Commercial Skipping - Tell Us How You Do It

[Brent]

I'm looking for input from everyone as to how you deal with commercials with SageTV. So to gauge the forum members at least, I'm starting this poll to learn how you currently are "dealing" with TV commercials in general. Please vote for the way you most typically deal with TV commercials within SageTV.

Note: This poll is public so others will see how you vote. Thanks!

[Brent]

The history of commercial skipping for me:

First I used BeyondTV which had "smartskip" built-in so I was "brought up" expecting commercial detection & skipping.

Then I used Show Analyzer for some time but switched over to Comskip when they came out with good HD-PVR h.264 commercial detection.

I've also used VideoRedo to edit out commercials on a select few recordings in the past as well.


I started this poll to see how out-of-the-norm I am with always using commercial detection - at least with the folks on this forum.

[MitchSchaft]

I've been watching TV on my PC since 2001 with ATI's all in wonder and software. I had to live with commercials until I switched to MCE2005 in 2007. I used babgvant's DVRMSToolbox with comskip.
Since switching over to Sage this past January, I use comskip with the built-in stuff from Sage. SageMC autoskips so I don't have to use an arrow to manually skip.

[Taddeusz]

I use both Show Analyzer and Comskip and then let SageMC automatically skip.

Because of Show Analyzer's School House feature I've been able to more successfully tweak it to a far higher degree than comskip. But then SA doesn't support H.264 and the current encarnation of the 1.0 beta doesn't detect very well and lacks School House. So I use comskip to detect ads in H.264 recordings. Comskip doesn't do that good of a job, particularly with 480i, but it works well enough most of the time. It's possible I haven't tweaked comskip enough but it is more difficult to tweak.

[Peter_h]

I use comskip triggered by SJQ. H264 recordings are done as the show is recording. Non HD, H264 recordings are done when the show ends.

I use SageMC autoskip so no right button push needed.

[wrems]

I use SA and Dirmon2, although I have SageMC set to automatically advance at each commercial block so I don’t have to hit the right arrow key. Skipping the commercials is the best part of diy dvr.

[sic0048]

I'm still "old school" and simply using a 2.5 minute ffw and then tweak with a 10 sec ffw.

I started out this way because I was running Sage on an old 3.0ghz P4 and have only HD quality recordings. So that machine doesn't have enough power for commercial skipping.

I recently built a nice quad core machine that has more than enough power. But I am running Windows Server 2008 on it and I haven't taken the time to go through the hacks to install the tuners on them. Once I get that done, I'll switch the Sage Server to that machine and may start using com skip then.

[matt91]

I use comskip to create .edl files. SageJobQueue then looks to see if the category of the recorded show is "children" (lots of those in my house!).

If "children" is true, then Videoredo runs and actually deletes the marked commercials. I set this up when space was tighter in my setup than it is now, but it seems to work well, so I haven't messed with it.

For all other shows, I just let SageMC autoskip the commercials as we're watching. If it's off a little, I can just rewind to see it.

Works well, and has greatly increased the WAF over our old DISH PVR.

[reggie14]

I've been using ShowAnalyzer for a while now. I'm running 0.9.7 right now. I haven't upgraded to the 1.0 beta because I don't use an HD-PVR. I use SA with analog recorded TV, QAM HDTV, and mpeg2-ps firewire recorded TV. I probably need to tweak the settings a bit, because SA doesn't always do a good job with HD channels.

My biggest complaint is that SA doesn't crash gracefully. Occasionally I'll get a file that SA can't process. DirMon will start an SA process on a file, SA will crash before an .edl file is created, Windows will pop up an error message, DirMon will start another process on the problematic file, etc. Since I rarely directly use my Sage server, sometimes it will take days or even weeks before I notice SA has been crashing and I'll have to hold down the enter key for a long time to close all the Windows popups. Hopefully version 1 fixes that. Really the first thing SA should do is create an .edl file, so that if SA crashes once it starts to process the file it doesn't cause this nasty loop.

[toricred]

I use SAV1 to detect (called by DTB) and then have Sage autoskip. It misses every once in a while, but it is always a bit of a commercial that I see never part of the show that I miss.

[Brent]

I'm kind of surprised to see at least 27% (out of 55 votes so far) not using commercial detection on SageTV. That just tells me I assumed too much in thinking commercial detection was one of the top 3 reasons to use an HTPC...

My wife would not let me switch to SageTV from BeyondTV UNTIL I had commercial skipping working well. We don't use auto-skip, instead we use the hit right on the remote to skip but it's something everyone has become used to and expects. They complain when we're at the grandparents and have to use the DirecTV DVR

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by Brent

They complain when we're at the grandparents and have to use the DirecTV DVR

So do I. I don't want to start a war here, but in my opinion there's a vast difference in user-friendliness between VCR/Tivo-style continuous fast-forward, and Sage-style skip-ahead. With the continuous kind, I have to give my full attention to the commercials I'm trying to skip, with my finger hovering over the Play button ready to mash it on a moment's notice when the commercial ends. With Sage, no split-second timing is required; I can just glance at a few frames to see where I am and have a couple of seconds to decide which button to hit next (or not). It's really much less stressful.

Although I voted for the "30-second skip" choice in the poll, I suppose I should amend that to add that I also use Pause On Skip, which gives you a series of still frames while skipping, instead of a bunch of short clips with annoying audio hiccups. Playback resumes automatically when the OSD times out (which I have set to three seconds). It may seem like a small thing, but I would certainly find the skip method much less pleasant without this add-on.

[brandypuff]

At first i was using Comskip and it worked pretty well. But then each night my disks were churning for several hours to cut out the commercials from shows recorded that day. I also kept a copy of the original video in case more than just the commercial were cut. Sometimes the process would fail and i'd have to restart it and clean up temp files.

Eventually, i just gave it all up and use the skip ahead buttons on my remote now. The random access nature of disk drives makes it so much easier to skip through commercials than the old analog vcr tapes. I just hope the buttons don't wear out on my remote from constant use.

I just received a new HD200 and am axious to try it out.
I love SageTV.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by brandypuff

At first i was using Comskip and it worked pretty well. But then each night my disks were churning for several hours to cut out the commercials from shows recorded that day. I also kept a copy of the original video in case more than just the commercial were cut. Sometimes the process would fail and i'd have to restart it and clean up temp files.

Why were you cutting the commercials out? All that's needed is to detect commercials and then you let the Comskip add-on or SageMC automatically skip. Unless you're going to keep the recordings indefinitely, IMHO, there's no need to go through the process of actually cutting the commercials from the video.

[gplasky]

Few people actually cut the commercials. The only time I did was if I burnt the recording to a DVD and knew I would be playing it from a regular DVD player. The drives will still churn at night because it is read-intensive to detect the commercials. Especially h.264. But that's why I have mine run at night. So I don't have to hear it or be affected by it.

Gerry

[lovingHDTV]

Use Dirmon2 to run comskip, SageMC and right arrow to skip. The sad thing is I instinctively try to use the right arrow while watching Hulu shows to skip the commercials but it doesn't work.

dave

[Skirge01]

Brent, as others have mentioned, you forgot the SageMC users who don't use the right-key to skip forward and instead let it happen automatically.

I didn't set up Comskip for about 6-9 months after getting my server running because I knew it was going to take some tweaking and effort, including setting up SJQ. So, I was afraid of breaking something else in the process.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

Brent, as others have mentioned, you forgot the SageMC users who don't use the right-key to skip forward and instead let it happen automatically.

Yeah, I did forget that... oops. Since you can't adjust the poll after posting just assume I meant "skip" in general instead of "right-key"

[HuMan321]

Brent,

Have you made many tweaks to the stock settings for commercial skipping? If so, is there a list somewhere?

[jreichen]

I used comskip until I switched to Linux. Erik doesn't build comskip for Linux and I don't care to install Wine so I got used to using the 10 second and 2.5 minute skipping on the remote.