How MythTV detects commercials

Posted Oct 27th 2006 7:48AM by Chris Tew
Filed under: Advertising, Linux, MythTV

One of the best features of MythTV, the open source DIY Linux PVR software, is its ability to completely skip commercials without any human input.

This is something that mainstream PVRs have shied away from in fear of lawsuits from TV networks. After all they get enough stick over the fast forwarding feature.

MythTV uses a very impressive system to detect adverts and is generally very accurate. It uses the following three criteria to score video segments as being commercial breaks:

Fade to Black: Often just before advertisements start and end there is a short fade to black. This can help identify adverts but can also produce false negatives from fade to black scenes within TV shows.
Frequent Scene Transitions: By detecting regular changes in scenes (high contrast image changes) MythTV can help pinpoint a block of commercials. Commercial breaks generally contain several frequent scene changes every 30 seconds over a short period of time.
TV Station Logo Disappearing: Quite often TV networks have a watermarked logo in the corner of the screen to help brand their station. This disappears during commercial breaks so can be used to detect them.

Take a look at the video below to see MythTV's commercial skip in action.

[Via Digg]

Reader Comments

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1. You can also set BeyondTV to automatically detect commercials, although you have to hit a button to skip them. And you can get SageTV, GBPVR, and possibly some other programs to skip commercials using comskip (http://www.sage-community.org/index.cgi/wiki/ComSkip and http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Manual/ComSkip)

Posted at 8:23AM on Oct 27th 2006 by Brad Linder

2. Before I went HD, I had 2 series 5000 ReplayTVs that did the commercial skipping quite well. Based only on my anecdotal observations, they used only the fade to black detection method.

That worked almost every time, except in the damn Law & Order shows, which constantly fade to black *within* the shows ;)

Posted at 11:49AM on Oct 27th 2006 by Bill G

3. This works the same as a tool i use for media center DRV-MS toolbox

Posted at 2:55PM on Oct 27th 2006 by Alex

4. The commercial skip feature on my RePlay has been more trouble than its worth. I'd just as soon keep it defaulted to off.

Posted at 4:23AM on Oct 28th 2006 by epobirs

5. I'm surprised that MythTV doesn't also use the increase in volume present during commercial breaks. Most commercials have a huge jump in volume level with the idea that you'll still hear it when you're in the kitchen grabbing a bite to eat.

Posted at 10:23AM on Oct 30th 2006 by Joe Schmoe

6. You can pry my automatic-commercial-skipping ReplayTV from my cold-dead hands...

Posted at 6:18PM on Oct 30th 2006 by some dude

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