[mythtv-users] [RFC] Proposed settings rework

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Wed Nov 4 18:49:21 UTC 2009


On 11/04/2009 04:27 AM, Janne Grunau wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 03, 2009 at 01:25:29PM -0800, Robert McNamara wrote:
>   
>> On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 1:20 PM, Richard Morton wrote:
>>     
>>>> Maximum commercial skip (3600, the default)
>>>>         
>>> We tend to have less frequent longer advert breaks so a default of 5
>>> minutes for max advert skip tends to be too short, however 6 minutes
>>> is nearly always adequate in my experience.
>>>       
>> Yeah, six seems enough, and a couple 30 second skips after that in the
>> rare instances it would not be.
>>     
> depends on the country, commercial breaks longer than 10 minutes are not
> rare in germany and 6 minutes is more like the minimum commercial break
> length during primetime.

Note that this setting only really benefits people who set, 
"Automatically Skip Commercials," to "Automatically Skip."  For users 
who use, "Notify, but do not skip," the setting actually removes capability.

As it is, any commercial break that's longer than, "Maximum commercial 
skip (in seconds)," is ignored and commercial skipping is disabled until 
you're within, "Maximum commercial skip (in seconds)," of a mark.  This 
setting also prevents users from jumping from section to section of the 
recording using SKIPCOMMERCIAL (Z,End) and SKIPCOMMBACK (Q,Home) keys 
when those sections are longer than, "Maximum commercial skip (in seconds)."

Those using, "Notify, but do not skip," can actually hit SKIPCOMMERCIAL 
if they feel the time mentioned on the notification is appropriate--or, 
as is often the case with me, they can hit SKIPCOMMERCIAL even if they 
ignore the time mentioned on the notification--and if it jumps way too 
far, just hit SKIPCOMMBACK (or SEEKRWD or JUMPRWND to go back.

Since Chris Pinkham has fixed the issue where commercial skipping would 
gladly skip to the end of a recording, the consequences of a "bad skip" 
are much lower.  Now commercial breaks that end within 10s or so of the 
end of the recording won't be skipped (automatically or using the 
SKIPCOMMERCIAL key).

And, if the setting is completely removed, the value which is used for 
the maximum (automatic) commercial skip (360s or 600s or whatever) 
becomes only a "sanity check."  Users of "Automatically Skip" could 
still use SKIPCOMMERCIAL or SEEKFFWD or JUMPFFWD to skip commercials 
that are excluded.

After all, this setting does /not/ fix broken commercial flagging.  How 
many times are these invalid commercial breaks completely within the 
show?  I'd venture a guess that the great majority of them are actually 
commercial breaks that /include/ some section of the show.  So, with or 
without this setting, manual user intervention is still required--unless 
the user would rather watch a whole commercial break than lift a finger.  :)

Mike


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