Automatic commerical detection

[raymondjpg]

Since the recent update I am seeing what are (for me) a bunch of "junk" files in the recordings directory, that seem to appear following completion of a recording. Inspection with Windows Notepad showed one of these files to contain information about ad skipping.

Is this normal behaviour, of have I somehow screwed up the installation with one of my "tweaks"?

I tried following the instructions in the release email:

    On the home screen of the IceBox if you go down to "Add-ons".
    Then go across to the big "IceTV" logo and press the "OK" button on the remote control.
    On the settings screen select "Automatic Commercial Detection" to disable it.
    Go across to the "OK" button on the right hand side, then when highlighted press the "OK" button on the remote control.

but couldn't find a big "IceTV" logo to press OK on. Is this peculiar to BYOB installations?

Is there some other way through Add-ons that Automatic Commercial Detection can be disabled?

My real aim is to determine if disabling Automatic Commercial Detection stops generation of auto skip files in the recordings directory,

TIA!

[Daniel Hall at IceTV]

Those files are created by the commercial detection process. They are only bytes each so even with a lot of recordings they will not take up much space at all. They will also be cleaned up when a recording is removed (although this would happen overnight).

So yes, disabling automatic commercial detection in the IceTV plugin settings will stop those files from being created.

The instructions could be clearer, but on the Add-ons page, go across and select the IceTV plugin, that will open the settings for it where you can disable "Automatic Commercial Detection".

[raymondjpg]

Thanks for that advice. I tried in vain all the ad skip program Add-ons, and it never occurred to me to look in the IceTV Services Add-on.

It appears that the Automatic Commercial Detection config option has replaced the force full guide data download option, that I think was there previously. Does that opiion now appear anywhere else?

I wasn't so much concerned about the disk space the files occupied as the amount of real estate that they occupied in the smb directory listing that I have mapped in Windows File Explorer. I will quite frequently play recordings from there and the ad skip files challenged my rather poor eyesight seeking out the video files! I also use that directory listing as the main vehicle for deleting video files, and I strongly suspect that unless the video files are deleted via IceBox that the ad skip files would also need to be deleted manually.

Having said all that, from what people have reported the Automatic Commercial Detection is a tremendous advance, and many would not be at all bothered by a bunch of associated files in the recording directory.

[Daniel Hall at IceTV]

The option to force a full guide update was removed as it wasn't reliable, so now the IceBox does a full guide update on first boot, so a reboot would force a full guide update anyway.

If you delete the video files via SMB do you find that they still show up under the "Recordings" list within Kodi?

[IanL-S]

My recollection is that Kodie rebuilds the recording list each time it is loaded; I have deleted recordings using SMB several times in the past and it has not caused any problems.

[raymondjpg]

My recollection is that Kodie rebuilds the recording list each time it is loaded; I have deleted recordings using SMB several times in the past and it has not caused any problems.

Same here. Files do disappear from the IceBox Recordings list.

[raymondjpg]

So yes, disabling automatic commercial detection in the IceTV plugin settings will stop those files from being created.

Initially when I did this ad-skip files were no longer created. However I found it necessary to do a soft reset yesterday and since then regardless of whether automatic commercial detection is or is not disabled in the IceTV plugin settings, ad-skip files are always created.

The settings file in Userdata|addon_data|service.icetv shows <setting id="comskip_enabled">false</setting> but the entry kodi-send --action=RunScript(service.icetv,register_commskip,"%f") at the "Post-processor command:" section of the TVHeadend Recording configuration still looks to be executing.

The only way I could stop creation of ad-skip files was by deleting the entry at the "Post-processor command:" section of the TVHeadend Recording configuration.

It's not a big issue for me, but I am curious as to why that might have happened, and if there might be some rather less brutal way of stopping it?

[Daniel Hall at IceTV]

I have had a look through this one, and it looks like there was a bug that was causing commercial detection to still trigger when it was disabled. This was also causing existing commercial detection files to not be removed (so for older recordings ads were still being skipped during playback)

An update is going out this afternoon that will fix this, so the post processor command can be left as is.

[raymondjpg]

Thanks for the update.

[raymondjpg]

An update is going out this afternoon that will fix this, so the post processor command can be left as is.

Did this update go out recently? I thought I saw my IceBox BYO processing an image on booting up today.

[IanL-S]

Yes, a new build was distributed a few hours ago. I understand that @Daniel Hall will be making an announcement about the changes made in that build.

[MD]

Dan has a dreadful dose of the flu so may be off-line for a day or so, and I'd rather leave the technical comments to him as the software author.

[raymondjpg]

Thanks for the confirmation about the update.

[IanL-S]

Dan has a dreadful dose of the flu so may be off-line for a day or so, and I'd rather leave the technical comments to him as the software author.

Hope Daniel gets well soon.

[raymondjpg]

I have had a look through this one, and it looks like there was a bug that was causing commercial detection to still trigger when it was disabled. This was also causing existing commercial detection files to not be removed (so for older recordings ads were still being skipped during playback)

An update is going out this afternoon that will fix this, so the post processor command can be left as is.

It looks like the update has resolved this issue. Thanks!