Profanity Filter

Feature Suggestions
65

I agree that swearing-mute alone doesn’t solve the problem. There can be a lot of other issues visually that are also unsuitable for younger or other thoughtful audiences. Ideally there would also be an automated scene skip capability too, to gloss over that kind of thing.

This is the first I’ve heard of this EDL functionality, but I think it has a lot of potential for this use case and for other use cases like Kodi describes, skipping commercials, etc.

I can already pause, play, skip, mute from the couch; programing a digital automation for that shouldn’t be that hard. If there were a common or open source database for that kind of filter I’d happily contribute to that.

I also totally agree that a directors vision should be considered the authoritative version (unless it’s George Lucas? j/k), but I think that debate about interfering with that vision only makes sense between the creators and the studios, like the theatrical vs director’s cut of The Abyss. Once it’s released it’s like birds leaving the nest, they can’t exactly control it anymore. The director might also have a vision of everyone seeing it 10x, $10bil box office and 7+ Oscars, but after it’s released it’s really no longer in their control anymore in terms of how people react or how they choose to consume it.

1 Like
66

Hell no, this is a terrible idea. you need to take better care over what your kids are allowed to watch. If this were to be implemented, it would mean huge resources would be required to take all of our audio, transfer it to the cloud, parse it with speech recognition, check for naughty words and then dip the audio at those time stamps.

It’s a privacy nightmare and an expensive band aid so that you don’t have to pay attention to what your kids are watching.

This is what age restrictions are for.

4 Likes
67

@MattTwinkleToes it’s not that simple. For example, Avengers Endgame is a grate movie totally appropriate for teenagers. However, it has quite a bit of language in it. Some households prefer to not watch movies with language in them. Why should those households have awesome movies like Endgame restricted because of some poor script choices. Especially if the household is buying the movie. Hollywood still gets their money and a family can now enjoy a movie.

Also, you would not need to upload any content for off site processing, and real time detection is not needed. All that is needed is a list of filters and when to apply them. So there is definitely some setup. Perhaps Plex can integrate with VidAngle or some other tech like ClearPlay.

4 Likes
68

There are plenty of reasons why a movie may contain profanity, nudity, etc… but I’m skeptical that “director’s vision” is at the top of that list. The simple truth is ■■■ sells (ironically, as I type this I’m noticing in the preview window that the forum software is filtering out that three letter word for copulation - looks like filters aren’t a bad idea after all)! It feels like a lot of movies have something overtly sexual thrown in there for business reasons rather than visionary ones.

But whatever the motives, the result is the same: there are plenty of movies out there that would be totally fine and fun to watch with my kids except for one or two parts that would make your mother cringe. I frantically run for the remote to awkwardly skip, then go back because I went to far, then accidentally pause on the worst frame possible…

And that’s why this feature has my vote. Help us avoid that awkward skip/rewind scramble and fail and make filtering a seamless experience! Other platforms have done it. That doesn’t mean it’d be easy for Plex, but it suggests it’s worth looking into. For your customer’s sake, for your daughter’s sake, ya might wanna think about building quality filters into Plex…

2 Likes
69

I’m interested in this topic. I think it would be great to have the option to filter whatever we want. In fact, I’ve been wanting to learn some data science, so I’m planning on making this a project of mine.

For now, my goal will be to generate EDL (or xEDL for extended) files for an input video file. The xEDL file will consist of EDL format + filter type (profanity, nudity, etc.). The xEDL will contain all supported filter types so when it’s used, the user can decide what to filter out without having to recreate a specific filter every time (i.e. unwanted filters can be ignored).

To make the xEDL files, I’ll need to incorporate some speech-to-text and some artificial intelligence that can recognize nudity and other filters of interest. I’m just starting to learn about all this and thought it would be an interesting project to apply what I learn.

This could be run whenever a new file is added to Plex to generate the xEDL file (similar to the PlexCommercialSkipper except it wouldn’t change the video file, but instead generate a map of time->filter). Also, because it’s unique to the video input file, it should be accurate enough to only skip/mute the unwanted content.

Once I have all this working I’ll look into how I can use it with Plex. Although depending on WHEN I finish this, it’s possible there might be another solution already. I mainly care about the learning experience so no loss there.

6 Likes
70

It’s definitely possible to implement without extensive manual labor. I know VidAngel has started new implementation, and Nofanity works very quickly in the audio media streaming world. The tech exists that’s for sure. I’m in the camp of not wanting to hear profanity and I think I’m allowed to feel that way the last time I checked?

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71

Definitely in favor of a plugin that can read edl files and filter content. As has been said above, there are plenty of movies that are very good with just a few things thrown in that don’t advance the story in any way.

1 Like
72

Even a simple solution such as letting users mark which timestamps to skip & using a “skipped version” playback would suffice. If marked, a section of the content could be skipped when watching with families. This would require someone to watch it completely in order to mark it first but you could play an alternate version of the content with your skips. Specifying whether to only mute audio or both audio & video would be great as well.

73

If you’re willing to do it manually, it’s very easily done with a simple video editing software. You could create multiple versions of the file that would mute audio, skip video, blur video, or any other combination.

The software to do the editing based on a manually generated file would be easy to write too using ffmpeg or something similar.

The difficult part is having software/AI generate the filter spec file automatically.

74

Yeah Joan, I understand I can edit content manually but this is a Plex Feature suggestion and it would be easier if this were implemented directly into Plex. I don’t see AI filtering content automatically being possible for years with a degree of accuracy that catches everything & ignores everything it should. I’d rather see something that can be implemented this year taken into consideration. I’m not sure AI filtering is a good idea as it’s just not realistic right now. Accidentally filtering out video that shouldn’t be censored is sure to lead to some upset users. The xEDL idea does seem like a good one as well but I don’t know enough about it to know how easy this would be to implement. My suggestion could use the XML markers of the videos to establish the skip points & if the skips were marked by users it would avoid any copyright issues for Plex.

1 Like
75

I’d also like to see Plex support EDL and give us the option (FOR THOSE THAT WANT TO USE IT) to skip lines of audio that contain swear words.

First off, if Plex does the absolute minimum, they could enable EDL support and just look at the EMBEDDED text already present in the subtitles that are part of the video file (mkv for instance).

This isn’t alien technology that is hard to do. KODI ALREADY DOES THIS PERFECTLY WELL AND CAN MUTE OUT AUDIO WHEN SWEAR WORDS ARE SPOKEN.

And for the “well don’t let your kids watch R rated movies” crowd… I DON’T! But, if I’m watching an R rated movie and my kid is playing in a room adjacent to where I am, guess what Einstein… audio travels from my speakers into the open air around me. My kids have ears, that work. They can hear the TV from their room.

Even as an adult, I’m tired of non-stop swearing everywhere in TV shows and movies. Heck, look at Westworld from HBO. The amount of times, especially in season 2, that you hear the F word is INSANE. Every 3-5 sentences of dialogue have probably 2-3 F bombs sprinkled throughout, non-stop! I had to give up watching it because I got sick and tired of the profanity. It added ZERO to the “impact of the scene”. Over the course of a few bored weekends, I went through and manually muted all the F bombs from the audio and deleted scenes that I found disgusting and now it’s a watchable show!

I’m not saying Plex should default to enabling filtering that mutes all profanity, skips all scenes of drug use, violence, sex, etc., etc. All I’m asking for is Plex to GIVE ME THE OPTION TO ENABLE FILTERING IF -------I------- WANT IT.

Why does it bother some of you so much that if -------I------- C_H_O_O_S_E to filter out swear words that I am “losing the impact of a scene” by not hearing/seeing what the writer/director wanted me to? WHO CARES!!! My choice for what movies I watch and how I watch them only impacts -------ME-------!

Believe it or not, there are people on this planet that don’t think like you do and God forbid, have a different opinion. Stop trying to make everyone conform to YOUR world views. Learn to accept the fact that people with differing opinions exist.

I edit a LOT of my movies before placing them on Plex and cut out entire scenes of subject matter I object to! I bet that makes your blood boil, doesn’t it? Does it bother you to no end knowing that I, as a parent, have complete control over what my children are watching and can sanitized TV shows/movies before they view any of it? Crazy that a parent can decide what’s best for their own child, isn’t it? I guess I should give that control up and let some of you and Pedowood decide what’s best for my children, right?

4 Likes
76

So… you want to protect your children from smutte - but only if it’s easy.

I think that’s what happened to Bonnie and Clyde.
We all know how that ended, but as far as an ‘Enduring Legacy’ - Bonnie and Clyde will be remembered a LOT longer than Oral Roberts… in most communities… maybe not yours.

77

I believe most people would agree with the sentiment that it is really nobody’s business but our own how we choose to watch our movies in our homes.

I agree with this. If we are all purist then we should take away the option to stretch and zoom the image as that is a distortion of the film and not what the artist intended. Not to mention listening to a 5.1 / 7.1 sound track on a movie from the early 1970’s…let’s take away that capability too so we can watch it and hear it in full mono as it was in the theaters. :roll_eyes:

Honestly, if you want to watch 4:3 material from the 1940’s colorized with a Atmos 7.2 soundtrack, go for it, I really don’t care, just don’t invite me over to watch. :grin: If you want to watch a film with sex, violence and language edited, go for that too…to each their own.

1 Like
78

No, I’d protect them from inappropriate content regardless of it being easy or not. They just won’t watch it. What I’d like to do is leverage existing technology to make it easier to filter out content so they can watch without being exposed to inappropriate scenes. As far as the other stuff you wrote, I’m not sure this is the right forum to rant about your morality decisions with incoherent movie analogies. No one is advocating for filtering your content, we’re asking for the ability to be able to filter ours should we want to.

3 Likes
79

I think the answer is pretty easy. A third party script/app that parses a .srt for specific words and spits out an .edl with a mute for that segment.

Example:

SRT
53:04:00 >>> 53:12:00
What the hell!

EDL
53:04:00 53:12:00 1

The “1” in an EDL file mutes audio. A simple If/Then script could be run against an SRT File to produce a usable EDL. TheEDL could be dropped into the folder with the same name as the movie and Voila!

3 Likes
80

If only Plex supported EDLs…

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81

If this is a matter of money, I’d happily put a large chunk towards a crowdfunded project to add this feature.

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82

Seriously, if it’s a matter of funds, I’ll be happy to contribute to development.

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83

Found a Windows based tool that removes the profanity. All you need is ffmpeg, the movie and a matching subtitle. It will output a new mp4 file with the profanity muted. You can also configure it to mach the words you want filtered. I found that 1000ms before and after works best:

2 Likes
84

Please do not allow this in Plex. This shouldn’t be the job of Plex employees, they have more important things to be working on.

If you want to censor art do it yourself.

3 Likes