Crop fails on manual use of Detect Adverts

[paultry]

My first attempted use of Detect Adverts. It failed on one film in the same way, so I'm trying it on a second film. They are SD films stored on the internal HDD in /media/My Video.

Using Web-IF Browse, I use OPT+ Decrypt - which works, then OPT+ Detect Adverts, which successfully creates the bookmarks. I check bookmark location in the HDR UI by using the remote to play, skip through the bookmarks, then stop playback, and press the remote media button to exit. I return to Web-IF browse and use OPT+ crop. On that screen I see the correct portions in red to be cropped out and press "perform crop operation" (with "save new bookmarks?" ON). I get "file cropping complete". Back in the Web-IF browse the file is the same size, and in the HDR UI it still has the adverts (and bookmarks) OPT+ crop is not greyed out. The original file has been automatically moved to an "original" (or similar) folder and is the same length, size and has adverts.

Sharing is on. In case it is relevant, in the Web-IF settings for detectads package I have the radio button "Folder flag, Sweeper or No automatic processing of recordings" selected. There's 17% of internal HDD empty. I've rebooted (i.e. button on standby, HDD parked, switched off at back, then back on) and tried OPT+ crop again but it's the same result.

Please, what on earth am I doing wrong?

 

[Black Hole]

I get "file cropping complete".

Is that after a reasonable time for processing, or immediately?

Assuming the latter, I have seen processing errors like this (other situations) and IIRC it's the result of some bug, but trying to find the relevant report might be tricky...

 

[Black Hole]

I think you should be warned: I realise you're toying with these facilities for the first time, but "crop" (for example) is a blunt instrument. Sure, it cuts&splices the video file at strategic points (i-frames), but it does not patch up the .nts sidecar file – which contains time index information for the HDR-FOX transport controls.

That said, it is possible to reconstruct the sidecar files subsequently.

 

[paultry]

On no attempt did it take more than a few seconds IIRC - I assumed that finding the ads was the hard bit, so it didn't set off alarm bells.

I guess I might try to do it in a non-manual way, as a workaround. I bought specifically the HDR a long time ago because I'd read about the rather extraordinary CF - and damn it, when I finally install it I can't get one of the best features working! Weird, when others use it routinely.

 

[paultry]

I think you should be warned: I realise you're toying with these facilities for the first time, but "crop" (for example) is a blunt instrument. Sure, it cuts&splices the video file at strategic points (i-frames), but it does not patch up the .nts sidecar file – which contains time index information for the HDR-FOX transport controls.

That said, it is possible to reconstruct the sidecar files subsequently.

I'm geting confused now. I thought a standard use case for detectads was to crop the adverts out - and that many users just let it do it automatically. Is cropping not common?

And I have no idea what the implications are of those other consequences!

 

[Black Hole]

Weird, when others use it routinely.

What we're actually doing is running ad-detection on-the-fly, during recording and not as a separate process, and then just setting a post-advert bookmark for manual skip.

WebIF >> Settings >> Setttings for detectads package

 

[Black Hole]

I thought a standard use case for detectads was to crop the adverts out - and that many users just let it do it automatically. Is cropping not common?

I'm not sure what the common usage is – the tools were created by the various enthusiasts on the back of the CF framework and released on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Playback of cropped files is sometimes problematic, so I know a fair number of users gave up with cropping and just use the bookmarks for skip.

This is a side-issue however. The basic manual crop operation should work, and we should be able to fix it.

 

[paultry]

Ah, OK,

What we're actually doing is running ad-detection on-the-fly, during recording and not as a separate process, and then just setting a post-advert bookmark for manual skip.

WebIF >> Settings >> Setttings for detectads package

I read that on-the-fly might stretch resources so I opted for a more vanilla approach. I can run detectads overnight. Bookmarking the adverts is a huge luxury, I just liked the idea of a bit more disk space as well - but as has been noted previously here, probaly by you, that's more of an inner journey.

 

[Black Hole]

Shot in the dark... do you have swapper installed? It helps when demands on RAM exceed what's available.

Belay that: swapper is default.