[DetectAds] Announcing DetectAds version 2

[af123]

Interesting. Does that mean that silences in the show itself might be incorrectly interpreted as ads?

Only if there is a run of silences in the same pattern as adverts. I've only seen this happen once and that was with a Family Guy sketch that was aping TV adverts!

 

[Black Hole]

Interesting. Does that mean that silences in the show itself might be incorrectly interpreted as ads?

If the silences mimic the pattern of an ad break - then yes. But generally programmes have a constant soundtrack, whereas ad breaks have silences between the ads.

I don't have arbookmarks installed - should I have?

Only if you want what it has to offer. If you use AR rather than auto-padding, arbookmarks has no purpose.

 

[MymsMan]

Interesting. Does that mean that silences in the show itself might be incorrectly interpreted as ads?

Potentially, especially if they occur close to a real ad break, but to qualify as a silence it has to last a certain length and be very quiet - gaps in conversation are not normally quiet enough. It is a trade off - occasionally real ad breaks are missed because of the checks to avoid false detection within a programme.

I don't have arbookmarks installed - should I have?

Only if you routinely use padding rather than relying on the broadcasters setting the accurate recording markers, the package sets bookmarks at the start and end marker points and would have been a potential source of the bookmarks you did find.

I think we have determined that DetectAds is working as designed but the middle ad break in your break contained the wrong type of ads to be recognized.

 

[MontysEvilTwin]

I have found ad detection to work very well, but the channel Pick is a bit of a rogue (it is owned by Sky). They tend to have a block of regular adverts followed by one or two ads for Sky programming. Often there is a second or two of silence before the Sky ad starts. To add to this, just before the programme resumes there is a channel ident with a musical sting and it then cuts straight to the programme with only a brief gap in the audio. Hence detectads often places the end of ad break bookmark before the Sky advert rather than at the start of the next section of programme. Sky may well do this deliberately to defeat such methods and try and make you watch their ads. It may be possible to tweak the silence detection parameters for this channel, but I have no idea how easy this is to do and how successful it would be.

 

[MymsMan]

I have found ad detection to work very well, but the channel Pick is a bit of a rogue (it is owned by Sky). They tend to have a block of regular adverts followed by one or two ads for Sky programming. Often there is a second or two of silence before the Sky ad starts. To add to this, just before the programme resumes there is a channel ident with a musical sting and it then cuts straight to the programme with only a brief gap in the audio. Hence detectads often places the end of ad break bookmark before the Sky advert rather than at the start of the next section of programme. Sky may well do this deliberately to defeat such methods and try and make you watch their ads. It may be possible to tweak the silence detection parameters for this channel, but I have no idea how easy this is to do and how successful it would be.

Allowing changes to the detection settings is on my Todo list but I am lacking in circular tuits at the moment!
Whether it would successful depends on whether there is actually a detectable silence between the trailers and program

 

[JoeBloggs911]

I have found ad detection to work very well, but the channel Pick is a bit of a rogue (it is owned by Sky). They tend to have a block of regular adverts followed by one or two ads for Sky programming. Often there is a second or two of silence before the Sky ad starts. To add to this, just before the programme resumes there is a channel ident with a musical sting and it then cuts straight to the programme with only a brief gap in the audio. Hence detectads often places the end of ad break bookmark before the Sky advert rather than at the start of the next section of programme. Sky may well do this deliberately to defeat such methods and try and make you watch their ads. It may be possible to tweak the silence detection parameters for this channel, but I have no idea how easy this is to do and how successful it would be.

This behaviour is not limited to Sky: I've experienced it also on More4 and Yesterday, with the same results you report.

 

[bob_a_builder]

DetectAds is not really working for me, initially when I set it up ( Using ChaseRun and bookmark end of ads ) a couple of recorded programs had the bookmarks added, but now mostly I get failure messages logged to the WebIF screen like ...

19/05/2017 20:34:01 - Queing |media|My Video|Coronation Street|Coronation Street_20170519_2030.ts for retry of detectads due to significant file length error

Please refer to file upload for further info ( unable to include in post due to links)

clearing all logs now to give a clean playing field

DetectAds#Debugging - suggests this might be due to poor signal - referring to the bar graph when using the i button - the top bar is about 50 or 60% - lower bar is 100% - theres no picture break up to hint at signal issues ?


Any pointers please ......



Web interface version: 1.4.1-6
Custom firmware version: 3.12 (build 3965)
Humax Version: 1.03.12 (kernel HDR_CFW_3.12)
Loader Version: a7.31

 

[Trev]

Does the file play?

 

[bob_a_builder]

Does the file play?

Yes - there are no problems at all playing any of the recordings

 

[bob_a_builder]

May or maybe not related to my current problem

But I decided to try running the Detect Ads from the Opt+ icon in Media browser on recordings which had already failed using ChaseGet above
And I find I'm getting the same Curl error that I reported in this earlier thread
detectads-curl-error-curl-7-couldnt-connect-to-host.7895

But none of those fixes suggested in that other thread are curing the Curl error this time ?

 

[MymsMan]

I don't have any idea why Curl would be be failing if you can successfully decrypt recordings.

I would suggest turning on debugging logging on the Settings page to see if that provides any additional information
Then on the browse menu select one the programs that has failed and 'Queue for ad-detection' button at the bottom of the page
On another of the failed program select Queue for Decryption and then Queue for ad-detection
It will be interesting to see the auto.log and chaseget.log after queue processing has completed.

You could also avoid the problems by turning on auto-decryption and switching detectads to traditional mode.

 

[Trev]

You could also avoid the problems by turning on auto-decryption and switching detectads to traditional mode.

Possible 'fix' but not a cure for what's wrong.
I'm surprised at you Myms

 

[bob_a_builder]

Decided to bite the bullet and do a CFW Reset ......
After WebIF installed, the only package I have installed has been DetectAds
Running DetectAds via the OPT+ button seems to be working now - no Curl errors so far
Will Re-install ChaseGet later

 

[prpr]

After WebIF installed, the only package I have installed has been DetectAds
Will Re-install ChaseGet later

Chaseget is a dependency of Detectads, so it will have been auto-installed. You don't have any choice in the matter.

 

[bob_a_builder]

Chaseget is a dependency of Detectads, so it will have been auto-installed. You don't have any choice in the matter.

Yes- thanks - just found that out as I went off to find it try to find it to install it
Curl is still working for now, so will now leave it alone for the week to test it with some live recordings

 

[bob_a_builder]

Came back from holiday to find it had failed to create many/if any bookmarks - due to the Curl error again
Switching off "Chaserun" now
Switching over to "Traditional" mode

 

[Robobunny]

Hi, I seem to have an issue on some cropped recordings, whereby the 'skip back' button will jump minutes rather than the programmed few seconds. Only happens on detectads cropped recordings, not regular ones. Sorry if mentioned before and I missed it. Any thoughts? Happy to help debug...

 

[MymsMan]

The cropping of the ads is performed by a modified version of nicesplice and I suspect that problems with skipping (and fast forward) may be due to the way it builds the nts file for the cropped recording.

Are the problems repeatable? ie if you go to the same point and skip backwards does it go back the same incorrect amount?
(setting a bookmark would help you position to the same point)
If the problem is repeatable you could rename the nts file and rebuild it using the sidecar package and see if that cures the problem.

I didn't write nicesplice and have limited time at present so I cant promise any quick fix

 

[Robobunny]

Hi, thanks for the quick response. The playback problem is very repeatable (on files with the issue – not all have it). Taking e.g. “F1 Singapore Grand Prix Live_20170917_1233.ts” the first advert bookmarked from 14:18 to 18:02 (copying the cropped recording to my PC and playing with VLC, the timecode skips from 14:13 to 17:58).

Very repeatable is (1) Select program, (2) Play from start, (3) Fast forward to just before the 1st cropped ad-break, let it play through it and on for about another 5 minutes (i.e. longer than the ad-break length). Pressing the instant replay button |<< (mine is set to 7 seconds) the program will rewind to a point which was at 21:05 in the original file (so ~17 min 20s into cropped). Now letting it play for 1, 2 3, up to about 8 minutes, the instant reply button always returns to exactly the same place. Also, whilst playing, the front panels stays on “PLAY 00:17” and the green progress bar also sticks on 17 minutes, until about 8 minutes later it skips forward in one big jump to the mid-20s (just the timecode I mean, actual program playback is fine).

I renamed the .nts file and rebuilt with sidecar but this failed (the resulting .nts was much smaller than the original, it only took 5 mins to do (program is 3 hours so should take ~30 mins, and it does estimate that's how long it will take), and now playback stops at the first cropped adbreak. So sidecar seems unable to rebuild the .nts from this cropped .ts (I tried twice).

For fun I recorded and cropped a “Frasier” (just happened to be the next prog on 4HD) to try all this on another file, again VLC skips the timecode but sidecar was able to rebuilt the .nts successfully (also this recording doesn’t suffer the skipping issue - not sure if that's related), so it seems sidecar has an issue rebuilding the F1 but not the Frasier (so not a generic issue with cropped .ts).

Happy to try more things if you need. I think the F1 was recorded with the "chaserun" option and CPU limited to 50%.

 

[MymsMan]

DetectAds failures with Countdown

I have been cropping the ads out of Countdown with no problems for years now but last week (while I was away) it started cutting in the middle of the numbers rounds

I will have to investigate why it now thinks the ad break is starting significantly early and what I can do about it

Has anyone else noticed problems recently?