How do it know?

chris-mcc

@schwnj:
Yeah, if it's anything like my old ReplayTV was years ago (before they got sued and removed the automatic commercial skip feature) it'll work really poorly on shows with a lot of dark, multi-second scene changes. The worst was Law & Order; the damned thing couldn't distinguish a "Dun, Dun" sequence from a Reynolds Wrap commercial.

CBragg

@schwnj: Yeah, my ReplayTV used to figure out where the commercials were this way (actually, it still does, but it doesn't skip them automatically anymore) and while it was usually right, the times when it was wrong were so irritating, I gave up using the feature altogether. At least with my Replay I could rewind if the machine accidentally skipped some showtime. With this software, however, it cuts the commercials out completely, so if it makes a mistake, you'd have to back out of the show and cue up the original file. That could get extremely frustrating.

But hey, I dunno, maybe this software works great. Couldn't hurt to give it a try.

karmaghost

I assume this uses some variant of ComSkip, which has been around for awhile. It analyzes the file for fades, cut sequences, blackspace, mono vs stereo sound, and a few other things. But in my experience, ComSkip often gets things wrong, and results in missing a few minutes of actual showtime (or leaves in a commercial or two).

schwnj

This app automatically gets +10 points for its name :)

BingleyJoe

So it won't work with Windows XP Media Center Edition? I mean the Media center part is basically the same in XP and Vista... I really could use this; I got about 370gb of Recorded stuff :)

GeorgiaBoot

I've tried Comskip with mixed (bad) results. Anyone know of another program for xp which is any good?

Tom-LH

@Tom-LH: I have used VideoRedo for about a year now. I love it. It's not free, but it's been worth it to me. I record several TV shows and many movies per week with my TV card. It records to MPG format, and VideoRedo is the best way I've found to edit them. (It is MPG-only). It has commercial scan, and very fast editing. It can be completely keyboard driven, and automated via VBScript. I have batch files to handle several automated things I do with it. I save the commercial-free versions to a Dr. DivX input folder, and a while later it's ready to go.

It took me a couple weeks to get proficient with VideoRedo, and set up the keyboard like I want it. I have the arrow keys set to move 1 frame, shift+arrows move 1 second, and ctrl+shift+arrows to move 30 seconds. With that setup and the highly-tweakable ad-scan parameters, not to mention it excels at re-muxing files to fix MPG/VOB errors, it takes me only a couple minutes to edit out commercials from a recorded file if I don't use ad-scan, longer (but less effort on my part) if I do. It's the fastest editor I've ever used. You get no lag at all when jumping around in a file, and I regularly edit 4 to 6 GB MPGs. In fact, "Johnny Dangerously" just finished recording on Fox Movie Channel a few minutes ago, and it's 5.4GB.

One more thing -- it works over a Terminal Services connection, which comes in handy when I'm using the Mac in the other room. If you get the settings right, it works almost full speed over the network too, no kidding. IIRC you have to change the video-out method in settings and turn off sound, was easy to guess my way through it.

I'm just a happy customer, no connections to the company. Some products are a joy to use, and this is one of them. It's in the same class as Sketchup, VMWare, Excel, and Opera in terms of being the best in its category, to the point of being nearly psychic, and one of those "how did I ever live without it" tools.

IttyBiggy

I second the use of VideoRedo. I have been using it for years with my media center pc. You can also use comskip and have it output the .vprj project files. This way when you open videoredo the cuts are already shown. You simply check that they are correct and save the .mpg. Also you can edit dvr-ms SD and HDTV files and save them as .mpg files which seem to play better on the older pcs on our network.

dgeezer

"If you're using Vista"...
So there's been, what, 15 downloads?

cbartlett

I'm also wondering if this will work with MCE XP. If not, looking for a good solid automated solution. I don't want to have to bother with doing it myself. I just want set it and forget it!

paqman

Back in the day, I used NanDUB to manual cut the commercials, and transcode to the format I wanted. Though my card really only capped in mpeg

pcronin

The name alone makes this great.

James

I'm still a loyal VideoRedo user, but will give this a shot to see just how it fares and how automatic it is. Looking at the screenshots, I don't see any preview mode, so if it makes mistakes you may be stuck with the results. Still nice to see something user-friendly and free.

urban bohemian

anything like this for MCE 2005 ?

toddkravos

Well, so you know, this program actually just uses Comskip itself to strip out the commercials. If Comskip doesn't work for you, then this probably won't either. Although, you can use a different app for commercial detection with Lifextender called "ShowAnalyzer" [dragonglobal.org] but this will set you back $20.

alsotop

@schwnj:
You are right about Comskip, but it also incorporates another plugin for commercial detection called showanalyzer, I'm testing this out on Law and Order CI right now, Ill report back with the results.

isewise

Another MCE 2005 (XP) user here wondering if there's another edition for XP.

Though Video Redo sounds good too!

kinksville

    I used the Dragon Global thing for a while, with my XP Media Center. It was clunky, to say the least. You had to do some cutting and pasting of directory paths, and it took a WHILE to process the file.

    What ended my using it was ABC shows. You miss sections of the show, and still get some commercials. It could be argued, of course, that commercials are better than Lost, at least last season! My wife's an expert with the fast-forward button, anyway...

AcidReign

I can vouch that it works pretty well.. and it's Vista 64-bit Compatible(!!)... seems like a winner to me!

davidfbecker

I'd say install it and try, reports on the actual site say that it has worked for some users but that he will not officially claim its supported.

jamisonfitz

It should be said that commercial skip is built right into MythTV. It works surprisingly well. On top of that, MythTV has a audio/video playback feature where you can either slowdown or speedup the playback of a program. So not only do you shave off all of the commercial time, but you play back the show faster. Further decreasing your TV watching time.

microe

Lifextender has been a lifeSAVER. Not only does it work, but it has saved me from many hours of having to manually cut out commercials so that I can put more shows on a DVD. So far it detected and reduced 81 files, saving me 14 hours and 14 minutes of unnecessary time and space (multiple gigs of precious hard drive space!). I have checked a few of the files and I don't notice anything jarring or missing from the non-commercial content. There are times when a second or two might be left on a commercial, but that's for the entire commercial break...and it's very rare. This plugin is a great addition for my Media Center library and I'm really happy that I don't have to manually cut out commercials ever again!

adanpena

@microe:
This is a Featured Windows Download that is for Windows Vista only. It's good to know that there's a linux program out there that has commercial skip built in, but Windows Media Center does not. However, the fact that there is software that does what you described for MythTV means that there is competition and hopefully plugins (or the software itself) will be updated to keep up. But for people using Vista's Media Center, this plugin is a great help.

adanpena

This program is EXTREMELY unstable under Vista 64bit. It's caused two BSODs, a Media Center crash, and numerous Explorer and Sidebar crashes since I installed it. Once I uninstalled it all of my stability problems went away.

Odwalla

I used this program on a recording of Comanche Moon I just downloaded on Sunday. That was a 2 Hour TV program. It removed all the commercials without any problems at all and reduced the size of the file, of course. I am one of the 15 people who have Vista, so no comment about how it will work on 2005 MCE. It is basically ComSkip with some newer features.

shane0049