How To Remove Commercials

[joe123]

Hi.

For those of us who have commercial detection setup and want to just remove the commercias OUT of the mpeg files, preferably from SageTV menus, what's available?

I have ShowAnalyer, DirMon2, all works well. SageTV skips the commercials with comskip. Now, I would like to take those mpeg files and the edl commercial cut points and CUT out the commercials.

Anything available that can be done inside SageTV via custom stuff?

[oddjob]

Here's one option:

http://www.videoredo.com/

It has a nice batch feature

[nielm]

See my reply to your other post

[joe123]

Thanks Guys.

[LJSSageUser]

Originally Posted by joe123

Hi.

For those of us who have commercial detection setup and want to just remove the commercias OUT of the mpeg files, preferably from SageTV menus, what's available?

I have ShowAnalyer, DirMon2, all works well. SageTV skips the commercials with comskip. Now, I would like to take those mpeg files and the edl commercial cut points and CUT out the commercials.

Anything available that can be done inside SageTV via custom stuff?

Comskip also has an application called Comclean that can run in batch mode and clips the commercials. It may be able to read the *.txt or *.edl files generated by ShowAnalyzer.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by LJSSageUser

Comskip also has an application called Comclean that can run in batch mode and clips the commercials. It may be able to read the *.txt or *.edl files generated by ShowAnalyzer.

I tried comclean. It creates the new mpeg file, but neither Sage nor Windows Media is able to play it.

The comclean scripts calls mpgtx.exe which gives an error of "warning: couldn't find any valid system header. I'm continuinng anyway."

Can this be the cause why the new mpeg files wont play? What's the fix?

[LJSSageUser]

Originally Posted by joe123

I tried comclean. It creates the new mpeg file, but neither Sage nor Windows Media is able to play it.

The comclean scripts calls mpgtx.exe which gives an error of "warning: couldn't find any valid system header. I'm continuinng anyway."

Can this be the cause why the new mpeg files wont play? What's the fix?

I don't use Comclean, but here's a quote from the GBPVR Wiki. You may have to use some more complex cutting procedure to get a usable file based on the error possibility (mpgtx has multiple processes that can be used):

"You MUST check the framerate in the Comclean.bat file The default is set to PAL

set framerate=2500

Set to 2997 for NTSC

Usage

The only parameter to Comclean is the name of the .mpg file to clean. Comclean reads the .txt file with the same path and basename to know where to cut. The text file was generated by ComSkip. When Comclean runs it copies the original .mpg file to _original.mpg and it creates a file without the commercials with the original name so when something fails you always can go back to the original file. Cutting is done on Group Of Picture (GOP) boundaries and no updating of the DTS/PTS is done. This may cause some mpeg players to crash. A typical GOP size is 7 to 15 frames so the cutting may be up to a second wrong. The advantage of this approach is the high processing speed.

If Comclean does something you do not understand you always can run it from the command line or change the line in PostProcessing.bat into

call Comclean %1 >>Comclean.log 2>>Comclean.err "

[roxy99]

Why not produce an a compressed xvid at the same time and use my batch file?

[joe123]

Originally Posted by roxy99

Why not produce an a compressed xvid at the same time and use my batch file?

You have a great setup and I would love to use it, but due to disk space, I cannot run it on my C: drive. If I put all the program in say D:, will your scripts work in D:?

[roxy99]

Originally Posted by joe123

You have a great setup and I would love to use it, but due to disk space, I cannot run it on my C: drive. If I put all the program in say D:, will your scripts work in D:?

The batch is meant to be configured so that your source (mpeg) folder is on your video recording directory. Drive C:\Project contains the batch file and Virtualdub, comskip, etc. Very little space consumed.

At the top of HQConver2Pass.bat you will see (open with notepad)

Set CUTDIR=c:\Project\Converted
set CAPDIR=c:\Project\misc
set VDir=c:\VirtualDub
SET WORKDIR=c:\PROJECT
set SDIR=c:\Project\source

The source directory is defined by the batch file as C:\Project\source but this should be changed to whatever you want it to be. So suppose drive D: has a folder called d:\recordings. Then drive the variable for SDir at the beginning of the batch file should be set SDIR=D:\recordings. (PS- actually you should create on D:\ a special folder- and move only mpg that you want to process and only a few at a time. The batch file hijacks your cpu to the point that it should be run when no scheduled recordings are to take place)

CutDir can be defined as any directory on D: where you want to put your converted and commercial cut videos.

Finally Capdir is a temporary directory and should be on the same har drive as where SDir and CutDir are.

In fact I don't recommend anyone using their drive C: for SDir, Curdir and Capdir. The defaul batch file is that way only because I can't anticipate everyone'd drive setup.

Hope that helps.