Forgive me if this has already been covered...if so can someone please point me to the correct post. I've looked but have not found anything specifically pertaining to my question.

I have a recording stored on my knopp box that has the commercials removed. I am not exactly sure what my settings are to remove the commercials automatically because I am at work but I can check later. Anyways I copied the .mpg onto my windows machine and noticed that the commericals are not removed in the raw .mpg and are only when removed when watching the recording through myth. Why? And how can I get around this?

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I think the default setting in Myth is as follows: if you've flagged commercials, and have either edited the commercial flag list or set it to be automatically used without editing, then when that recording plays back it will skip the commercials for you.

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Commflagging

As you've discovered, they're still there, and won't be removed unless you take that recording and transcode it to something else.

I usually set up a "lossless transcoding" profile which then leaves recordings as MPEG files (that's the "lossless" part) but removes the commercials (after I've gone in and adjusted commercial start/stop points).

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Re ... ommercials

Commercial flagging just flags the commercials in the database. When playing a flagged recording in mythtv, it will automatically jump over the commercials.

You can remove the flagged commercials by transcoding the recording. A search on transcoding in the documentations or the forum will provide info.

You can also set up the box to auto transcode all recordings. Be aware that if the commercial flagging made a mistake, the incorrectly flagged section of the recording will be lost.

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Here is some additional reading you may be interested in:

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Re ... ommercials
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Sc ... ommercials

All of the post above about Commercials and how Myth works with them are essentially correct.

I would add the following observations:

Commercials are flagged automatically and if during playback Commercial Autoskip is on then you will see an OSD at a Commercial mark that says Skip 3:00 or some other random amount for commercials. These are dependent on the skip method and how well Myth is able to detect the commercials.

If after Commercials are Flagged you go in and edit the Commercial Cut List, you can make it better but also two things happen. When you look in the recorded Programs menu each Program that you have edited the cutlist will now display a marker (Mine is Scissors) dependent on your Myth TV theme. Also when you play back one of these shows in Knoppmyth, it will play as if there are absolutely no commercials based on your cutlist and play back is clean. However they are still there and the file size is as it was initially. If you pass this file to Windoze or through VLC it will play the commercials because they still exist.

Now if you use AutoDetect (Lossless) transcoding, the resulting file will play as mentioned above for you in Knoppmyth, but it will play the same as far as No Commercials in any other platform. Lossless transcoding is just that, it actually removes the frames between the cut points you established by editing the commercials.

An added benefit the resulting file is smaller(about 30%) and plays in windoze or any other platform just like it does in Knoppmyth.

Hope this is helpful.

thank all of you for posting your insight on the issue. I appreciate it very much. I did manage to find the "Removing commercials" article in the mythtv wiki shortly after posting this but I probably won't get a chance to fool around with my knoppbox until this weekend.

I want to be able to flag the commercials so that any recordings on my machine just skip over them upon playback rather than "cut" them out. Which is pretty much how I have my machine setup now anyways. I read that transcoding or "cutting" the commercials out does not reallly save a ton of space. Is that true?

so with that said I want to be able to transcode the file into another file so that I may then transfer that onto my windows machine. So when I transcode a recording it will actually create another file? Or will it actually just cut the commercials out that have been automatically flagged by commflagg? Thanks again for the input guys, really truly appreciate it.

_________________
Compaq Deskpro EN
KnoppMyth R5F27
------------------------
Intel Board FW82815
Intel Pentium III 1000mHz
128x3 PC133 RAM
Hauppaugge WinTV 48432 (Freestyle)
Nvidia GeForce MX 4000 128 MB
Onboard Network & Sound

I just transcoded an SD file that was originally 2228858884 bytes. The transcoding process (done by the script nharris pointed you to) turned it into 1513645060 bytes. Depending on your usage (and how many commercials exist in the shows you record, what definition you record in, etc.) "a ton of space" may or may not be the case.

If you want to play the file in an application other than MythTV and you don't want commercials, then you have to transcode it. And yes, technically a "new file" is created during the process, but when finished the filename is the same.

That depends if you call reducing a 1.7Gb recording to just 1.0Gb "saving a ton of space". Me, I'll take a 40% size reduction any day of the week.

YMMV of course, Most of my recording start 2-3 minutes early and end 2-3 minutes late to avoid issues with obnoxious schedule drift by the broadcasters. That alone is an extra 15-20% overhead on a 30 minute recording, but even 20% seems significant to me... On the other hand I often get that same level of reduction with movies of >=2 hours where the early start and late stop are far less significant.

To add a little more to TJC's point the average "hour" program is 42 minutes. the average half-hour program is 21 minutes. All other things being equal a 42 minute recording takes (what I would call) significantly less space than a 60 minute recording.

When I transcode I let it change formats too (to divx, I believe) my 2.2Gb recording goes down to 765Mb, so the savings are even more significant.

You may want to check out the archive function under optical disks. I'm using a separate file server for mass storage of the things I want to keep. It's attached via Samba (Windows file sharing). Using MythArchive, I archive my favorite recordings to that box. The process removes commercials and optionally creates a dvd for backup (a file system can always be damaged). The target directory is available under media files, so I can still watch the show easily on the Myth system (it's necessary to reread the movies directory under settings).
I hope that wasn't too difficult to follow!

Cheers,
/Chris

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