BETA: Smart Commercial Detection for TVE & Pluto

How far behind are the stable releases?

No Clue but it has been a while.

If you use TVE, there is no "stable" release branch. period.

It is moronic that certain users keep pestering others who are reporting issue or dislikes of the "pre-releases" and how changes or new things it affects their use of the software, to tell them "if you don't want issues, then move to Stable version."

You are telling people to use old code that is often not functional for TVE to work.
TVE has to be constantly updated and fiddled with.
U are telling people to swap new issues for old ones.

Stable = OTA users only

Pre-release= TVE + everything else (new features etc).

Personally, I wish they had a 3rd version, they did at one time on android clients, Alphas.

Keep the "Pre-Release" branch for major quick fixes of bugs, and TVE things, and Alpha (or just call it actually "Beta", since they use the term Pre-Release for their tier below Stable) for new feature testing purposes.

Just my thoughts, that i have wanted to post for some time, but withheld doing so, but the last few users posts here brought it up.
Its off topic for this thread, so expect them to move them, this is all i will say about the topic here.

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DVR, tvOS/iOS, Android & Fire TV Stable Releases Channels — Version History
DVR Pre-Release DVR Pre-Release Notes
tvOS/iOS Beta tvOS/iOS Beta Notes
Android & Fire TV Beta Android TV/Fire TV Beta Notes

Bravo is our family's most used TVE channel. Would love it if you could add the new commercial skipping protocol to it. I just switched over to this release today so will check out tonight's recordings tomorrow morning. Thank you!

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On a vaguely related topic the commercial skip on the ATSC 3.0 is really quite bad at this point. I leave it on but often it cuts quite a bit of the programming out.

It's hit and miss, due to comskip unfortunately

My most-watched TVE channels are ESPN and NFL Network.

Is there any chance this commercial detection can be made to work on in-process recordings so that it’s possible to “catch up to live”? This would be especially useful when watching sports but starting after the game has already started and/or pausing. The intent is to be caught up to live by the end of the game.

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Not sure about ESPN but I think NFL Network does insert ads into their player and not the stream itself, so I’m hopeful it works with this ad detection method. I’ve seen a lot of ads cut out and show the last 1-2 seconds of a different ad before returning to the game.

I've seen that on some TVE and even Pluto channels, both going into and coming out of a commercial breaks.
It's almost like the whole commercial break was originally national ads and then they insert some local ads but their insert timing is off.

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Commercial editor now works with the new detector.

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Is there any documentation on how to use this?

I assume that if a segment is check-marked it plays, and if not check-marked it doesn't play.

What is the difference between "Local" and "Local (With Edits)"?

It shows 3 frames from the show. Are these first, middle, and last, or something else.

Results so far:

Discovery and Science are much better.

Fox News is somewhat better, but still not great.

Correct. Green is show, gray is ad. There is a legend/summary at the bottom.

The latter means you edited the results.

Yea it shows 25% 50% and 75%. The first and last frame are usually black so they're not shown.

Fox news doesn't use the new detector.

Currently it is working on:

  • all discovery stations
  • all pluto channels
  • cnn
  • espn
  • nfl
  • some free streaming channels like buzzr

I will keep working on adding support, but it looks like it is not possible to implement for these:

  • ABC, including disney, freeform, ngc, fx
  • FOX, including fox sports and fox news
  • NBC, including bravo, syfy, and other nbc.com/live stations
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I’ve had a bunch of videos from BBC America in the last two weeks where no commercials were detected. Is it possible this was related. I haven’t watched the videos tbh just went in to try and edit them and got the error retrieving commercial message. I’m noticing that in the logs the episodes that I get that error message for have a new [ADS] in the log, which is different. But other videos on the same channel get the regular comskip stuff. So I’m not sure if it’s related or if there is another issue.

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I greatly appreciate all the improvements you have made and all the work you have done, but Fox News and Fox Business are still showing some 98% static screens with no sound, saying a commercial break is in progress. These usually show up at the end of the break after other commercials have already played. They seem to last between 15 seconds and 60 seconds. I think there are 3 different versions of them.

Catching these would not come close to a total fix, but would be greatly appreciated.

Channels Server V 2021.12.31.0318 on windows

Recorded Paul McCartney - A Musicares Tribute

The log shows commercials were detected yet not showing commercial breaks on the time line with Android player V 4.0.1 and also not skipping.

2022/01/01 00:00:00.006016 [DVR] Starting job 1641013200-ch9105 Paul McCartney - A Musicares Tribute on ch=[9105]

2022/01/01 00:00:00.372333 [TNR] Opened connection to M3U-STIRRthenewFreeTV for ch9105 Qello

2022/01/01 00:00:00.382713 [DVR] Recording for job 1641013200-ch9105 from M3U-STIRRthenewFreeTV ch9105 into "TV\Paul McCartney - A Musicares Tribute\Paul McCartney - A Musicares Tribute 2022-01-01-0000.mpg" for 1h32m59.9939837s

2022/01/01 00:00:00.463360 [IDX] Generating video index for job 1641013200-ch9105

2022/01/01 01:33:00.066314 [MTS] Statistics for "TV\Paul McCartney - A Musicares Tribute\Paul McCartney - A Musicares Tribute 2022-01-01-0000.mpg": skipped=0 unhandled_packets=0 discontinuity_detected=26 transport_errors=0 invalid_pts=0 invalid_dts=0 saw_pcr=true saw_pmt=true highest_pts=5594.018633

2022/01/01 01:33:00.140742 [ADS] Detected 12 commercial markers in file-822: TV\Paul McCartney - A Musicares Tribute\Paul McCartney - A Musicares Tribute 2022-01-01-0000.mpg

2022/01/01 01:33:00.277344 [TNR] Closed connection to M3U-STIRRthenewFreeTV for ch9105 Qello

2022/01/01 01:33:00.283022 [DVR] Finished job 1641013200-ch9105 Paul McCartney - A Musicares Tribute

2022/01/01 01:33:00.345066 [DVR] Processing file-822: TV\Paul McCartney - A Musicares Tribute\Paul McCartney - A Musicares Tribute 2022-01-01-0000.mpg

*** Regenerate video index

2022/01/01 12:17:50.067076 [IDX] Generating video index for file-822: Paul McCartney - A Musicares Tribute 2022-01-01-0000.mpg

2022/01/01 12:19:18.127618 [IDX] Finished video index generation for file-822 in 88s

*** No improvement so doing Redetect Commercials

2022/01/01 12:28:55.708063 [DVR] Running commercial detection on file 822 (TV\Paul McCartney - A Musicares Tribute\Paul McCartney - A Musicares Tribute 2022-01-01-0000.mpg)

2022/01/01 12:41:56.949697 [DVR] Commercial detection for Paul McCartney - A Musicares Tribute 2022-01-01-0000.mpg finished with 12 markers in 13m1.2777608s.

*** This time the commercial skips are working

Morris