It would be lovely to be able to manually turn on & configure (per series) the ability to auto-skip a show's intro/recap.
Primarily for TV series from FX, HBO, Showtime, AMC. For ex: Boardwalk Empire has a 1:30 intro. Sons of Anarchy, The Americans, tend to have recap + intro. The Walking Dead has recap + intro.
I expect the ability to manually opt into & configure this feature would likely be a necessity, considering users source their media from all sorts of locations, whether from a PVR/DVR, DVD, Blu-ray, etc.
I'd propose a server-side configuration for series, with ability to override/ignore such settings on the client-side.
Problem with this is that quite often there's the short 'catch up' things before the intro, which tend to vary in length.
However I agree, it would be an awesome feature.
Which is why it would need to be individually opted into & configured. Agreed the catchup/recaps aren't always of dependable lengths.
A more complex solution (but also possibly more accurate) would be to provide an audio/video snippet of the intro, so then a scanner could identify it's location in each video, and set start point per-episode to coincide with the end of that snippet.
Wouldn't work for shows that have a delayed intro (new content prepended to intro).
** Would likely need to support multiple snippets, for shows that change intros throughout seasons
Another option would be to have Plex play the episode, excluding the points identified by a snippet. So then you'd get the variable-length recap and any new content, but the intro itself would be skipped. Rather than editing video, it would instead function like an auto-fast-forward that is triggered by an event (reaching X timestamp).
Which is why it would need to be individually opted into & configured. Agreed the catchup/recaps aren't always of dependable lengths.
A more complex solution (but also possibly more accurate) would be to provide an audio/video snippet of the intro, so then a scanner could identify it's location in each video, and set start point per-episode to coincide with the end of that snippet.
Wouldn't work for shows that have a delayed intro (new content prepended to intro).
** Would likely need to support multiple snippets, for shows that change intros throughout seasons
Another option would be to have Plex play the episode, excluding the points identified by a snippet. So then you'd get the variable-length recap and any new content, but the intro itself would be skipped. Rather than editing video, it would instead function like an auto-fast-forward that is triggered by an event (reaching X timestamp).
If a scanner option isn't possible, these are some ideas I came up with, not sure how feasible they are:
1. For each show on the server side, you can enter a second amount that you want to skip. (10, 15, 30, 60, x seconds). Would be an option that either pops up when you choose to play multiple episodes of the same series, or an option in the main PHT settings.
2. A crowdsourced database, by Plex users for Plex users type of deal. Where users can enter a Show and then the amount of time to skip for a series (where it can be overridden for episodes if needed).
