Commercial Skip Help Needed

[dj7675]

I am needing a bit of help on commercial skip. The developer of Mplay for the Roku photobridge has graciously offered to try and incorporate commercial skipping into the video player app. In order to do this he needs a sample edl and a sample txt output file. If anyone could post one or both that would be great and I can forward it to him. Also an brief explanation of the format. He also asked if the edl/txt files store byte outputs, or only frame numbers.
I use the roku to view all of my recordings for HD and it would be great if I could use commercial skip with the roku as well.

Also, do the commercial skip programs (showanalyzer/comskip) mark the video file in some way, or only show the markers in the .edl/ .txt file?

Thanks

Darin

[erik]

Example of .txt file

FILE PROCESSING COMPLETE 111472 FRAMES AT 2997
-------------------
1 1784
24797 30046
35515 41854
54023 62691
72359 79663
89269 96566
102875 111472

The third and next lines denote one commercial per line.
The numbers are the start and end frame number of the commercial

Example of .EDL file for the same recording

0.00 59.53 0
827.39 1002.54 0
1185.02 1396.53 0
1802.57 2091.79 0
2414.38 2658.09 0
2978.61 3222.09 0
3432.60 3719.45 0

Where each line denotes one commercial, start and end time in seconds from the start. The zero at the end of the line tells it should be skipped.

[dj7675]

Thanks for your reply. Much appreciated. I have forwarded the files to the Mplay developer to see if he can make it work. According to him

"If they store the cuts as byte offsets, then it should be possible. If it just records the frame number, then it's much less likely, because we don't have access to that information via the Cascade API. "

Is there a way that comskip could output the cuts as byte offsets instead?

Or, is the actual mpg marked in some way that his app could detect at those points instead of using the edl results?

Darin

[malbec]

While at it can he add support to the photobridge so it can be used as an HD extender for Sage?

[dj7675]

I actually think that would be possible but it would be a bit project and I don't think he uses sage unfortunately. I did write an app to tune channels for the HDHomerun. He has made 2 outstanding applications for the Roku MPlay for video and Slimroku and slimserver based client. See links below. Very cool. Right now I am just happy to get perfect playback of my hd sage files and with the .my plugin, I can also see program data with the roku. Hopefully MPlay will be able to skip commercials as well.--Darin

http://www.permanence.com/SlimRoku/
http://www.permanence.com/MPlay/

[ke6guj]

My question is: How can these guys write programs for the Photobridge and Sage can't? Looking at the Photobridge forum, I see plenty of programs for the Photobridge in development. What is needed besides the SDK?

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by dj7675

I actually think that would be possible but it would be a bit project and I don't think he uses sage unfortunately. I did write an app to tune channels for the HDHomerun.

Darin,

How is your app different than the one that Endless wrote for tuning the HDHR via the Photobridge? More importantly, does it work with the newest firmwares?

I updated the firmware in my HDHR and now his app "TvPlay" won't scan channels and write out the file with the channels. Something must have changed in the HDHR communications.
He said that now that the firmwares updates have slowed down he will try to get a new version out that works with the new firmware. However it's been a week or so.
If I recall the original version of TvPlay only works up through either the last firmware in November or one of the first couple in December.

In case you didn't know, here's the link to the TvPlay thread over on the Roku forums.

TvPlay Forum at Roku.com

[erik]

Originally Posted by dj7675

Is there a way that comskip could output the cuts as byte offsets instead?

Or, is the actual mpg marked in some way that his app could detect at those points instead of using the edl results?

Darin

Comkip can not output byte offsets.
But I assume his player can seek in the timeline and using the .TXT file one can calculate the fraction of the total file where to reposition

Using:

FILE PROCESSING COMPLETE 111472 FRAMES AT 2997
-------------------
1 1784
24797 30046
35515 41854
54023 62691
72359 79663
89269 96566
102875 111472

you divide the frame number by the total frames (111472 in this case) then multiply by the total size of the file and you have an approximation of the byte offset number.
This math must be done in 64 bit integers because the file size can exceed 2GByte.

Comskip never does anything to the recording it is scanning.

Do you know that there are other standalone players that can use comskip output to skip over the commercials? Examples are zoomplayer and mplayer

[dj7675]

Thanks for your explanation. I will be sure to pass it on. I play HD files over a network and haven't found a better playback device than the roku. I don't wan't to use a PC at this time to do it, so the Roku does the job very well.

Thanks again for your help. Hopefully I will be using it soon.

Darin