[nickr]

I turned off commskip years ago and use the skip button.

[allan87]

What I suggested would be better, though, as the commercial skipping is very accurate (for me, anyway) except at the ends of shows.

[Woppie]

This is exactly what I suggested here; http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid2013648

But I didn't know com skip already worked with kodi? can't seem to get going.
Maybe you want to eye that thread as well as I still think it's closely (or somewhat) related

[Ned Scott]

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.

It's not actually all or nothing, and Kodi already has ways of helping deal with this. Kodi already supports being able to quickly jump back when something is incorrectly marked as a commercial:

EDLs (wiki)

Commercial Breaks - each commercial break is automatically skipped once during playback. Since commercial detection is rarely 100% accurate, commercial breaks that have already been skipped can be re-entered by seeking backwards or rewinding. If an incorrectly flagged commercial break is automatically skipped, pressing "Down" (big skip backwards) within 10 seconds will jump back to the start of the commercial break. Pressing "Up" (big skip forward) within a flagged commercial break will go to the end of the commercial break.

Kodi also lets you tweak EDL behavior using the <edl> advancedsettings.xml (wiki) tag http://kodi.wiki/view/Advancedsettings.xml#edl

Code:

<edl>
  <mergeshortcommbreaks>false</mergeshortcommbreaks> <!-- if true, commercial breaks will be merged according to the remaining options. -->
  <maxcommbreaklength>250</maxcommbreaklength> <!-- Commercial breaks won't be merged if the total length of the commercial break would be greater than this (seconds) -->
  <mincommbreaklength>90</mincommbreaklength> <!-- After merging, commercial breaks shorter than this will be removed (seconds) -->
  <maxcommbreakgap>120</maxcommbreakgap> <!-- Commercial breaks that are further apart than this won't be merged (seconds) -->
  <commbreakautowait>0</commbreakautowait> <!-- How long to wait before automatically skipping when the start of a commercial break reached (seconds) -->
  <commbreakautowind>0</commbreakautowind> <!-- How long to rewind after automatically skipping to the end of the commercial break (seconds) -->
</edl>

[allan87]

It's not actually all or nothing, and Kodi already has ways of helping deal with this. Kodi already supports being able to quickly jump back when something is incorrectly marked as a commercial:

In fact, no.

99 out of 100 commercial marking errors I have are at the ends of shows - myth often fails to distinguish between the last ad and the last 30 seconds of the show after the ad. As a result, automatic skipping skips to end of file. You can't skip back if you are no longer in the show.

[jhfry]

On my MythTV frontends I have it pop up a message a few seconds before the commercial starts telling me that a break is approaching and how long it is. I can choose to hit the commercial skip button or skip through normally.

The advantages to this are:
1. No automatic skipping - if Kodi were to auto skip a poorly detected break, it's not always easy to grab the remote and skip back... for example my wife may have the remote with her in the bathroom (it's happened).

2. I can usually tell by the length displayed if the detected break is accurate or not, so I can choose to just skip forward using the regular navigation keys.

3. It is far more novice friendly - I frequently have guests who watch TV at my house, I suspect they would rather watch commercials than to experience a bad skip that causes them to miss part of the show and not know how to recover.

I tried auto skip for a few days and no one in our house liked it. Notify but do not skip, however, is extremely handy and we use it all the time.

[Woppie]

It's not actually all or nothing, and Kodi already has ways of helping deal with this. Kodi already supports being able to quickly jump back when something is incorrectly marked as a commercial:

In fact, no.

99 out of 100 commercial marking errors I have are at the ends of shows - myth often fails to distinguish between the last ad and the last 30 seconds of the show after the ad. As a result, automatic skipping skips to end of file. You can't skip back if you are no longer in the show.

Using MediaPortal with ComSkip for over 12 years I only had it once; it missed a short commercial in between.

Now I'd say it's defiantly worth having.

[Ned Scott]

In fact, no.

99 out of 100 commercial marking errors I have are at the ends of shows - myth often fails to distinguish between the last ad and the last 30 seconds of the show after the ad. As a result, automatic skipping skips to end of file. You can't skip back if you are no longer in the show.

Aye, the last break is pretty much all or nothing in a sense (it could even be called a bug, IMO). I was just clarifying that there are some ways to handle the other commercial breaks.

[nickr]

These comm detection schemes vary in effectiveness between markets and even channels within any given markets. That is because different broadcasters handle commercials in different ways, sometimes there a few blank frames, sometimes a period of silence, sometimes different volume levels.

Tuning it right can be hard. I have never found it to be really useful in NZ, although the silence detect has had good results. (Silence detect is also really fast as it doesn't have to decode/analyse the video, just the audio).

Maybe after reading Ned's post and knowing that there are some other options I'll give it another go.

For an overview of the options in mythtv see https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Commercial_Detection

for the silence-detect script for mythtv:

https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Silence-detect.sh and https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Commercial_d...freeviewHD

[thebpass]

I created a pull request on github for a small change I made to address this feature request: https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/7330

Basically my change adds an action (TOGGLE_COMMSKIP) which will cycle commercial skipping on/off. The cycle isn't saved, so the next recording it defaults back to whatever you have in settings.xml. I also added an option to display notifications of commercials and their lengths.

This is pretty similar to how mythtv works (allowing you to change the setting for the currently watched recording without mesing up your settings for good).

I found that Kodi does such a good job with Cut/Skips (internally aptly named "trick play") that I wasn't even noticing some of the commercial skips happening. I added a configuration option for commercial notifications so that I'd be sure I saw them. Otherwise a badly flagged commercial break might go unnoticed entirely.

I've never put anything into Kodi before so I dunno if it will get accepted as is. I'll try to keep an eye on it.

[nickr]

Wow good work.

[popy]

I created a pull request on github for a small change I made to address this feature request: https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/7330

Basically my change adds an action (TOGGLE_COMMSKIP) which will cycle commercial skipping on/off. The cycle isn't saved, so the next recording it defaults back to whatever you have in settings.xml. I also added an option to display notifications of commercials and their lengths.

This is pretty similar to how mythtv works (allowing you to change the setting for the currently watched recording without mesing up your settings for good).

I found that Kodi does such a good job with Cut/Skips (internally aptly named "trick play") that I wasn't even noticing some of the commercial skips happening. I added a configuration option for commercial notifications so that I'd be sure I saw them. Otherwise a badly flagged commercial break might go unnoticed entirely.

I've never put anything into Kodi before so I dunno if it will get accepted as is. I'll try to keep an eye on it.

thx for this great feature.
When can we have this in an official build?
The resubmited pull request is not merged in.

Any news on timeline marking of the commercials?


Thanks
pOpY

[jksmurf]

Hi,

Apologies if I am coming to this late, but I too would VERY MUCH like (primarily) to have Kodi show the ad breaks in the timeline (e.g. as black bars) as well as the ability to turn it off (was "999" IIRC, in NextPVR).

Ta!

k.

[blich]

Just found this thread and was wondering if this was implemented.

I'd like to be able to map a key to toggle commercial skip when I'm watching a show. Is this possible?