[mythtv] alternative method for commercial skipping

[Ben Bucksch]

Chris Pinkham wrote:

>I think that generic detection methods such as just detecting a still-frame
>would work better than trying to capture every still-frame ad that every
>station uses.
>
In case you mean a single picture that stays on screen for some time 
without changing, that's not what I meant. Stations here don't use that, 
they have a maybe 5 second clip (animation, video, moving pictures) 
involving the logo somewhere, e.g. some children playing ball with the 
logo in the background as well as the word "Werbung" (advertizing) 
somewhere etc.. In other words, if you look for a non-moving picture, 
you'd probably fail.

BTW: It is common here that commercial blocks are followed and sometimes 
preceeded by one or more trailers/previews for other shows or movies of 
that station. The normal commercial detection code might work for that 
as well, just mentioning it just in case.

Another idea: That scene change detection scares me a bit, that it might 
trigger in a movie and that I might miss a small part of the movie that 
way without noticing it. Maybe add an option to show 1 second of the 
start and end of the commerical block, so that I know I (rather, the 
detection code) really got the start and end of the block, and maybe 
also display the position OSD, so that I know I didn't see the start of 
one block and the end of the next block, missing a whole block of the 
movie (maybe the current code already does that, I don't know).

I am curious to try out the code you'll check in tonight, thanks for 
working on it. The movie police will hate you - Cheers ;-P.

Ben