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I have been using VideoRedo to edit tv adds from my tv recordings. I have also heard of a command line program called comclean. It apparently automatically cuts adds? has anybody used it, does it work? How do other MCE users edit adds from recorded shows?
No problem, I really think videoredo is a great tool. However, always on the search for other useful programs, I have heard that comclean automatically edits tv adds from recordings, just seeing if anyone has used it and what they thought. I also wanted to see what others are using to edit tv commercials from their recordings.
I am dubious about "automatic ad removal" though. As I understand it, these features use one of two methods to detect ads:
1. detect the black screen before and after the ad break. Fine except when the program fades to black between scenes or has a very dark moment and this confuses the software which mistakes this for the start of an ad break.
2. Detects the station's watermark to find the ads. The problem here is the stations often don't turn their watermark back on for a while when they come out of an ad break. Check out channel seven - it's about 30 secs into the program before all the Now ... and Later... banners finish and the watermark is back.
Personally, I use VideoReDo's Ad Detective to mark where the blacks are then manually check them before editing. It's the only safe way.
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The following Member(s) said "Thank You!" to GlenR for this information:
I have been really happy with VideoRedo, but I would always check the edits. Navigation is very easy to each break. You can also use the breaks that are detected to set up chapters when burning to disk by saving chapters as smaller mpegs.
I learned about VidseoRedo on this forum. Thanks all.
King Hilary.
The following Member(s) said "Thank You!" to KingHilary for this information:
I have to agree with Glen here. I think VideoRedo is as good as anything around. It's great to just set the ad detective running and come back later but I find that it's then best to manually set the start and end points and cut the ads because often there are plenty of false positives to be ignored. I also find that not only do dark scenes trigger a false positive but sometime the stations have black space between ads. To make things worse, sometimes there is no black space between the program and the ad and unless I'm mistaken then no software will overcome that.
Personally I archive anything worth keeping as DVD folders so I would be rapt if there was something better out there but the truth is there probably never will be. For me the only real improvements I'd like to see are things like speed and direct DVD folder creation so I don't have to re-encode. (Unfortunately all of the DVD burning software I've tried re-encodes regardless of whether it's necessary or not.) I find saving movies as DVD Folders gives me the best presentation and usability although I'm not overly rapt about the amount of storage space they use.
I downloaded VideoRedo a while back but never got around to installing it.
Seeing the comments on what I can do I think I'll have to get organised and use it. At the moment I just let any recording older than one week run through Crunchie and skip through the adds whenever I'm watching these AVI's.
Thanks for the hints guys.
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"Seeing the comments on what I can do I think I'll have to get organised and use it. At the moment I just let any recording older than one week run through Crunchie and skip through the adds whenever I'm watching these AVI's."
Trust me, it is a much better viewing experience to cut the adds out of your recordings! VideoRedo is a must have program for this process and it would seem nothing else matches it for performance.
It is the type of program you can install and use, minimal instructions or experience necessary.
Thanks for all the posts guys, looks like nothing yet matches the performance of VideoRedo. I researched comclean, and it appears to get good reviews and is quite accurate. The problem is that it is a command line app with no GUI, making it extremely difficult to use.
I'm a VideoRedo user as well, but I first run my videos through ComSkip. It's a bit better in detecting the commercials in most cases.
But it stays a black art, commercial detection. Sometimes it's near perfect, other times I have to edit the blocks extensively. And we're talking about the same show on the same channel here. Ah wel, nothing beats the "human touch".
I use VideoRedo too, but the TV stations are staying a few steps ahead and I am not sure that software will ever be able to do a perfect job.
During movies, some channels have taken to fading in the channel/movie identifier before going to the ads proper. VRD will detect the black when the ads start, but not the 10-30 seconds of as the movie fades into the station promo screen. This is really evident when you go back frame by frame in VRD. Another annoying feature of this trend is to start the music associated with the promo screen while the soundtrack is still playing in the movie, so you either have to cut out some of the audio track or have a "Sunday night movie" watermark or the like visible.
In general I would not expect to tape a perfect movie off the airwaves. I normally would be using the Media centre in the way we used to watch Videos. That is tape from TV and watch later. If you want a perfect movie free of TV edits and watermarks, then you should probably buy the DVD.
It is obvious even burned to DVD for storage that the movie was taped from free to air TV, but we are not selling or giving away the disc, only using for watching that show on our other TV.
For the reasons given above, I have no faith in auto ad removal. For that reason, I use the 'manual' process in Nero 7 to top & tail and remove the ads. I can then put a brief fade between the sections, chapters at the section breaks and anywhere else I want, put a menu that is a screen shot of the MCE description of the film, with a capture of the DVD artwork from Amazon pasted on the left of the screen. Then Nero burns the DVD pretty quickly.
Occasionally you can see the splice, but it is rare enough that people comment when you can. I have a library of 2-300 films now.
For the reasons given above, I have no faith in auto ad removal. For that reason, I use the 'manual' process in Nero 7 to top & tail and remove the ads. I can then put a brief fade between the sections, chapters at the section breaks and anywhere else I want, put a menu that is a screen shot of the MCE description of the film, with a capture of the DVD artwork from Amazon pasted on the left of the screen. Then Nero burns the DVD pretty quickly.
Occasionally you can see the splice, but it is rare enough that people comment when you can. I have a library of 2-300 films now.
You're right to some extent. Auto ad removal will always be a bit hit and miss but the fact is that VideoRedo's ad detection at least will mark 99% of all ads for you while you go off and do something more productive saving you the time of trawling through hours of video manually. I can typically edit a 2 hour movie in about 10 minutes after the ad detective run and then just set it to re-stitch the video file. By comparison, a manual ad search would take more than triple that time. By their nature the edits are mostly not visible because they are just like scene changes. The exception is when the TV channel chooses to fade audio or logos/ads over the top of the movie and you're left with the choice of losing a part of the movie or seeing the edit.
Now if only VideoRedo would burn DVD's or create DVD Folders in the same process it would make it an absolute slam dunk against anything else.
