My latest HTPC project has been to resurrect a method to skip commercials for recorded TV programmes. This is something I have done in the past when I was a Windows Media Center user using third party tools to both instigate the commercial detection as well as to support the actual function of commercial skipping since WMC didn’t natively support it. Even when Media Center switched to the WTV format commercial skipping was still fairly easy to perform on standard definition content as Windows had the built in ability to convert the file to the more compatible DVRMS format and soon tools such as DVRMS Toolbox came with scripts to automate the procedure. Unfortunately high definition content that was generally .h264 encoded could not be converted in the same way and Microsoft’s WTV format was (and still is) undocumented which led to a delay in the ability to make HD content compatible with commercial skipping software. This led to me abandoning commercial skipping altogether as the hoops you had to jump through to get it working were just not worth the effort. In recent times the WTV format has been ‘reverse engineered’ for want of a better expression, allowing commercial skipping software the ability to scan it, although this is no longer an issue for me as Mediaportal records to a transport stream (TS) file. The more important improvement has been the accuracy of h.264 HD media commercial detection, which is why I have started looking into using it again.

Luckily MediaPortal supports both the initial commercial detection process via a launcher plugin for Comskip as well as giving the ability to skip adverts either manually (as chapter markers) or automatically. See this link. Comskip is free for mpeg2 media scanning but if you donate $10 or more you are given access to a version that works with h.264 media which is essential in my opinion.

As I generally don’t use the MediaPortal client to watch TV I was interested to find out if XBMC supported this feature and it does! For quite a while now XBMC has had built in support for EDL  (Edit Decision List) files that tell it where not to play the media file. What you will see in the scrub bar while playing the file in XBMC is the edited file duration as opposed to the total file length with adverts. This is useful so you can tell the ad skipping is actually working. As long as the edl file (or txt file in MediaPortal clients) filename matches the media  filename you are playing back you have a working commercial skipping system. Whereas in MediaPortal all clients seemlessly will honour the commercial detection in the manner you have set it up in the configuration, it isn’t quite the same with XBMC. Due to the method that the MediaPortal TV server plugin for XBMC plays back recorded TV (it streams the media instead of playing back a file directly) it doesn’t read the EDL file on clients that are not on the same machine as the server. This isn’t a major problem because all you need to do is play back your recorded TV not via the section on the Live TV tab but create a folder link to in “videos” as you would for any other video media. It then will read the EDL file. More detailed information on the XBMC client side process can be found here.

So in summary, commercial skipping via MediaPortal TV server and playback in XBMC is very doable and straight forward. Apart from the issue where the XBMC client that is on a different machine to server needing playback to occur via a media share the only other issue I have encountered is that you must wait for the recording to finish before to commence commercial detection with Comskip. The MediaPortal plugin “Comskip Launcher” does give the option to do it on the fly but it didn’t work for me and I believe this may be an issue with the TV server. You may also need to edit you “comskip.ini” configuration file to change your detection method and other settings depending the source of your TV signal and the country you reside in. I am in the UK recording from Freesat and Freeview sources but so far all I have changed is the basic detection method from “43″ to “111″ (these settings are explained in the Comskip guides) but more fine tuning can be done if you require it. Changing this has given me very good results and I am really enjoying not having to watch those pesky commercials!