[mythtv-users] commercial flagging only some recordings

[Robert Tsai]

On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 08:52:22AM -0400, Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 05/23/2007 04:36 AM, Leigh Porter wrote:
> > However.. I am in the UK and I have noticed that commflag does not
> > seem to work too well on UK channels, is this the case?
> 
> Robert Tsai has been doing some work--in what free time he has--on
> improving the flagger, especially for those outside the US.  And,
> IIRC, he's in the UK, so once it's incorporated into Myth...

The code is already accessible in MythTV as the "Experimental" option
in the choice of commflaggers.

I live in the US.

I find that it works better than the "all" flagger, for me, for my OTA
HD recordings.

I can't say if it represents a regression from the "all" flagger for
other kinds of recordings (cable TV, non-US, etc.). But if the "all"
one doesn't work for you, then you may as well give "experimental" a
shot.

If you want to know why the "experimental" flagger isn't doing a good
job, this page will describe how you can get a graphical depiction of
what it thinks is going on:

	http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/User:Rtsai1111

It is heavily biased towards logo detection (since that is a good
indicator for OTA HD broadcasts, probably not as reliable for cable
TV). If logo presence is not a good indicator in the UK, then this
will probably not work so well for you.

It also has a blank-frame detector, but currently it just uses blank
frames as a way to nudge commercial breakpoints earlier or later, if
the logo reappears or disappears a little early or late relative to
the main broadcast.

It is possible to run blank-frame-only analysis (using the
"experimental" flagger), but that will require MySQL fiddling.

--Rob