[mythtv-users] How to skip commercials in Myth 0.22

[Simon Hobson]

Patrick Doyle wrote:
>OK, I've been recording shows for a while now and am (finally)
>managing to find the time to watch them.  I have been curious to see
>how well commercial flagging worked.  So far, I am disappointed... It
>seems that I'm not skipping through commercials.  So I tried looking
>in the User's guide and, except for some mention of the Z and Q key in
>the Keyboard Commands section of the manual, I don't see any mention
>of commercial skipping (although there is a certain amount about
>commercial flagging).
>
>So I searched the wiki for "commercial", without much success.
>
>So I searched Gossamer Threads for "commercial" and found a discussion
>from 2008 talking about using Z,Q, left and right to jump around.
>
>So now I'm going to ask some questions here...
>
>What do the settings for "Commercial Auto-Skip" in the OSD do?
>Auto-Skip OFF -- that one seems pretty obvious.  It also seems to be
>the default setting.  Is there a way to change this default?
>Auto-Skip Notify -- what gets notified, and how?
>Auto-Skip ON -- didn't seem to work (well) when watching "The Good
>Wife", but seems to be working with "ABC News"
>
>When should I use the Z and Q keys?  One time, when I tried it, the
>show skipped ahead to the next commercial, 15 minutes later into the
>program.

The first thing to realise is that the skip functions use markers 
determined by the commercial flagging program. As already mentioned 
some broadcasters fiddle around to confuse such programs because they 
don't want people skipping the commercials.

Over here in the UK, it's very variable as to how well it works. 
That's understandable as different broadcasters do different things, 
and the people writing the comm flagging software can only work with 
what they are getting.

At one extreme, we've got Ice Road Truckers showing on Five. Don't 
know if it's because it's an import from North America, but the comm 
flagging on that is spot on - the narrator spouts off with the 
"coming up next ..." waffle, I reach over for the keyboard, see the 
splash screen, hit Z, get another second of the splash screen and 
straight into the next segment. IIRC I think it also works well with 
CSI - I think one of the key things here is that both programs have 
very distinct splash screens with a few frames of black between them 
and the commercials.

Another factor that may influence reliability of flagging is 
auto-pad. I have my rules set to start 5 mins early, and so most 
recordings start during the end of the previous program - I suspect 
that can confuse the comm flagging since the things it's looking for 
change early on during the recording.

At the other extreme, on many of our channels, and with many of our 
programs, the comm flagging is pretty useless. If you hit Z and land 
either in the middle of commercials, or jump ahead a whole program 
segment, then commflagging hasn't worked for that program on that 
channel at that time. If you immediately hit Q it will jump back to 
where you were before you hit Z. You then need to use the skip ahead 
or fast forward functions to manually skip the commercials.
Z simply means skip forward to the next commercial end marker, Q 
means skip back to the previous commercial end marker (or to the 
previous playback point if within a few seconds of hitting Z). If you 
turn on autoskip, then the frontend does it for you which probably 
isn't a good idea unless you are getting very reliable commflagging.
-- 
Simon Hobson

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