[mythtv] Re:Another commercial flagging method

[Dooferlad]

On Wed, Jan 28, 2004 at 10:03:52AM -0000, Edward Wildgoose wrote:
> I notice that in the UK, a few programs still have the flashing black
> and white box at the top right corner.  Is that a US thing as well?
> Could be a good marker for the advert start if it ever appears (no 
> guarantee though on the digital channels)

I believe that this is a satelite putting its stamp on the broadcast. I
have never seen it in digital broadcasts though so it probably isn't of
use for advert detection.

I haven't been following this discussion very closely so please forgive
me if I go over old ground on this. These are my thoughts on the matter
though:

1. Adverts are regularly spaced so we should be able to discount suspect
adverts if they are too soon after the previous detected advert.

2. Adverts tend to be louder. This is due to audio amplitude compression
rather than peeks getting taller. A measure of how oftern we hit 0db out
(or a tunable parameter) or an average peek amplitude will indicate if
we are in an advert. The only exception to this would be MTV style
broadcasts because commercial music is heavily amplitude compressed
anyway.

I don't know if you do this, but perhaps several advert measures could
be used, each producing a score and then the advert will be detected if
the score goes over a threshold. This would be similar to how SPAM
filters work.

Dooferlad