With the introduction of kmttg AutoSkip which allows you to automatically skip commercials when viewing shows on series 4 or later TiVos the first step towards being able to share commercial skip files is in place.
Of course the problem is we have to currently manually generate our own .edl or .Vprj skip files for this to work. It would be nice to have a database of skip files available for download so that the community could share skip files with each other. That's what this thread is about - trying to come up with a viable scheme to allow sharing of commercial skip files.
TiVo with introduction of SkipMode is effectively doing that. They have a database of skip files. They generate a skip file on a specific TiVo and then came up with a way to share that data with other TiVos. Of course the problem is that the precise cut points can vary from TiVo to TiVo, so there needs to be a method to adjust cut points to a particular TiVo, otherwise it's worthless.
TiVo came up with a method to make those adjustments by using closed caption data which is assumed to be universally available among the TiVos sharing skip data. If you know the precise location in time of captions located close to skip points, you can adjust the skip points accordingly to account for timing differences between TiVos and thus effectively share skip data.
In light of the above, I was thinking we could mimic the TiVo mechanism to some degree. If we collect 2 sets of files for a particular TiVo recording of a show:
1. A .edl or .Vprj file with skip points
2. A .srt file containing caption data for that same recording
Then we can have some code that looks at the .srt file and the cut point file to determine time offsets of caption lines surrounding cut points. i.e. Attempting to depict this:
TIVO 1
captions_1-----cut point-----captions_2
TIVO 2
---------captions_1-----cut point------captions_2
If we can assume the time offset between captions_1 or captions_2 and cut point is the same for both TiVos then we can precisely adjust cut point for TIVO 2 using data from TIVO 1 and .srt data for TIVO 2. Multiple caption lines would have to be used to try and figure things out obviously since a single caption line by itself will not be unique for many cases.
Note that the above is just brainstorming. I have no idea how practical it is to implement. But I'd like to explore it further or perhaps get ideas from others on more effective ways of sharing skip data.
Perhaps as a 1st step assuming we pursue the above is to pick a certain show and generate skip files and .srt files for it and share the files with each other. Then just manually examine the files and see if we can manually generate an adjusted skip file that would work on our TiVo. Anybody up for doing such an experiment?
Of course the problem is we have to currently manually generate our own .edl or .Vprj skip files for this to work. It would be nice to have a database of skip files available for download so that the community could share skip files with each other. That's what this thread is about - trying to come up with a viable scheme to allow sharing of commercial skip files.
TiVo with introduction of SkipMode is effectively doing that. They have a database of skip files. They generate a skip file on a specific TiVo and then came up with a way to share that data with other TiVos. Of course the problem is that the precise cut points can vary from TiVo to TiVo, so there needs to be a method to adjust cut points to a particular TiVo, otherwise it's worthless.
TiVo came up with a method to make those adjustments by using closed caption data which is assumed to be universally available among the TiVos sharing skip data. If you know the precise location in time of captions located close to skip points, you can adjust the skip points accordingly to account for timing differences between TiVos and thus effectively share skip data.
In light of the above, I was thinking we could mimic the TiVo mechanism to some degree. If we collect 2 sets of files for a particular TiVo recording of a show:
1. A .edl or .Vprj file with skip points
2. A .srt file containing caption data for that same recording
Then we can have some code that looks at the .srt file and the cut point file to determine time offsets of caption lines surrounding cut points. i.e. Attempting to depict this:
TIVO 1
captions_1-----cut point-----captions_2
TIVO 2
---------captions_1-----cut point------captions_2
If we can assume the time offset between captions_1 or captions_2 and cut point is the same for both TiVos then we can precisely adjust cut point for TIVO 2 using data from TIVO 1 and .srt data for TIVO 2. Multiple caption lines would have to be used to try and figure things out obviously since a single caption line by itself will not be unique for many cases.
Note that the above is just brainstorming. I have no idea how practical it is to implement. But I'd like to explore it further or perhaps get ideas from others on more effective ways of sharing skip data.
Perhaps as a 1st step assuming we pursue the above is to pick a certain show and generate skip files and .srt files for it and share the files with each other. Then just manually examine the files and see if we can manually generate an adjusted skip file that would work on our TiVo. Anybody up for doing such an experiment?