Overview

How to skip ads or commercials when viewing recorded TV programs.

Introduction

MediaPortal allows you to use Comskip to automatically skip commercials or ads. Comskip will analyze the recorded video file and looks for various characteristics such as black frames, silences and changes in aspect ratio. Based on this information Comskip segments the recording in blocks and using heuristics, together with additional information such as the presence of logo, the scene change rate, Close Captioning information and other information sources Comskip tries to determine what blocks of the recording are to be characterized as commercials.

Configuration

First, you must configure the Comskip Launcher Plugin.

After a recording is done and Comskip has analyzed the file, it will create a text file containing the detected commercial start and end frame numbers.

Example of a Comskip output file:

FILE PROCESSING COMPLETE  96016 FRAMES AT 2500
-------------------
11447    19770
47968    55444
76269    82459
92500    96017

 
In this example Comskip detected four commercial breaks and stored its start and end frames. Since the video file has 25 frames per second the breaks will be around:

1. 7 min 38 sec - 13 min 11 sec
2. 31 min 59 sec - 36 min 58 sec
3. 50 min 51 sec - 54 min 58 sec
4. 1 h 1 min 40 sec - end of video

Installation

MediaPortal supports automatically skipping commercials when watching recorded TV or videos. Once you have configured the Comskip Launcher Plugin correctly, MediaPortal will automatically load the Comskip output file.

Skipping commercials

By default MediaPortal reads Comskip's output file and creates chapters at the commercials segment end. Use  and  (or Play previous and Play next by remote) or the[ fullscreen context menu|Actions Menu] (as seen below) to jump to the previous or next commercial end.

If Comskip is set up well enough so that you rarely miss any part of the show when skipping commercials, you can activate Automatically skip commercials for videos with Comskip data available in MediaPortal Configuration > Videos.

Comskip Timeline Markers

MediaPortal can display the Comskip data on the Recorded TV timeline, similar to how timeshift data is displayed when watching live TV. The display may vary depending on the skin you use (and if it supports this feature).