[mythtv-users] Commercial Skip

[Chris Pinkham]

> feature), I have noticed that since the upgrade to .17 (and using the
> All method), it tends to skip over the last 5 or 6 minutes of many
> shows I watch. Big candidates for this include Carson Daly, and The
> Daily Show. Both of these shows go for a final 2 minute commercial
> break, then come back for a final 30 - 90 second goodye, then the
> credits roll and there's commercials again.

Part of this is due to the fact that it assumes that "show" segments
must be at least 65 seconds long.  I've seen what you're talking about
once or twice, but if I crank that number down, then you will get
missdetection at other points because of the way the scoring works.
I believe that what I'm going to have to do is to allow the minimum
show length to be less when within the last 10 minutes of a show.

> In almost every recording of Daily Show, it skips right over the last
> 5 or 6 mins of the recording, right to the end of the show, and
> sometimes hangs up MythTV requiring a kill and restart of Myth :(

I record The Daily Show, but only the first 15 or so minutes (don't care
about the interviews). :)  I'll modify my schedule so I can get a sample
or two of this to see if I can work something out.

> It seems to be, if commercial skip skips to the end of the recording,
> freezing is highly likely (on my system).  Add to this the inability

In a lot of cases, this wasn't a freeze, it was a slow seek.  When using
the ALL method in 0.17, if the last commercial break ran right to the
end of the recording, the flagger would set the END mark at the next to
last frame of the recording.  Myth's player and editor code will not let
you seek to within 2 seconds of the end of a recording.  If you tried
skipping the last commercial break which went to the very (real) end of
the recording, the player would not be able to seek to that point, so
behind the scenes, it would "play" through to that point, then resume
normal play.  If the last break was 5 minutes long, then on some people's
systems, it could take 15-20 seconds to "play" through so it would appear
to freeze the frontend.  I have a fix for this in my CVS tree but haven't
had a chance to commit it because I have been busy with work this week
and I need to separate out that code from some other mods in my tree that
aren't ready for CVS quite yet.  I never let recordings get to the end
anyway, it's usually easy to tell if the what last played was the last
part of the show so I just hit 'D' to exit and Delete.  Reguarding auto-
skip, see below.

> to skip back before a commercial (since it does the auto-leap forward
> repeatedly if you try to jump back over a flagged break) and I pretty
> much have to stop playing the show, start it from the start, turn off
> the auto-skip then jump to the end of the show to see the final bit.
> Sometimes with a complete Myth restart in there.

I wrote the commercial detection code in Myth and never even use Auto-Skip.
The current flagging code works probably 95% or more of the time on the
main shows my wife and I watch but I still don't use Auto-Skip.  The only
Myth auto-skips is when I create a cutlist from the commercial flagging
markers and make sure they're right.  Part of the reason is probably that
I like to see when it goes wrong so I can try to think of why and fix it,
and when it does get it right, I sometimes turn to my wife and say
"Perfect Skip!"

-- 

Chris