ - I think this has more to do with different stations effecting their transitions to commercials differently (given that its possible to plug different .ini files into comskip for different stations underlines this). So, no, it will probably never be perfect, but it works pretty decently so long as nothing is removed, any slight anomalies can be overcome by flicking back or forward.
I’m a heavy Plex media user, but love the integration that Channels has between iOS and TVOS and keep coming back to test it out again and again. The Channels apps are unquestionably the best in their class.
BUT as I say, I use Plex a great deal and watch a lot of TV on a Mac Mini and the Plex advert / commercial removal is a boon to me. I can understand that some folks don’t want to delete commercials, but would it be possible to leave the things in the file, but have an option to those that don’t want to have to reach for a remote or click with a mouse or double-tap a screen to automatically … “just” skip them?
I promise to take any errors on the chin. 
I don’t care. I hate adverts that much.
[quote=“Captainsensible, post:42, topic:823”]
Have experienced this with the commercial detection in Channels DVR too, where it will occasionally miss a commercial or make a commercial boundary too ‘wide’ - [/quote]
Same here.
I think it was something on a CBC station we were watching the other night: The commercial markers were way off. Began late and ended way too late, IIRC.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find they don’t all mess with transitions on a regular basis specifically to frustrate automated commercial break detection. I know I would.
Is double-clicking the right joystick button really all that burdensome for some of you?
What I would like to see is user-configurable double-click interval timing.
See the following: Click on the title not the command
Autoskip on playback utilize: MrMC (paid app - tvOS,iOS, Android) or Kodi (free - Android)
Thank you so much for this, Debbie. And for the link to original thread.
I’ve set up a recording and will see how it goes.
1 Like
How did it go?
1 Like
PlayOn has the additional hint(s) because the stream info has a ‘break’ in it where the ads are inserted. If the streaming providers ever do a better job of blending the ads into a continuous stream, that would make it much harder for PlayOn to detect the insertion.