uPnP commercial skipping

[anonymous]

The attached patch supercedes ​Ticket 3344, to correct fast-forwarding for uPnP players. In addition, new functionality was added to the GetRecordings? method so that portions of content could be specified through a "bytes=" parameter in the URL. A new method GenM3u is provided to automatically generate a playlist containing a series of URLs that specify content up to the end of a commercial break. In the near future, I'll submit a patch to the CDS that will present a upnp listing of commercial-detected recordings, and will utilize the new GenM3u method to serve up the recording segments, in full upnp spec compliance. See ​Section 2.8.9.2 Playlist file generation from container derived object resources of the standard.

Rather than completely removing detected commercials, commercial skipping will be semi-automatic. When a user viewing the program recognizes a commercial, the user may hit the "next track" button, which will switch to the next segment of content, just past the end of the detected commercial break, thereby skipping the commercials. Thus, if commercial content is erroneously marked, the user may review the missed content. For those that trust in the algorithms, complete commercial removal can be achieved through lossless transcoding.

[robsbox@…]

please disregard patchfile.1 -- had a bug in the url, which is fixed in patchfile.2

[robsbox@…]

Also supercedes ​ticket 2500.

[robsbox@…]

additional changes for track parameter and start of CDS modification

[robsbox@…]

*Submitted patchfile.3 as a replacement for prior patchfiles. *Modified MythXML service GenM3u() and GetRecordings?() for more user-friendly parameters (i.e., track=<#> in lieu of specifying a byte range). *Started modification to upnpcdstv, but it appears playlists are unsupported/non-functioning. Added commercial free category to menu.

[robsbox@…]

Final patch revision

[robsbox@…]

Modified new table method ProgramInfo::GetTrackMap?() and added new type pos_time_map_t for supporting the method so that a map of commercial endpoints byte offsets indexed by time position (in seconds) is created. This will come in handy whenever someone decides to include track offsets in mytharchive rather than arbitrary, percentage based tracks.

Since my uPnP player apparently does not support playlists, but will play a sequence of videos if the play button is pressed when viewing a container list of video segments, I modified UPnpCDSTv() to generate a list of videoItems, each videoItem having content comprising the show followed by the commercials. The next track button skips to the next segment of video. I needed the above modification to the track table so that the duration of each track is reported properly in the resource tag.

Please disregard patchfile.4, which did not calculate segment sizes properly and had a bug in the duration of the last track. Patchfile.5 is the final patch to implement this functionality.

[robsbox@…]

Final patch file fixing fast forwarding and implementing commercial skipping tracks.

[robsbox@…]

fix small memory leak & iterator deficiency

[anonymous]

hmm, what upnp player are you using? I just patched this against the latest svn of 0.20-fixes (which recently got a upnp backport), and the skip track button just tells me "Invalid". I have a linkplayer2, so it's possible it is a limitation of my player. I had to hand-apply a couple of diffs because of rejects ...

I'll attached the changes here ... I think it'll also apply to trunk, but I can't verify if anything works. I can verify though that if I select "Commercial Free" from the recordings list, it hangs for 60 seconds before erroring out.

[dblain]

There are numerous things wrong with this patch using the latest upnp code.

I started re-implementing this feature and ran into a problem with getting appropriate file offsets.

I also wanted to change the way it shows up in the directory. I was going to add a sub-folder ("Chapters") under each recording, that would give simular results.

[robsbox@…]

Replying to dblain:

There are numerous things wrong with this patch using the latest upnp code.

Dave, I've be happy to discuss offline -- please email me. Regards, Rob

[robsbox@…]

Replying to anonymous:

hmm, what upnp player are you using?

I have a Buffalo LinkTheater?. After I upgrade to 0.21-fixes, I will attempt to review and patch again.

[wjskelle]

Guys, how do we move forward with this? I have a Samsung HDTV that recognizes my Myth box, and after applying a different patch (ticket 7296) it plays all of my recorded shows beautifully! However, not being able to skip commercials is a real pain. It looks like this patch is 'kind of' compatible with 0.21 but I think we should open some discussion on how to move forward with this concept?

[robertm]

Speaking of discussion, please take it to the (aptly named) discussion lists.

[robertm]

I might start looking at some uPnP stuff in the future, unlocking in case anyone wants to update the patch for trunk.

[robertm]

robsbox, If you feel like updating this for .23 or trunk, I won't let it go three years, If you can get it updated I won't let it rot.

[stuartm]

Since we don't have an agreed upon patch and no progress has been made on producing one in years this ticket is no longer valid, it's a feature request and it belongs with the other feature requests in the wiki.

I'm told that Gavin (Beirdo) has tried and failed to produce something that he was happy with.