[mythtv-users] Commercial flagging on a sample basis

Bonj mythtv at bigfathooker.com
Tue Mar 25 23:32:16 UTC 2008


Robert wrote:
> Mike Perkins wrote:
>> Robert wrote:
>>> I've noticed that most UK programs are "sponsored by <product>" and 
>>> <product> always has it's advert first and last in commercial break - if 
>>> someone could create a database of these ads and then a comm-flagger 
>>> that used the database to detect them, I think that would be a fairly 
>>> reliable method.
>>>
>>> If end-users could mark these ads and submit them for a particular 
>>> channel / program / or everything, and others could download to use in 
>>> detection, that would be pretty cool.
>>>
>> Take some care here. I would guess that you might end up stepping on 
>> copyright-owners toes if you are talking about what I think you might be talking 
>> about.
>>
>> Now, copyright in the UK is possibly treated not quite as crazily as over the 
>> other side, but I think there may still be sufficient question of legality in 
>> what you might be suggesting that talk of it around here could cause problems.
>>
>> Samples for investigating techniques, yes. Possibly collating some kind of 
>> digest of each commercial, maybe. "Downloading", now that raises all kinds of 
>> flags we ought not be talking about on this list, however innocently.
>>
>> Mike Perkins
> 
> I don't know too much about copyright law, but if I were an advertiser, 
> the more places my advert were distributed the better and I'd hardly be 
> bothered to go to the extent of copyrighting my adverts either!  Sounds 
> like unnecessary expense and hassle.  And with the number of shows and 
> movies available to download from the internet I think the authorities 
> are fairly busy trying to stop all those people to worry too much about 
> a (relatively) small number of Myth users sharing a few adverts around.
> 

Copyright is immediate and automatic in most Berne Convention signatory 
countries. I believe it is possible "register" your copyright in the 
USA, but failing to register it does not mean you don't have the 
protections. The register just makes it easier to assert your copyrights.

I don't think they'd be happy with distributing their ads for the 
purpose of skipping them either!

The ad detection code works fairly well in Australia. Programs 
originating in the USA seem to work really well.... probably because 
they have had the most developer time directed at them as mentioned 
previously. Some programs seem to have all ads detected perfectly, and 
others none detected at all. Generally in movies, most of the breaks are 
detected, but the stations here do some tricky things like removing the 
logo before the ad break and not fading to black in some breaks, which 
makes it much more difficult.

I think Australian users would definitely benefit from audio detection 
methods as the ads here have their audio levels compressed 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_level_compression), which in 
combination with other methods, would lead to much more reliable 
detection. Compressed audio levels for most 30 second ads would be 
fairly consistent for the full 30 seconds, but I could see some programs 
  experiencing false positives... particularly action films, or scenes 
with lots of shouting.

The other thing Australian stations do, is play a short transition 
(unique to the broadcast program) scene before the ad breaks. I think 
some code to match those scenes could reliably detect the start of an ad 
break. It may be too computationally or memory intensive however.

-Bonj



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