Commercial Detection Experiences

Channels DVR Server
#21

Had a show tonight on NBC that didn’t detect any commercial breaks at all. Log entry:

2019/02/11 23:15:02 [DVR] Running commercial detection on file 308 (TV/Manifest/Manifest S01E15 2019-02-11 Hard Landing 2019-02-11-2159.mpg)
2019/02/11 23:24:32 [DVR] Commercial detection failed with exit status 1

There was a weather warning that partially obscured the NBC logo for the whole show. There was also a crawler for part of the program out to the right of the weather warning as well.

I’m running Production version, not Beta.
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#22

Aman: I would love to see the commercial detection better if possible. That is one of the main reasons I had to drop Channels DVR. I know it may not ever be as perfect as TiVo but the inconsistency that we saw was far too off point for my wife to allow the switch over. I'm glad to see that you are working on trying to make it better.

#23

The biggest repeatable issue I see skipping the first ~30 seconds and last ~30 seconds of shows. This is due to credits being displayed along with the ending scenes. To fix this, I modified my comskip ini file to ignore the first 30 seconds and last 30 seconds of a show. This is especially useful for the last 30 seconds, because if it actually is commercials, you're done watching the show anyway, so stop watching. (BTW, if there is an extra/manual 1-minute of padding at the end of the show, set the ignore interval to 90 seconds.)

#24

Watching "The Rookie" recorded on ABC last night I noticed that for all commercial breaks except the very first one it breaks just before the show starts back up, usually with some ABC ad for another one of their shows. I think Comskip thinks it is the show starting back up.

#25

Very good to know what it is looking at when it uses detection (logos). Thanks for sharing that probably explain why it works amazing one day but not so great the next day on the same daily show.

#26

I have Cox with 2 Hdhrprime's. Commskip rarely is even close. I'll pay attention to see if there is any commonalities I can find.

#27

For the most mart I’m seeing similar issues already identified. One thing I miss from my days with mythtv was that it would run commercial detection concurrently with the recording. This way I could start watching a recording 30 minutes in and still be able to skip commercials.

#28

I took a closer look yesterday and you're right, the NBC logo comes back for their own ads, the only thing that distinguishes when the main show is back is the rating banner, upper left, which only comes on when the actual show is back, so perhaps using both for triggering can help.

#29

Same here

#30

I too have thought that the ratings logo in the top left might be useful for detecting when the show returns.

#31

Running v2019.02.12.0028 on a Synology DS218+. Watching Last Man Standing, last night: The commercial detection caught them all--even the short resumption at the end of the show. But it was chopping the breaks just a little >< too short. So then it was either wait for the remainder of the break, or hit "->", which would then necessitate hitting "<-" once or twice.

#32

I'm have a lot of what others have written.... CBS usually does pretty well, ABC, not so much. My local news is spot-on, and PBS usually misses the first 4-5 minutes. The ends of some NBC shows get lost.... I now look at the timeline/comskip key on the program when I first start watching, to see if it thinks the last 5-10 minutes of a show is one big commercial, and then I know I need to manually step forward rather than comskip as I get closer to the end.

#33

Experimented briefly with commercial detection when I first installed Channels DVR, but turned it off after realizing it was inaccurate and didn't want to load down my NAS CPU by using commercial detect for every recording.

If I could select individual passes or episodes to detect I would try it again. I don't like that it's an all or nothing selection and when turned on you are opted in and have to individually disable detection instead of selectively enabling it.

I did the EDL hack and had it generate a VideoReDo project file and used VideoReDo to open the recording and check where the skip marks were.

Curious what the "Edit Commercials" dropdown for an episode does in the version 2019.02.12.0028 I'm running. Nothing but a spinning circle for me, but I have Enable Commercial Detection unchecked right now.

#34

7 posts were split to a new topic: VideoReDo

#37

Wheel Of Fortune and Jeopardy no commercials are detected. Both are on CBS and are on back to back. The Price is Right is also on CBS and commercial detection is perfect.

The other nine shows I record on Fox, CBS, ABC and NBC are about 95% accurate.

#38

For me it works very well most of the time when I wait to watch the recording until after the recording has ended and comskip processing has finished. But it fails 100% of the time if the recording is still in progress :wink::wink::laughing::laughing: Yes that statement is made with tongue firmly in cheek :grin:

Seriously though, the best improvement would be near-real-time detection. Are you still planning on doing something like this (thought I read somewhere this was on the to-do list)?

#39

Last night watching 20/20 on ABC, commercial detection wasn't very accurate. I noticed that the channel logo was not present sometimes until a minute or two after the program resumed after commercial.

One thing that I noticed, when using the commercial jump, it would put me a minute or so into the program and then I'd have to rewind to get back to the start of the segment and more than a few times it would jump all the way back to where the commercial break started as if doing a reverse commercial jump. Maybe I hit the backwards button too quickly, but one would think commercial jump should not work in reverse. Right?

#40

Most of my experience with Channels commercial detection is very positive. However, I record and watch NBC Nightly News daily, and have noticed that entire blocks of the show are often completely missed, buried within what is flagged as commercial segments. It happens at least once a week, and it is usually toward the end of the show.

#41

Just experienced a CBS house ad for Survivor was thought to be non-commercial video. I noticed the CBS logo in the ad. It only appeared for a small portion of the ad.

#42

I did the update. It's WAY better. Very usable.