Recording HBOMax movie into Channels DVR?

Channels DVR Server
#1

Somehow I thought this could be done with the strmlnk feature.

I'm obviously wrong on that point.

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#2

The difference is between "linking to" and "recording". Channels will not record from premium services like HBOMax, Netflix, or Amazon Prime. However, you can pass a URL to Channels so your program be listed inside of Channels. When you want to view the program, Channels will access that URL to play your show "on demand".

Ken

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#3

Okay thanks Ken. I was only interested in a recording option. Probably illegal for me to do something like that anyway.

I have a subscription to FubuTV so I guess I can record movies that way. Unfortunately, I have to cut out the commercials. Maybe using comskip and mcebuddy could accomplish that.

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#4

You can check out https://www.playon.tv to do something like you're asking.

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#5

There is a different product/company called PlayOn that looks like it will do what you want, but I rejected it because it only has 720P resolution on its recordings.

Ken

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#6

Channels takes care of the commercials, so what is issue there? We've built up a pretty big library of movies ... a lot of the kids movies especially. I'm finding that my wife often than not now watches them via Channels instead of the Disney app, because everything is in one place. She can easily skip the commercials via Channels. I am doing this because then eventually we can drop some of these extra VOD services like Disney because they rarely get new stuff.

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#7

All my TVE comes from Fubo. Just register Fubo as a TVE source in Channels and you will get most everything Fubo has via high quality TVE and you can tell Channels to skip the commercials.

Ken

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#8

Ken,

I got it working with Fubo. The recordings have the Comskip sections in there. Skipping the commercials also works great. However, I want to cut the commercials out completely on certain movies that I want to put in my Movie library.

I know there is a json file included with the .mpg but I'm not sure how to use ffmpeg to cut out the commercials. (Can't use MCEbuddy because I don't do Windows)

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#9

Here's a script I put together in the past using the ffsplit files in the comskip log directories:

#!/bin/sh

ffmpeg -i video.mpg $(cat video.ffsplit)
for _f in segment*.ts
do
  echo "file ${_f}" >> edit.txt
done
ffmpeg -f concat -i edit.txt -c copy edit.mpg
_file=$(readlink video.mpg)
mv ${_file} ${_file}.orig
mv edit.mpg ${_file}
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Deleting commercials from recordings on OSX
#10

Not sure what OS you are using I recommend Handbrake its available for Mac, Windows and Linux
It is free open source, been using it for years.

#11

Okay that is an awesome script. It works great. Thank you so much. However, I lose the audio to the recording. Did you find that to be the case?

Also, is there any way to remove the residual markers within the .mpg file that identify the commercials? And also the "Skip Commercial" messages?

#12

I did not. However, to ensure that all streams from the source are used, add in -map 0 before the -c copy option.

I'm not sure what you mean. If you mean that some commercials remain, that is because the original detection did not flag them. If you find that is often the case, you may want to manually confirm/assess the commercials in the Channels interface (either the web UI or an Apple client). Then, use the web UI's option to export EDLs, and convert the EDLs into a format that Ffmpeg will take.

A different option is to use the ffmeta file that Comskip generates to create a Matroska version, and it will add the commercial markers as chapters/bookmarks. That has the benefit of being non-destructive, so if the commercials are not properly marked, you can still watched where a commercial segment was flagged, but was really programming content.

Those are not present in the output. That's an overlay that Channels presents. (You can even disable that in the app's settings.)

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#13

The commercials are removed, but when playing the file it still visibly shows sections where the commercials used to exists. And the "Skip Commercial" message appears when the playback enters those sections

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#14

Are you saying you're removing the commercials from the recording, and replacing the original recording file, and still using it within Channels, just as you did before, and not as a separate Local Content import? If so, why?

Your problem then is that the Channels database doesn't know the file has changed, and it is using its old/stale information from the original recording; it does not know that you're playing back a different file from the one it created.

In your situation, you would be better served by manually editing/confirming the commercials in the web UI, and then enabling automatic commercial skipping. Using an outside program to remove commercials works best outside of Channels, or added back in as a Local Content import. Making the changes in situ and still expecting Channels to know you changed things is going to lead to a poor UX.

#15

Excellent points. My original goal was to strip out the commercials and move the final movie into a separate movie library. So really, the only problem I need to solve is the audio. I will use the -map 0 option and see what that gives me.

#16

This is now working for me. I changed the script so that all the segments were concatenized into a final .ts file, rather than a .mpg

ffmpeg -f concat -i edit.txt -c copy edit.ts

Somehow this totally resolved the audio issues.

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