Skipping TV commercials when recording

#1 03-08-2010, 07:27 AM

Skipping commercials on Windows 7 Media Center is a pretty complex thing to set up. And it is not FREE.

Advantages of Automatic Commercial Skipping:

Save time - The average hour long show has 17 minutes of commercials.
Save energy - No need to reach for the remote control when commercials come on.
Peace and quiet - Those super loud commercials get skipped before they have a chance to wake up the entire family.

Dragon Global ShowAnalyzer ($29.98 for a one-year license) is a Windows application that allows to skip ads. Basically it "watches" the show for you, only really, really fast. While it is watching the show it tries to divide the recording into blocks. Later it uses characteristics of those blocks to try to determine which blocks are commercials and which blocks are part of the show. ShowAnalyzer processes the show and creates files that identify the location of the commercials. The data is then available for use by whatever program you use to watch or edit the show. The truth is that accurately detecting commercials is hard and the networks are constantly trying to make it harder.

#2 03-08-2010, 07:29 AM

Besides ShowAnalyzer you will need to download free DVRMSToolBox and the DVRMSToolBox (DTB) Media Center Add-in for Windows 7. If you use Windows Media Center, this will allow you to skip commercial automatically.

We will set up the following:

When a recorded program is played back, we will skip commercials automatically, without using our remote control.
If the show wasn't analyzed for commercials yet, we will be watching it and skipping commercials manually.
If some part of a TV show was detected as a commercial, we will disable auto skip and will skip commercials manually.

How to set up DVRMSToolBox, DVRMSToolBox Add-in for Windows Media Center 7, ShowAnalyzer to skip commercials:

Download and install software:
1. Download and install DVRMSToolBox.
2. Leave modify permissions checked and click the Next button.
3. Uncheck Download/Install ShowAnalyzer (otherwise you will get older version of the ShowAnalyzer)
4. Make sure the "Run the DTB file watcher as a service" is checked.
  Click the Next button several times and the installation should be done.
5. Download and install DVRMSToolBox Media Center Add-in (DTBAddin) for Windows 7 (Windows Vista version is available as well).
6. Restart your PC.
7. Download and install ShowAnalzyer.
Configure ShowAnalzyer
1. Launch ShowAnalzyer by clicking Start -> All Programs -> ShowAnalyser Suite -> ShowAnalyzer User Interface.
2. In ShowAnalzyer and go to Help -> Add Registration Key to register it (note that you have a 30 day trial period).
3. In ShowAnalzyer go to Tools -> Settings and on the Scheduler tab uncheck the "Enable Directory Watcher folder" checkbox, because DTB File Watcher will be used instad.
Launch DVRMStoMPEGSettings by clicking Start -> All Programs -> DVRMSToolbox -> DVRMStoMPEGSettings.
- On the File Watcher tab:
  - "Watched Directories" should contain your TV recording folder. Check the Recursive watch if you need.
  - Set "Wait Time" to 0, if you want recordings to be scanned for commercials while they are still being recorded.
    
    Set "Wait Time" to 5, if you want recordings to be scanned for commercials after the recording is completed.
  - Set "Workers" to 1, so that one show is scanned at a time. We do not recommend to set the workers to higher than 2, otherwise commercial detection will probably be very slow if you watch TV at the same time. The faster your computer is, the larger value you can set. Also if you store TV recording on separate physical hard drives, you can increase the number of workers.
  - If you check the "Log Create" and "Log Write", then it will be much easier to troubleshoot.
  - Check the automatic cleanup if you want temporary files to be deleted automatically.
- On the "Commercial Skip" tab.
  - Check the "Auto Skip" checkbox.
  - Check the "Suppress Not Found" checkbox
  - Set the Keys. You can use the Right Key for "Auto Skip On" and the Left key for "Auto Skip Off", for example. Please note that doing so will not allow you browsing your TV Guide while watching recorded TV.
    You can set everything else to D1, D2, D3, since they are not used when watching TV recordings. If you don't know what function means what, you can move your mouse over and read the tooltip.
Some TV shows and TV channels don't have any commercials. Also DRM content can't be analyzed. We can skip commercial detection using Process Conditioners:

Let's set up one for PBS channel that doesn't have any commercials:
1. Go to Start -> All Programs -> DVRMSToolbox -> ProcessingConditionEditor.
2. Hit the "New Condition" on the top right.
3. Enter a Description like "Skip PBS scan" and leave the Name box empty, it will be filled automatically.
4. From the drop-down list select "Create an Empty Commercials File". On the select "Add", choose "WM/MediaNetworkAffiliation", then "Contains", then type in "PBS" and hit the "Ok" button.
5. Before closing you can test the new condition by clicking the "Test Conditions" button. Choose a file and test it. It is better to test two files, one that is supposed to match, and another one that is supposed not to match.
6. Make sure that the profile "Every File" is still the last one. Otherwise there is a chance that everything won't work as expected.
7. There are lots of variables that you can use, but it might be hard for a non computer geek to set up everything properly.
New recording will be scanned automatically now, unless a process conditioner set up by you prevents from doing so.

Previously recorded TV shows can be scanned manually with ShowAnalyzer. Just choose a file or folder and analyze it.
If you are not satisfied with the quality of commercials detection, you can customize the accuracy of scanning.
If you content is not analyzed properly, you may go to the Log folder (usually C:\Users\Public\DvrmsToolbox\FWLogs).
File Watcher logs are created for every TV show.