[MEncoder-users] delogo + edl list = commercials remover

[RC]

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 02:59:25 -0800 (PST)
zika <zika at lova.every1.net> wrote:

> How about creating commercials remover filter by using
> delogo filter, to check for frames without logo and then
> creating edl list from it?

I'm sure delogo isn't smart enough for the job.  It doesn't have any way
of recognizing if the logo is there or not, it just blurs over the area
on the screen you specify.  

Besides, most TV networks understand this trick, and so they have their
logo disappear for a few seconds in the middle of the show, and reappear
later.  Black-frame and sceen-change detection works much better, though
using logo detection in-addition might help a little bit.

If you are using mencoder to encode from a TV tuner, just use a fairly
large keyint value, and you can tell EXACTLY where the commercials are
by the distribution of keyframes.  This made it VERY easy to skip right
over commercials in a fraction of a second with a few quick seeks in
mplayer, also very easy to edit out commercials using avidemux.  You
could even write a simple program to look at the distribution of
keyframes, and write an EDL that excludes the segments (of up to 10
minutes) which average more than one keyframe per every ~5 seconds.

I certainly don't have any desire to automate this process myself.  It's
trivially easy to skip over/edit-out commercials manually, and with all
the pop-up ads during shows (most of which I stopped watching), the
regular commercials aren't what really iritates me.