[mythtv-users] Commerical skips

[Douglas Phillipson]

DBakker at arrayasolutions.com wrote:
> 
> How does the commercial skipping work? Is it automatic? Do I have to set 
> it up somewhere? Will it remove the commercial from my PVR-250 DVD mpgs 
> when they are recorded?
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
The HowTo isn't real clear on this:
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21.13 What is this transcoder thing, and how do I use it?

The transcoder re-encodes files from one MythTV format to another. The 
main purpose of the transcoder is to allow users with hardware encoders 
(PVR-250) or systems that can only record in RTJpeg due to performance 
reasons (multiple capture cards, slow system, etc) to create MPEG44 
streams to save space.

The transcoder can be used in two ways:

     * Automatically re-encode every file once it has completed recording
     * After marking commercials, the transcoder can be run manually to 
delete the commercials from the file (thus further saving space)

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In the "Commercial Detection" section of the GUI setup screen, there is 
a "Automatically skip commercials" checkbox but I don't know if it does 
it while recording or transcoding.  I would like to know if commercials 
are  tagged during record, then removed with transcoding.  Or tagged and 
removed during transcoding.  The text below doesn't seem to match the 
MythTV software as I'v never found a way to "Mark" commercials through 
the menu.
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The two methods are independent. The first is an automatic process that 
can be enabled/disabled through the setup program; the second is a 
manual method which must be invoked on each recording individually.

The second method can be used on files that have already been transcoded 
(or files which were are already in the correct format), so only the 
frames immediately following a cut section will be re-encoded, resulting 
in a very minimal loss of quality.

To enable automatic transcoding, do the following: start the setup 
program under the host-specific settings: set the Transcoder Auto-run 
checkbox

For either manual or automatic transcoding: start mythbackend start 
mythfrontend select setup, and the Transcoding recording profile. now 
select either RTJPEG or MPEG-4 (selecting any of the hardware encoders 
will result in the transcoder not working). set the other parameters as 
you'd like. For best performance, you should match the audio to the 
'Default' profile. If you plan to only use the manual transcoder, you 
can choose to set the video to be the same as the default profile too 
(as long as it is MPEG-4 or RTJpeg)

Everything should now be setup properly. If you elected to use the 
Auto-Run feature, the transcoder will automatically launch after each 
recording is complete. The transcoder thread runs at a low priority, so 
it should not impact any critical tasks or other recordings.

If you want to manually transcode a program, simply press 'X' while 
watching a recording (you should have already finished marking all 
commercials). If you change your mind, hitting 'X' again will stop the 
transcoding.

Once the transcode is complete, mythbackend will replace the old file 
with the new as soon as it is no longer in use.