[mythtv-users] commercial flagging idea - commercial "fingerprinting"

[Matt]

On Apr 11, 2005 7:36 PM, Brad Templeton <brad+myth at templetons.com> wrote:
> 
> Yup, you'll find threads (often including me) about man of these sorts
> of features.   The long term version -- aggregating which parts of programs
> people watch at normal speed and which they don't -- provides the only
> undefeatable commercial detection algorithm, unless you are among the first
> to watch a show, but it's a long way off.   Fingerprints based on various
> video and audio fingerprinting -- or even easier, on closed caption text when
> present -- is a lot easier.    Some of these can actually be applied without
> collaboration, in that once you have identified a budweiser commercial by its
> closed caption text you can spot it again everywhere.  (Of course not all
> commercials have captions.)
> 
> A _really_ fancy fingerprinting system could actually fingerprint shows and
> notice when the same snippet of video appears in two different shows -- almost
> always a commercial, but not always always -- and then cleverly delete the
> redundant fragment and point to it. (Something myth can't yet do of course but
> may be planned for the future.)  One reason that's interesting is that aside
> from spotting repeated commercials and repeated shows, it can also let you
> browse the commercials and start learning what they are.  Ie. some people like
> to capture the movie trailers.  Though web download is often a better idea there.
> 

Hi Brad!

How about this:  Instead of fingerprinting the commercials,
fingerprint the show 30 seconds before and after commercials.

For example.  Users manually verify (and fix) detected commercial.
Those users that do that, then automatically run a fingerprint before
the start of the commercial cut and after the end of the commercial
cut (when the show is back from break).  This fingerprint could then
identify the breaks in the show, not the commercials themselves.

Also, the fingerprint alogrithm could include time information.
Obviously, shows (in America at least), have a set length between
commercial breaks.  Each episode might be different, but this is not
determined by the individual broadcast stations, so someone watching
an episode of "Friends" in Texas will have the same ammount of time
between commercials as the person watching in New York.

One show  constantly see issues on is "Law & Order" where it comes
back from commercial, and will show a the black screen with the text
giving the location/date/time of where the scene is taking place... it
almost always gets cut off.  Just another example :)