Sometimes commercials are not accurately detected by the backend, so that the EDL causes the PVR to skip over program content. This tends to occur when the content has characteristics that are difficult for the commercial detection to deal with. In my experience, the most common and problematic occurrence is the very short segment after the final commercial in a show. In this situation, the Kodi PVR skips the commercial as well as the rest of the show, to the end of the recording. This drops you back into the Kodi interface, so you can't even rewind.
This problem would be materially eliminated by a setting that loads the EDL, but does not skip without user intervention.
In this scenario, the user can still press the up button during a commercial break to skip to the next mark (which should be the end of the commercial). The user also has the choice to press right to skip ahead in smaller increments, or do nothing. This would be very useful in the above situation, where ads are marked correctly for most of a show, so you want to skip them using the up button, but you press right to skip manually through the last ad.
This would provide additional utility and flexibility.
Hmm, I wonder if it would also help if the timeline on the on-screen-display could mark what areas it thinks are commercials and will be skipped. That way you have some warning ahead of time if you see a large chunk being seen as a "commercial" or you know part of the end should be actual show.
(2014-11-07, 03:29)Ned Scott Wrote: [ -> ]Hmm, I wonder if it would also help if the timeline on the on-screen-display could mark what areas it thinks are commercials and will be skipped. That way you have some warning ahead of time if you see a large chunk being seen as a "commercial" or you know part of the end should be actual show.
This is exactly the reason I came here tonight!
Previously, I used SageTV before Google bought them. It put a different color on the timeline to show the areas it thought were commercials (and hence would be skipped during playback). I've been missing this feature since I switched to MythTV with Kodi as the front-end. Sometimes, MythTV is aggressive with what it thinks are commercials. With SageTV, I could sometimes see that the commercials had been detected incorrectly just by looking at the timeline, which generally caused me to disable commercial skip for that episode.
The original poster doesn't want commercials auto-skipped. I'd say to make this an option, and have some way within the player to toggle that option for the current show, while you are playing the video (like when you change the deinterlace settings, etc).
(2014-11-07, 03:29)Ned Scott Wrote: [ -> ]Hmm, I wonder if it would also help if the timeline on the on-screen-display could mark what areas it thinks are commercials and will be skipped. That way you have some warning ahead of time if you see a large chunk being seen as a "commercial" or you know part of the end should be actual show.
I've been working on a proof of concept for such markers some months ago but didn't find time to continue it. In addition to visualizing EDL, markers can be used to show the Live TV timeshift buffer or even (DVD) chapters.
The code is available on GitHub (
https://github.com/fetzerch/xbmc/commit/...c4a70907df), but it's far away from being ready and not very nicely implemented. Nonetheless I'm sure that with the help of a team member we could get it to a state where the feature can be included. Support is especially needed for the GUI control which I only have copied and adapted, but also for a sane concept of querying the data.
Screenshots:
In addition to this, I think it would also be useful to add a setting that allows disabling of automatic skipping of EDL. From my experience, commercial break detection works very well in some countries and is rather weak in others. In Germany broadcasting companies work hard to prevent commercial detection (for example by moving channel logos around).
(2014-11-08, 13:41)cfetzer Wrote: [ -> ]In addition to this, I think it would also be useful to add a setting that allows disabling of automatic skipping of EDL. From my experience, commercial break detection works very well in some countries and is rather weak in others. In Germany broadcasting companies work hard to prevent commercial detection (for example by moving channel logos around).
Completely disabling skipping in that scenario is already available. First of all, one can simply turn off commercial detection on the backend. Also, the current Myth PVR addon has a setting to not load the EDL.
That does not address an issue I see very often, however. In my case - North American commercial broadcasting - I find that the EDL is accurate most of the time, so one would want to use it most of the time. In this situation, I think my proposal is an elegant solution. If I expect the EDL to be accurate, I'll press the up button at the ad. If it is accurate, it will skip the ad perfectly. If it isn't accurate, I still have full control and can use FF or short skip (right button) instead. Or I can do nothing and watch the ad. This would be more convenient than going to the OSD and finding a toggle to turn the auto skip on or off.
I also think this idea is very transparent and user friendly. A user with limited familiarity will already know to use the up button for a big skip and will be pleasantly surprised when the skip is exactly to the end of the ads.
Yes, sorry I might have been unclear. I meant a setting to disable the automatic skipping.
Looks like it can be added easily. CDVDPlayer::CheckAutoSceneSkip() would have to check the new setting.
Skipping with keyboard / remote is already possible with the built-in functions NextScene and PreviousScene
(
http://kodi.wiki/view/Edit_decision_list).
For convenience they would probably have to be integrated in ChapterOrBigStepForward.
@allan87:
https://github.com/fetzerch/xbmc/commit/...95ae8da71f
Needs more testing though. Especially the case when the recording starts with a commercial.
I also don't expect this being easily accepted since the team is generally against adding more settings. (which is perfectly understandable)
EDL differentiates between CUT and COMM_BREAK although they are handled similar in Kodi at the moment.
One alternative I could think off would be disabling automatic skipping for commercials in general and only keeping it for cuts. I don't know however if that makes sense considering the big variety of PVR backends, that might not set the type correctly.
Any thoughts?
(2014-11-09, 23:13)cfetzer Wrote: [ -> ]One alternative I could think of would be disabling automatic skipping for commercials in general and only keeping it for cuts. I don't know however if that makes sense considering the big variety of PVR backends, that might not set the type correctly.
In Myth this would be rational, in that the cut list would normally be manually edited, so it should be accurate. It might also make sense to ignore COMM_BREAKs if there is a cut list.
Generally speaking, though, I think the safest way to alleviate the inaccurate EDL issue is to have a setting that allows EDL based skipping manually with the keyboard or remote, but disables automatic skipping.
If you have done the cutting, you've probably seen the show. It is unfortunately a great way to spoil a TV show, going through and checking/correcting the ad breaks first. I find the whole thing easier to set a slightly less than 4 minute skip ahead when using recordings (the ad breaks here seem to be almost invariably 4 minutes. Slightly less than to allow for my slowness ot react.
Then small step back if you overshot.
I am still appalled when I go to someone elses house and have to sit through ads. Even more so when seemingly intelligent people s drop into conversation "Have you seen the latest ad for [insert product name]..."
That's a valid point. I can't imagine manually doing a cut list just to watch a show. I'm pretty happy with the mostly accurate myth commercial detection, as long as there is a reasonably usable override.
(2014-11-09, 23:13)cfetzer Wrote: [ -> ]@allan87: https://github.com/fetzerch/xbmc/commit/...95ae8da71f
Needs more testing though. Especially the case when the recording starts with a commercial.
I also don't expect this being easily accepted since the team is generally against adding more settings. (which is perfectly understandable)
EDL differentiates between CUT and COMM_BREAK although they are handled similar in Kodi at the moment.
One alternative I could think off would be disabling automatic skipping for commercials in general and only keeping it for cuts. I don't know however if that makes sense considering the big variety of PVR backends, that might not set the type correctly....
I have thought about this a bit more. A couple of thoughts:
- While the proliferation of settings is certainly undesirable, I think a setting is warranted here, at least in advanced or expert level (suggestion below). I'm sure I could come up with several current settings that have less utility.
- If adding a setting is a dealbreaker, it makes sense to make the non-automatic setting the default. This is based on the premise that commercial detection is significantly less than perfect - if you cannot rely on the accuracy of the EDL, the user should have more control. I acknowledge that I have a bias here, but I think this is a rational basis for choosing the default behaviour.
- A second reason is balance of convenience. Users will be minimally inconvenienced by having to press the up button to skip an ad. It is more inconvenient to miss the end of a show because the autoskip causes a premature exit to the recording list (because the commercial detection fails to recognize programming after the last ad). Indeed, I'd call this behaviour a bug.
- There are currently two settings in PVR.MythTV that try to alleviate this issue by not loading the EDL or by loading it selectively. That, I understand, is all that can be done in the addon. Those settings could be eliminated with the proposed enhancement.
Suggested setting under "Live TV
layback", with hint text:
"Skip commercials automatically"
On (skip commercial breaks without any action by user, If your PVR backend has commercial detection)
Off (skip to end of commercial break with up button, If your PVR backend has commercial detection)
Further observation: If there is a cut list, the commercial skip list should probably be ignored. I once tried to watch the end of a show by fixing the cut at the end using MythFrontend*, but the Kodi PVR continued to skip the end of the show.
* Technically, Mythfrontend loads the commercial skip list as a cut list, and you edit the
cut list. The auto-generated commercial markers are not edited or removed from the EDL. Kodi loads all of the EDL information (the edited cutlist as well as the old, incorrect commercial detection) and either it ignores the cutlist, or does not know how to deal with the contradictory markers. BTW: My wife was watching the show with me and observed this effort. There was mockery.
+1
This would basically give Kodi the default commercial skip behavior of the MythFrontend. As Kodi Helix currently stands, if I view a recording with commercial breaks active, I very frequently cannot view the end of the show; it drops right out to the Kodi recording listing. This is extraordinarily frustrating. While MythTV commercial detection is pretty serviceable for most shows, it falls flat fairly predictably towards the end of shows for some reason, which we've learned to live with with the Mythfrontend. The nice thing is that the Mythfrontend will refuse to skip if the skip will take you to the end of the show. A similar rule would be very useful in Kodi.
I really like Kodi and would love for it to replace my high-maintenance Mythfrontend full computers. It runs exceedingly well on the new Raspberry Pi 2b, which I would love to put in our three home viewing locations. However this behavior has become somewhat of a deal breaker for me. There is no way my wife will understand that she can't have her commercial skipping on-demand when she's had it for all these years.
Yes, this is a significant usability issue and I think the solution I proposed is a good one.
Your other thought, however, may be even better for the particular issue of skipping the end of a show, and would not require a preference: disregard a commercial skip if it will take you to the end of a recording.
Please, please, please, someone tell me they are working on this.
I am days away from a major overhaul of my mythtv setup and I need more frontends... I really want to go with a $35 Pi2 rather than building full PC's. Just started playing with Kodi, and while I think I can train my family to use it, I really don't think they will like it if they can't skip commercials the way they have done for years on mythfrontend.
When I first saw that commercial skip was either all or nothing, I nearly cried... it really doesn't seem logical.. there is no commercial detection that is 100% accurate.