[mythtv-users] PVR250 and commercial skip ?

[Chris Pinkham]

> > Does commercial skip work with PVR 250 with hardware encoding on ?
> 
> Yes, mine skips commercials..... but keep in mind that it will make 
> mistakes.  I doubt that is due to the 250 though.

Commercial skip should work for all cards in Myth.  The only stipulation
is that with software encoders, Myth does some detection work while it's
recording, so you can take advantage of that right away after a recording
finishes.  With the hardware encoding cards, you have to wait for the
commercial flagging thread to finish before you get good commercial
skip/detection.  The commercial flagging thread does a much better job
of detecting and flagging commercials than the real-time blank-frame
detection method does.  The flagging thread can do more analysis of the
video to better detect commercials.  Also, even though I wrote the code,
I don't run Myth with auto-skip on because the commercial detection is
still not 100% accurate.

> Eventually (when the API settles, according to other posts here) we will 
> be able to configure different profiles and pick one on a per recording 
> basis.  But for now, just pick a good happy medium and stick a decent 
> sized HDD in, they are cheap enough these days.

You can already do this on a per-recording basis, but it doesn't have much
effect on pvr-250 cards since you can't change bitrate yet.  Just create a new
profile on mythfrontend's recording setup screen and then goto the Advanced
Recording Options screen for a scheduled recording.  You can get to the
advanced screen by either hitting 'I' again while on the normal recording
options screen or by turning the option on in setup to always use the
advanced screen.

-- 

Chris