Commercial Advance Beta Release

[malore]

Found the following about vcr commercial skipping here

22.7) How does the "commercial skip" feature work? (From: Matt Kruckeberg (sackmans@ndak.net)). My understanding of commercial advance is that the program is monitored during recording for fade to black and silent audio between programming and commercials and between commercials. The microprocessor stores these events in memory until the recording session is over. It then analyzes these events to determine whether an event was part of a group of commercials or just a dark silent passage of programming. The tape is then rewound and the beginning and end of the commercial groups are marked with special start and end signals recorded on the control track, similar to index search marks. During playback with the feature activated the unit will automatically forward search when a start signal is detected and resume normal play when an end signal is detected.

Additional comment by me:
Commercials usually have better closed capturing than shows. The CC for commercials are probably done by the advertiser, while the CC for shows are a government service.

The methods for commercial detection that I know of are
· blank/white frame
· scene change (commercial tend to have more scence changes than shows)
· logo detection (networks what nielsen families to know what channel they're are watching)
· sound level

V-chip rating detection sounds good, but I can't find anything indicating anyone else is using it. Plus you would somehow need to get this during recording for all the different card types.

[malore]

I don't have a pvr-350, so my ability to fix problems related to the 350 is limited.
My Jul 19th update of my main STV file, which this is built on, added custom5 command to the main menu that toggles pvr350 output off and on, similar to laurenglenn's custom1. I never got any feedback for this feature so I don't know how well it works or if it would be useful in this case.

I'm curious to know if the pvr-350 had lockup problems before SageTV could display the menus on the pvr-350 output.

[malore]

I've made a couple changes to my comskip.ini that I've found to give me better results. If I had paid attention to my own notes in the .ini file, I would have noticed the 2 minutes is a common size for commercials, yet I had the max commercial size set to 90 seconds. I've also turned of checking that the commercial break is an increment of 5 seconds.

In answer to the question asking about the usefulness of requiring that commercials be evenly divisible by 5 seconds. The code I base my detection off of appears to me to require commercials to be one of the following sizes 15,20,30,45,60,90,120. This was missing the 5 second promos for the sci-fi channel, so I moved to the less restrictive divisible by 5. The point of this seems to be to avoid marking dark scenes in the middle of a show. I've raised the criteria for a frame to be considered black and adding a minimum and maximum commercial size, which seems to avoid this type of mistake. So currently the trade of between having the setting on or off is that with it on, it will miss commercials more often, but mark the show intro as a commercial less often. With it off the reverse is true.

[mls]

malore - I do hope you did not take any offense at my post. I admire your work and effort in this area. However, things do seem to be constantly changing, so it's hard to keep up.

I agree with what you said about the method some VCR's used, but somehow I think that may have changed in the last year or 2. I'm really not sure (don't use a VCR anymore now that I got SageTV )

On to more confusion...

Originally posted by malore
The code I base my detection off of appears to me to require commercials to be one of the following sizes 15,20,30,45,60,90,120. This was missing the 5 second promos

For some time commercials were "standardized" for length. However, now with computer technoligy the broadcasters and network feeds can pretty much sync in any time slot they want.

About 2 years ago I had read something about advertisers changing from 15 second to 12 - 14 second ads. Also, 20 second ads may have changed to 22 seconds.

If they run 2 - 14 second ads and one 22 second add, that adds up to 50 seconds (if they did that I mean) which would still be a 5 second multiple. But, one 22 second ad is not.

While these are only small amounts, they do throw off any commercial skip that is designed to work with the older "standard" add time allotment.

As I said, THEY know we don't want to see the commercials so they do anything and everything to defeat any form of commercial skipping.

Hey, I wish it weren't so, but heck, that is how they make their money to keep putting TV shows on.

Keep working on it though and maybe you'll find a way to get around those pesky buggers

[Hector]

Greetings.

I always use your STV and and have a pvr-350 that frequently locks up. I already have custom5 mapped with Girder to use your commercial skip (too cool) so if I understand right when it locks up I should go to the main menu and send a Custom5?

What I need to do when it locks up manually is to play any video to restore the video then go to detailed setup and disable then re-enable the PVR UI out to get the overlay back.

Being that you don't have a 350 I'd be glad to help out in any way I could.

BTW, thanks a lot for sharing your work. You've really added a lot of functionality that I can connect with.

peace . . .

Originally posted by malore
I don't have a pvr-350, so my ability to fix problems related to the 350 is limited.
My Jul 19th update of my main STV file, which this is built on, added custom5 command to the main menu that toggles pvr350 output off and on, similar to laurenglenn's custom1. I never got any feedback for this feature so I don't know how well it works or if it would be useful in this case.

I'm curious to know if the pvr-350 had lockup problems before SageTV could display the menus on the pvr-350 output.

[Deadbolt]

I have now rolled back to your release July 19 (no comskip) and have no problems with losing pvr-350 UI or tv-out . It was something in the beta release with the commercial skip. I realize you can't troubleshoot without a pvr-350.

Bummer...it really worked well.

[malore]

OK, I'm guessing that the problems with pvr-350s is caused by the way I implemented the auto commercial skip feature. I've rewritten auto skip in a different way. Pvr-350 users should download malore350.zip and let me know if this works better (has less problems with lockups).

The custom5 command on the Main Menu should be the same as going to detailed setup and disabling and then re-enable the PVR UI.

[ToxMox]

I have another question relating to this STV. The media library section acts a little strange compared to the OriginalV2 stv. When I go into Imported Video files Sage doesn't seem to be handling the repeating IR commands coming from the remote like it does everywhere else. It is as if it is detecting every repeated IR code sent. I use a remote setup that very rapidly sends the codes and usually Sage has a built in delay that ignores all the commands received within X amount of time but for some reason the imported videos ignores this. I'll be happy to try and elaborate more if this is too confusing for some.
Thanks,
ToxMox

Edit:
I'll give a little more info regarding this issue. It seems to only happen on pressing select/ok or back or forward. If I'm navigating up or down the list of video files the delay works properly. However when I press ok on "imported video files" it has been skipping right into playing whatever the first video file highlighted is and when I press Back it jumps back out to the media library menu again. I can only get it to do what I want by very very quickly tapping the button. Then it doesn't jump ahead.

[malore]

mls, no offence taken.

ToxMox, I added code to the Video Library to make it try to look up the show information using the file name for shows previous recorded by SageTV and then possibly converted to divx or something else. But, this slows down the library a little bit. Since, nobody has given me any possitive feedback for this feature, I've been thinking about removing it. If I remember, it will be gone for the next release and then the Library should work like normal.

[ToxMox]

Malore,
Thats great! Thanks for the quick response

[Deadbolt]

If anyone WHO HAD STABILITY PROBLEMS BEFORE has tested the new malore350 stv with a pvr-350 and now is stable please post.

Thanks!

ps - I was loosing the tv-out and gui on the pvr-350 even when it wasn't doing the auto commercial advance...I just lost it at random times. I'm not sure if Custom 5 would have helped....I have to do this in order to get it back:
Disable TV-OUT
Disable 350 GUI
Enable TV-OUT
Enable 350 GUI (at this point I get the GUI with blue screen..no video)
Play a video

[Hector]

I used to restore mine the same way but I have found that if I play a video first I can just disable then re-enable the UI and that saves me the disable/enable TV out step(s).

Obviously our problems may be different.

I still don't know if the Custom5 works for me or not as luck would have it mine hasn't locked up since I learned of the custom5 fix. I only tried CS on a few shows before the 350 version was posted but in the limited time I tried it I was not having any lockups with CS.

Lockups usually happen for me when I FF/RW a lot.

peace . . .

Originally posted by Deadbolt
If anyone WHO HAD STABILITY PROBLEMS BEFORE has tested the new malore350 stv with a pvr-350 and now is stable please post.

Thanks!

ps - I was loosing the tv-out and gui on the pvr-350 even when it wasn't doing the auto commercial advance...I just lost it at random times. I'm not sure if Custom 5 would have helped....I have to do this in order to get it back:
Disable TV-OUT
Disable 350 GUI
Enable TV-OUT
Enable 350 GUI (at this point I get the GUI with blue screen..no video)
Play a video

[Deadbolt]

Hector,

I'll give playing a show first a shot...then Custom 5. But, playing a video "blind" (no UI) isn't the most user friendly for someone not familiar with the menu.

[Hector]

Originally posted by Deadbolt
Hector,

I'll give playing a show first a

shot...then Custom 5. But, playing a video "blind" (no UI) isn't the most user friendly for someone not familiar with the menu.

Actually its not that bad.

Just hit -

Main Menu
OK
OK

If you do this while watching you'll see it takes you to the main menu of course then selects recordings (because its first) and then plays the video you were just watching (because it 'remembers' where it was in the list).

Its nice because if you have others around you can keep resume watching in just seconds without having to restore the UI at that moment and hear 'why can't we just watch it on the tivo'.

Now when it locks up next time I'll try the custom5 while at the main menu and with any luck we'll have a decent workaround.

So it might be

Main Menu
Custom5
OK
OK (although maybe you'll already be able to see it)

but based on what Malore said (replaces the UI toggle) I think it will more likely be

Main Menu
OK
OK
Main Menu
Custom5

I want to test it but it hasn't locked up all night which is really annoying heh.

peace . . .

[Deadbolt]

...sometimes with these lockups...workarounds...multple key punches I am the thinking "why can't we just watch it on tivo"

[thomaszoo]

Originally posted by malore
OK, I'm guessing that the problems with pvr-350s is caused by the way I implemented the auto commercial skip feature. I've rewritten auto skip in a different way. Pvr-350 users should download malore350.zip and let me know if this works better (has less problems with lockups).

The custom5 command on the Main Menu should be the same as going to detailed setup and disabling and then re-enable the PVR UI.

First, I would like to thank Malore for his great work on this. Even the first release was very good.

Now for my problem. I updated to malore350 (since I have a 350) last night and all seemed well at first. In fact I watched two hour long shows without any problems. About midway into my third show, without any hint there was a problem, my system restarted (I can't remember it ever having done that in at least the last year). After restarting, everything seemed ok. Then it happened again about 10 minutes later. It wanted to do a chkdsk which I cancelled. At this point I had lost all of my customizations, including the malore.stv. Then it happened a third time (after I had finished watching what i wanted )and this time when it came up it had even lost the basic sage information such as channel lineups. At that point I shut the system down and cut power to it since I did not trust it to not trash things.

The point of all of this is that I do not know if the malore350.stv had any part in this or not. But I did make the mistake of not having my crucial Sage files backed up before I tried things, so I may be hosed. But I will recover and will set things back up with the tried and true malore.stv. It is definitely worth it!

Thanks again.

Wayne Thomas

[Hector]

Originally posted by Deadbolt
...sometimes with these lockups...workarounds...multple key punches I am the thinking "why can't we just watch it on tivo"

Yeah well . . . heh.

I've curious if I could get to a place where I could just ditch the tivo but it's just not quite there.

Actually for the most part the malore version of Sage smokes Tivo in functionality. Pretty much the only thing I miss with Sage/malore is automated wish lists. For example I had a friend who was badly wanting to see a particular episode of twilight zone so I set up a search for keywords Twilight Zone and the episode title and set it to automatically record and Tivo found it at 4am on scifi almost a year later. That's a real nice thing but its the only thing I really prefer about the tivo software.

But the hardware (pvr-350) is another matter. With football season in the wings its back to Tivo for AC3, slow motion and smoother transport. It's a shame too because anything you want to keep is a few extra annoying steps to extract.

peace . . .

[krutaw]

Originally posted by malore
OK, I'm guessing that the problems with pvr-350s is caused by the way I implemented the auto commercial skip feature. I've rewritten auto skip in a different way. Pvr-350 users should download malore350.zip and let me know if this works better (has less problems with lockups).

The custom5 command on the Main Menu should be the same as going to detailed setup and disabling and then re-enable the PVR UI.

Malore,

YOU DA MAN! I will test this out as soon as I get home tonight.

Btw, I truly hope you took my report as nothing more than that, only trying to be a good beta tester. If I don't report all the bugs, you (as the developer) can't fix them.

[Hector]

Wow. Yuck.

Just by way of comparison I've been running malore350 for about 3 hours of watching and 4-5 recordings without any problems at all. Commerical skipping has worked really well.

On the otherhand I do get an occasional reboot for no reason and about once a week my sage locks up right after a show has been recorded. I have to reboot and Sage won't play the mpeg but WinTVOut and WinTV will and the file seems clean in an editor. I don't think this has anything to do with custom STV's tho and I've never lost any Sage data.

peace . . .

Originally posted by thomaszoo
First, I would like to thank Malore for his great work on this. Even the first release was very good.

Now for my problem. I updated to malore350 (since I have a 350) last night and all seemed well at first. In fact I watched two hour long shows without any problems. About midway into my third show, without any hint there was a problem, my system restarted (I can't remember it ever having done that in at least the last year). After restarting, everything seemed ok. Then it happened again about 10 minutes later. It wanted to do a chkdsk which I cancelled. At this point I had lost all of my customizations, including the malore.stv. Then it happened a third time (after I had finished watching what i wanted )and this time when it came up it had even lost the basic sage information such as channel lineups. At that point I shut the system down and cut power to it since I did not trust it to not trash things.

The point of all of this is that I do not know if the malore350.stv had any part in this or not. But I did make the mistake of not having my crucial Sage files backed up before I tried things, so I may be hosed. But I will recover and will set things back up with the tried and true malore.stv. It is definitely worth it!

Thanks again.

Wayne Thomas

[malore]

thomaszoo, sorry to hear about your troubles. I'll definitely take another look through the code to see if I can spot any potential problems. I've been running the 350 update myself without any problems, but then I don't have a pvr-350.

krutaw, I suggest you wait until I've had a chance to look through the 350 code before updating. I've pulled the update off my site.