Commercial Skip Without DVR activation?

Live TV & DVR
1

PLEX FAQ says (or implies) that it can skip commercials during playback of non “DVR files”. I use different software (PLAYON) to record episodes besides a hardware based tuner / DVR. Playon allows me to record premium streaming content (netflix, hulu, disney, etc), not just OTA like most tuners.

Anyway, I then copy the files (episodes) to my NAS for Plex Playback.

I would like to avoid having for example to purchase a used HDHomeRun box and an pay annual DVR subscription just to activate this feature in Plex. It seems you have to activate a DVR to start playing with these settings in PLEX. [It would cost me about $100 just to test this feature out]

I can play directly from PLAYON, but I am trying to consolidate all my viewing / listening through plex for better family adoption of playback instead of wondering if the content is on one server or another (or one app or another). The only reason I use PLAYON for playback is commercial skip, so if I can get that work on PLEX without buying a DVR to turn the feature on, that would be ideal.

Thanks in advance.

I hope this question makes some sense.

2

Have you tried using an HDHomeRun proxy like xTeVe? That might mitigate having to purchase a HDHomeRun.

Your forum ID seems to show you have a Plex Pass. That’s all that’s needed for the DVR/Live TV functionality in Plex. No additional subscription so you should be good.

I’m trying a similar thing with bringing Channels DVR files into Plex. I used one of the tuners I use with Channels to setup the DVR/LiveTV. My problem has been that Channels uses a file container that Plex doesn’t work with. Going to find an easy way around that. Next part of the project.

Good Luck!

Chris

3

Thanks I’ll try xTeVe to see if that at least gets me past the activation step

4

As I recall, Plex was only enabling the library options for this if you had DVR installed. I often had recorded content that did not come from Plex DVR and I wanted to take advantage of this too. I pointed out to Plex at the time that library options for this should be enabled for all Plex Pass holders, not just the ones that installed the DVR. It seemed like a pretty easy thing to change the menu enable/disable logic. Eventually, I lost interest and stopped following the issue. Given my extremely underwhelming experience with Plex in the forums, I am not surprised that this was never “fixed” (I used quotation marks as I am sure that Plex would consider this a new feature or enhancement when it really was just a dumb programming mistake from the start).

5

Plex uses the Comskip program (https://www.comskip.org/) so if all your media is mpeg .ts files or h.264 then it might be possible.

6

Thanks. It does work but the options are only visible if you have the DVR installed and I don’t want the DVR installed because it conflicts with the DVR software that I actually use. The issue here is that the library options that allow you to mark the commercials for skipping should not be tied to having the Plex DVR installed. They should be there for all Plex Pass users.

You see, I don’t normally use the hopeless Plex DVR. I use something that works. I have my DVR record into a Plex TV Show Library folder. I should be possible to enable commercial skip on that library without having the Plex DVR installed.

The Mark Commerical For Skip is one of the few good things Plex has done in the past couple of years. And it’s completely hidden away if you don’t have the DVR installed. Most users would never even know it was there.

7

Thanks, all for your help and suggestions, I am still experimenting.

I got lazy and picked up an HDHomeRun tuner box which was found instantly by Plex so I could activate the DVR features on Plex Server. One good surprise was that I did not need to purchase the $35/year DVR service from SiliconDust since Plex nicely fills in the roll of a DVR with almost as many features as my TiVo.

So far I still don’t have any luck with commercial skip, in particular on legacy media. I have a ton of content I recorded with Playon (.mp4 containers), and when I play that content back via Roku/Playon it skips commercials just fine. But Roku/Plex still only offers “intro skip” and not commercial skip. If it matters most of this content is from Hulu or Peacock, or CBS access.

If I copy that same content to my Plex TV show folder I still get all the commercials. I have turned on the appropriate settings (as far as I know), in the DVR advanced features as well as editing the library settings to “mark commercials in already recorded media”.

I don’t know if I have to wait for Plex to Scan everything and build markers in a database somewhere, or it just happens on the fly.

I watched a video that said your plex server had to have have hardware accelerated transcoding to use this feature, but I’m not sure I believe that.

Just in case that is true, I set up a second Plex Server on a 4 year old i7 laptop that has a Nvidia graphics card (instead of my 7 year old synology NAS 1512+) The synology was perfectly fine streaming 720p content in and out of my home. However it could not process fast enough the .TS files that plex DVR was creating from HSHomeRun without massive buffering issues.

I also moved PLEX DVR to the laptop, and I’m just now recording some shows so I can see if I can get commercial skip to work even on new recordings.

Anyway, so far, I have no luck skipping commercials, but assuming that Plex Server has to do something first to the existing recordings, maybe over time it will start to work.

Any other suggestions welcome.

8

I should apologize. It no longer appears to be working the way I remembered. Once DVR was installed, some of the options on TV Show libraries would become unhidden which allowed the ability for commercial skip to run on new items added to the library. However I tried installing the DVR about a week ago and it was no longer working that way. Basically, it appears that you can now only use the mark for skip feature for content recorded by the Plex DVR (which I only use sporadically). So it appears that one of the best new features for me in a long time has now been removed. I must admit however that I might just not be seeing exactly how it works now. Sorry if I led you astray.

9

Another thread (did not check date) said that it could take a long time to scan saved files. No big deal, If it does not work I’ll just watch them through playon instead of plex. I’m reorganizing my libraries at the same time so it will take a while for it all to sort out.

10

I’m more confused than ever on this topic.

So I used Plex DVR to record a show on PBS and a show on FOX.

When I started playback on PLEX via Roku…

  1. The PBS show asked me to skip ads (at the start of playback) (Ironic since PBS does not really have commercials)

  2. The Fox show (Lego Masters) never asked in the entire show to skip intros or commercials.

I also tried to playback a video recorded on Playon (Parks and Rec).

I was offered Intro Skip, but not commercial skip.

However, when I press pause or down arrow, it shows me all the chapters and the chapters are clearly labeled which parts of the video are commercials. So while playback does not offer commercial skip, I can press down, then select the next non commercial video segment to in effect skip commercials.

Does anyone have any ideas on where to look next?

I wondered for example if I had to “force” Plex client app to transcode on the fly to pick up commercials, but that did not seem to make a difference (vs direct play for supported media).

So what in the world is commercial skip looking for?

I have the “Activity window” set to 23 hours per day. Nothing is running or scanning so it really is not doing any scanning in the background.

Such a confusing topic.

Thanks for all my stupid questions. I feel I’m missing something obvious.

11

Commercial detection isn’t 100%, logos and news tickers can interfere with the detection.

Commercial skip points are stored in the database of the Plex server the process ran on, so if you have 2 servers and only one is detecting them then that is the server you would have to play back on to see the skip points.

Once the DVR is added to a server, you then need to edit the advanced settings on the TV library to turn on commercial detection, again this is on a per server basis. I don’t recommend adding the same HDHomerun to more than one server. The way the DVR function is written it expects exclusive access to the tuner.

I would create a new test TV library with the commercial settings and then copy a few tv shows over to the new library. They should follow the TV series naming convention of

/TV Shows/ShowName/Season 02/ShowName – s02e17 – Optional_Info.ext
12

Thanks for the tips.

I did delete my initial synology plex server and set up a new one on the i7 laptop. So I only have one plex server running, one HDHomerun DVR and so on.

I’ll keep experimenting to see if I can find some rhyme or reason. I just turned on detect chapters and create thumbnails to see if I can force plex to rescan the files.

I am experimenting on different networks (abc vs fox etc) to see if I can find any patterns. It is just surprising to me that even on some shows that have chapters clearly marked as commercials are being ignored on playback in other words the still play. If I press down arrow on the roku it shows chapters labeled “commercial” and I can manually move the cursor to the next chapter.

13

Thanks everyone for your ideas and tips.

I think it is as good as it gets for now.

Here is where I ended up overall. (Grade C)

My primary goal was to have a more user (wife) friendly place / way to find and view recorded content, instead of folders and file names and different apps for different recordings.

Everything is through Roku, other than live TV

  1. Migrated PLEX from my underpowered Synology Server (1512 (9 years?) old box no HW transcoding) to a 5 year old I7 Laptop with Nvidia

  2. Added a cheap used HD Homerun Box (without SiliconDust DVR Activation) just to enable Plex DVR

  3. I record non-broadcast shows (streaming sources) with Playon SW [highly recommend]

  4. I record a few OTA broadcast shows with HDHomeRun

  5. I created a plex library for TV shows that monitors both my Playon Server Directory (Local Laptop Drive) and my main NAS Media directory

As far as Plex commercial skip it is still hit or miss. I would estimate maybe 60% success, which seems way to low to me, but it is what it is.

Results

Playon Recordings - About 70% Success through Plex, seems to vary by streaming source.

Initial Testing, not complete, is that Hulu Sources seem to skip fine, and Peacock has built in chapter markers for commercial skip, but 80% of the time Plex does not skip commercials from Peacock, I can press down on the remote and just move to the next chapter, so that is an OK work around. BTW native commercial skip from Playon Roku App is 99% effective. But keep in mind my goal is a single interface (one app)

HDHomeRun Recordings - No real pattern, some shows it works others it does not, no pattern that I can determine between shows, networks, etc. I would estimate this is about 50-60% effective. Even within the same show sometimes it works at first then as the show continues it stops working. Again, I can record the same show via Playon and it is 99% effective, so here I can clearly say that Plex Commercial Skip could use some improvement.

As far as Settings,

Currently I have “find chapters” and “create thumbnails” turned on to try to force Plex to rescan files. I have scheduled tasks running 23 hours a day 00-23, but I rarely see any activity in the dashboard. I have use HW Transcoding enabled. As time permits I’ll take a closer look at the logs. I don’t have a massive amount of content, maybe 1000 episodes [is that large?], but it does not seem to be spending enough time analyzing the files. So I wonder it if is hitting a file or condition, then stops the scan.

I have scans set for hourly, and “when media is added”.

On the Plex Roku App, I have experimented with all the setting there to try to force Plex to transcode on the fly to see if that improved anything (no change)

As I said, I have enough functionality where the convenience of having all my media in one place with proper descriptions and resume where you left off, to make it worthwhile. Once I have tumbnails generated for fast forward it will help a lot when skip is not working. Overall I rate my setup as “C” but that is up from a “D” with having to browse folders to manually launch a show.

Thanks Plex, Thanks Forum.

14

You have several counter productive settings.

Plex should not see the Playon recording directory, it will process the file before it is fully written. You will need to create a process that copies the file to a Plex directory after it is saved. Incorrectly processed files need to be manually analyzed to correct.

Transcoding should be avoided.

Scanning hourly and when media is added. Assuming your server is Windows it should be polling the storage for changes and therefore scheduled scanning isn’t required.

You could try a custom comskip.ini file but with the sources not being all OTA it would be tough to get above 90% accuracy. I think Peacock purposely tries to defeat commercial skip.

15

So in theory, that could explain one of my symptoms where it skips the first commercial but not the rest of the show.

I’ll make batch file to copy from Playon Recording to Plex Viewing and see if that helps.

16

For a more controlled test maybe I should try a “manual” analyze from each source. That would at least give me some clues if the automatic processes (schedule or when added) are working correctly.

Does this make sense.

I’ll turn off scheduled (or set the window to 1am-5am)
I’ll turn off “when added”

Then I’ll grab a few shows from Hulu, Xfinity, and Peacock and HDHomeRun the then manually trigger an Analyze each, and then see what happens in the console and then test the results.

I think that will give me a good baseline for improvement.

  • Does Skip Intro Work
  • Does Skip Commercials Work
  • Do I have thumbnails (on ffwd)
  • Do I have chapter marks
  • Are there any log errors
17

All that sounds good.

Skip intro doesn’t work till you have 2-3 episodes stored.

18

final results … Still about a c+ on overall commercial skip. That’s OK it works enough for me.

I changed scheduled tasks to run overnight so as not to interfere with recording. I set all the functions to “scheduled only” instead of “when media added”.

No particular pattern, some shows, some networks, some recordings work better than others, but all are good enough. Even in the same show, I’ll have a few commercials not detected, then suddenly later in the show it all works perfectly.

Some shows have chapter markers, so I can manually skip commercials if Plex fails to prompt. I have thumbnails on so if there are no chapter marks I can fast forward visually see when we get past commercials.

So to tie back to the start of the post. Yes, you can do commercial skip on Legacy Recordings, and I did not end up wasting time trying to trick plex into turning on the DVR features, I just picked up a cheap used HDHomeRun to turn on the feature. Eventually I’ll upgrade HD Home Run to 4K OTA once the price comes down.

Not all these steps may be needed, but what I did

  • Schedule Tasks Overnight (not when media added)
  • Create Thumbnails (as a last stop gap in case skip or chapters fail)
  • Move Plex from Synology to more powerful laptop

Playon is used to record streaming sources
HD Home Run used to record OTA sources

Libraries are watching both NAS and PLAYON folders so the viewer does not care where the content is coming from. Eventually I’ll make a script to move Playon files to the NAS as there is not a good way to point the Playon at the NAS drive.

Thanks for all the tips.

19

I would like to have the ability to add my recordings from third party tuners and have plex remove the commercials. I can’t do this now that Locast is down as my tuner isn’t compatible with Plex (I use Tablo). I’m considering getting a HDhomerun but wouldn’t like the ability to just use my Tablo since its nice having it as a backup in case my plex server is down or my network has issues.

20

I’m sure there are more technical solutions.

I bought a cheap HDHomerun on Ebay ($50) just so I could activate the DVR feature of Plex. Then I point my non-Plex compatible DVR (in my case Playon) to store shows in a Plex monitored Library. It works pretty well overall. Commercial skip is hit or miss, but about 80% of them are found.