Short piece of program at end - marked as commercial?

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cmcquistion
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Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2007 6:25 pm

Short piece of program at end - marked as commercial?

Post by cmcquistion »

I searched over at the Comskip forum, but couldn't find the answer I was looking for about something.

On some channels, they put a very short section of show, right at the end, in between a bunch of commercials. Sometimes, this show length is only 25-50 seconds or so. Sometimes, instead of being a section of show, it is just the trailers for next week's show. Either way, these are being marked as commercials. If I lower "min_show_segment_length" to 25 or less, then that section might not marked as a commercial, but it also missed almost all other commercials.

I found a note about "min_commercialbreak_at_start_or_end=39" but changing this doesn't seem to have any affect.

What I'm looking for is some way to override the commercial detection at the end of a show, so it is less aggressive, there.

Is there a way to do this? I've been running tests all day and I can't seem to figure it out.
erik
Site Admin
Posts: 3368
Joined: Sun Aug 21, 2005 3:49 pm

Post by erik »

Best is to upload a .csv file and a list of commercial start/end frame numbers to my ftp server so I can have a look on how to approach this.
See
viewtopic.php?t=34

The solution could be in a couple of directions as I have been able to help some other people with similar problems.

I will PM you with the upload details.
radmeck
Posts: 8
Joined: Tue May 27, 2008 2:03 pm

Re: Short piece of program at end - marked as commercial?

Post by radmeck »

I'm having the same issue with the short segments at the end not being detected as part of the show. Can you share what solution worked in this case? Thanks...
erik
Site Admin
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Joined: Sun Aug 21, 2005 3:49 pm

Re: Short piece of program at end - marked as commercial?

Post by erik »

This is a very difficult problem because of the different behavior you expect
If you only want to ensure the very last part is not marked as commercial then you should use this parameter
Only delete a commercial at the start or the end if it is longer then this in seconds
min_commercial_break_at_start_or_end=39

If its in between two commercials you have to look in detail why it is marked as commercial (set verbose=10 and read the last part of the log file where the scoring is done)

Otherwise I can help if you follow the "How to ask for help" post
radmeck
Posts: 8
Joined: Tue May 27, 2008 2:03 pm

Re: Short piece of program at end - marked as commercial?

Post by radmeck »

After many hours of tuning I was finally able to get a perfect cut of Two and a Half Men! This show has about a 60 second segment at the end of each episode after a long commercial break and it's always tagged as part of the commercial. I actually wound up restoring all of the settings to their defaults except for disabling heuristic 1 with the following setting:
disable_heuristics=1

I tried this after noticing a line towards the end of the log file that read something like:
H1 Added block XX because short and between two commercials.

After disabling heuristic 1 that line no longer appeared in the log and the segment was no longer flagged as a commercial - all other cuts were spot on. I tested the setting with three other recordings of different shows from different channels and I only noticed one small side effect. In one of the shows, a 4.07 second block in the middle of a commercial segment was tagged as show!? It would be nice to eliminate this somehow but it seems like a decent trad-off to me. It basically just split one commercial segment into two.

I was also having a problem with Law & Order because the logo either doesn't appear or is slightly different in the opening scenes than for the rest of the show. I had to disable no logo punishing for this to cut properly. After that it was spot on.
punish_no_logo=0

Changing that setting, however, seems to have caused the first commercial in some segments (only on Saturday Night Live so far) not to get cut but I would rather have it leave a little too much in than take too much out!

If you wouldn't mind taking a look at the two remaining minor issues I can certainly follow the "How to ask for help" post! Can you PM me on where to upload?
erik
Site Admin
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Joined: Sun Aug 21, 2005 3:49 pm

Re: Short piece of program at end - marked as commercial?

Post by erik »

Radmeck,

There are almost no black frames detected
Could you set
maxbright=5
and
max_avg_brightness=20
erik
Site Admin
Posts: 3368
Joined: Sun Aug 21, 2005 3:49 pm

Re: Short piece of program at end - marked as commercial?

Post by erik »

and also set

detect_method=63
as silence detection makes things worse and

punish_no_logo=0
because logo is missing on some show part


Do remember that when changing the maxbright setting you must process the original recording again.
In the next build you can use the .csv to retest
I just release build 138. Use that to retest

Could you also set
output_data=1
and include the generated data files in the zip files you upload?
This will help me to also check the CC processing.
radmeck
Posts: 8
Joined: Tue May 27, 2008 2:03 pm

Re: Short piece of program at end - marked as commercial?

Post by radmeck »

ok, i'll make the proposed changes and reprocess the shows!
erik
Site Admin
Posts: 3368
Joined: Sun Aug 21, 2005 3:49 pm

Re: Short piece of program at end - marked as commercial?

Post by erik »

From you PM I understand that I have not been able to solve your tuning problem.
Do I understand correctly that these are the blocks that are unacceptably wrong

Law&order: Block 1 should be show. (Block before the first commercial)
Saturday: Block 91,92 should be discarded (Blocks after the last commercial)
Scrubs: Block 29 should be show (After the last commercial)
Office: Block 33,34 should be show (between the two last commercials)
Two: Block 22,23 should be show (between the two last commercials)
radmeck
Posts: 8
Joined: Tue May 27, 2008 2:03 pm

Re: Short piece of program at end - marked as commercial?

Post by radmeck »

I'll check over them again and let you know for sure when I get some time later this week. I'm working on opening a new hotel tomorrow so I'm a little short on time right now! Thanks...
radmeck
Posts: 8
Joined: Tue May 27, 2008 2:03 pm

Re: Short piece of program at end - marked as commercial?

Post by radmeck »

Just wanted to say thanks for all the hard work and for keeping the updates coming! I haven't had any time to do further testing but I'm excited to use the latest build when I do get some time. Cheers...

Robert
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