Questions on DVR, COMSKIP, EDL, Plex and Quicktime Playback

Channels DVR Server
#1

I thought why not try and get a few answers, save thread paper :wink: Here they go:

  1. Loving the Channels DVR and am hoping more can be done with COMSKIP. Therefore the question here is that I see the commercials marked but is there anyway using any of the Channels apps (iOS, tvOS etc) to actually skip rather than just seeing the break points and fast forwarding ?

  2. Having enabled the EDL hack/feature, can any of the other mainstream apps such as PLEX etc read the EDL and therefore apply the commercial skipping ? I think I saw MrMC could do this but was hoping PLEX could as well.

  3. About a week or so back (can’t remember the DVR beta build at the time) I was able to successfully playback the recordings in QT but have noticed in the past few days those seem to now just sit there and buffer. VLC plays the files without issue as does PLEX when using that for playback but still not QT. Did something change in the recording/encoding profile ? Anyone else see this issue ?

Thanks so much

#2

  1. If you double click right on the remote it will skip to the end of the commercial.

  2. I don’t think Plex can use EDL

  3. QT can generally only play h264 recordings. If you are using a cablecard some of your channels may be using h264.

#3

@tmm1 thanks as always for your quick response. That was my concern RE: PLEX not being able to read EDL’s, hopefully they will in future or can find a script to integrate. WRT to QT, I’m using an HDHR Extend. Media files look to be H264 and what is strange is that shorter recordings now seem to work but longer ones beach ball.

Thanks again for your help

1 Like
#4

Saw an interesting thing. When trying to play anything above 3.25GB in the H264 MPG format from the DVR, QT will just beach ball. However anything below that (3.24, 3GB etc) plays back fine. Not sure what QT doesn’t like about those files sizes but certainly seems a little odd.

#5

On ATV or Android…MrMc (paid app) will auto skip commercials. I can confirm.

Otherwise, using Kodi on non Apple devices (…unless one sideloads using Xcode with a developer’s account) will also auto skip. Cannot personally confirm, however, many postings in various forums confirm.

#6

How do you get Mr Mc to Auto skip Commercials? I bought it for my Fire devices and find it useless

#7

You have to run the “Edl” hack on your server. The curl command can be run on terminal. To access, view this thread.