Will we ever get better intro detection for shows?

[Guest]

Hi,

Recently purchased Premiere because I'm not happy with the direction Plex is going. Overall, Emby is way, way better than Plex in almost every way.

However, the area where it is lacking, in my opinion, is intro detection for shows. Many of the shows I've been watching lately have had a episode or three where the intro doesn't start until 20m into the viewing. It's really annoying to have to find the balance to skip through these. Plex detects the intros fine no matter where in the video. As of right now, this is a big enough deal breaker for me that I went back to Plex for now.

Thanks

Edited December 30, 2024 by generic345
fix typo

[Guest]

Tagging @Lukeand @ebrfor discussion. Hope you two are doing well and had a great holiday. Thanks for all the work you do.

[hapylestat 10]

@generic345i guess it's better to provide some samples, so the devs would be able to reproduce the issue.using it. Otherwise it would be impossible to fix.  

[ebr 16182]

22 minutes ago, hapylestat said:

guess it's better to provide some samples, so the devs would be able to reproduce the issue.using it. Otherwise it would be impossible to fix.

Hi.  This is a known limit, not an issue to fix.

We have to strike a balance between finding 99% of intros and taking absolutely forever to do so.  Right now, it stops looking 10 minutes in so intros deeper than that will not be detected.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, ebr said:

Hi.  This is a known limit, not an issue to fix.

We have to strike a balance between finding 99% of intros and taking absolutely forever to do so.  Right now, it stops looking 10 minutes in so intros deeper than that will not be detected.

I found a post from a couple years back where this was mentioned and nothing after that. That’s what prompted me to make this post. I’m also a bit disappointed that you seem to not want to respond to me directly, despite paying for the service and trying to be cordial about the topic. That being said, I guess I’ll be blunt now.

Here’s where I stand. I have about 3500 tv episodes and 400 movies. Plex was able to detect credits and intros for the shows and credits for the movies in about a day. Emby did less work and took over twice as long. Whatever code is running this process can be better.

[ebr 16182]

On 12/31/2024 at 11:25 AM, Guest said:

Plex was able to detect credits and intros for the shows and credits for the movies in about a day. Emby did less work and took over twice as long. Whatever code is running this process can be better.

Hi.  Plex compiles this information centrally from everyone's library.  This is the difference.

[rbjtech 5284]

To note, there is a configuration you can make to extend past the 10 minutes - BUT, as ebr has pointed out - this applies to all new/future items, and the more time you allow for the fingerprint, the more time you potentially add for false detections - in short, it's not worth it for the one off's.

During the build of the original introskip plugin - we defaulted to 12 minutes - but now some shows have the 'intro' mid way through - so it's not going to catch those either.

The ability to 'add' an intro marker 'on the fly' would be really cool - ie you pause, 'add intro start marker' let the intro run (or ffwd), then pause again - then 'add intro end marker' - would be a perfect solution to these 'odd' episodes.

Alternatively - use ChapterAPI plugin (and manually do it) ..

[yocker 1248]

Automatically finding the intro without having some database is hard.
If the intro between two episodes differs just a little it might not be found.

[rbjtech 5284]

31 minutes ago, yocker said:

Automatically finding the intro without having some database is hard.
If the intro between two episodes differs just a little it might not be found.

Correct - there is a fine balance between the 'patterns' on the chromeprint (audio fingerprint).  Too loose, and it will match anything related, too tight, and it will reject the slightest difference.    I think emby have this set just ok - I have very few misidentified Intro's vs the original Plugin.

I just wish they had added editing, credits and TV series selection etc - but the core Intro detection part works just fine. 

Edited January 1, 2025 by rbjtech

[Lessaj 467]

Generally it does work well by itself. I recently went through Stargate Universe and in that case every episode starts with a ~1 minute recap and the actual intro is maybe 10 seconds at most several minutes into the show, the few shows I've gone through with short openings generally don't get that picked since it's so short, but I don't think it ever actually detected that a single time for this show. In fact it picked some quite random points between each episode, sometimes several minutes in, sometimes maybe half of the recap. I used the chapter API plugin to change the skip intro to basically skip the recap instead, but I also used it to pull the metadata and sound clips of what it originally picked and they were quite different so I'm not sure how it decided that was the best choice.

Edited January 1, 2025 by Lessaj

[yocker 1248]

2 hours ago, rbjtech said:

Correct - there is a fine balance between the 'patterns' on the chromeprint (audio fingerprint).  Too loose, and it will match anything related, too tight, and it will reject the slightest difference.    I think emby have this set just ok - I have very few misidentified Intro's vs the original Plugin.

I just wish they had added editing, credits and TV series selection etc - but the core Intro detection part works just fine. 

Agree.
I wouldn't have a problem with an intro database though, as it doesn't automatically mean logging and data harvesting but i can see why the Emby team wouldn't want to go that route.

Maybe in the future some one makes something opensource like Bazarr but for intro markers.

[rbjtech 5284]

16 minutes ago, yocker said:

Agree.
I wouldn't have a problem with an intro database though, as it doesn't automatically mean logging and data harvesting but i can see why the Emby team wouldn't want to go that route.

Maybe in the future some one makes something opensource like Bazarr but for intro markers.

ChapterAPI did - but it didn't get any traction.  It didn't save the intro marker timings - but it stored the 'fingerprint' of the intro (a tiny binary fingerprint file) - and emby just had to find it on 'your' version of the file.

Storing the actual timings (based off ALL the 'versions' of that file that are available) is one option - but the ChapterAPI method works for ANY file and generates it's own timings.   The 'key' is the fingerprint - as that should be the same across any version. It worked perfectly and could also be used for 'recaps', 'credit/outro's' etc - as you simply applied the same concept across the file for the different marker types.

A huge missed opportunity imo.

Edited January 1, 2025 by rbjtech

[yocker 1248]

2 hours ago, rbjtech said:

ChapterAPI did - but it didn't get any traction.  It didn't save the intro marker timings - but it stored the 'fingerprint' of the intro (a tiny binary fingerprint file) - and emby just had to find it on 'your' version of the file.

Storing the actual timings (based off ALL the 'versions' of that file that are available) is one option - but the ChapterAPI method works for ANY file and generates it's own timings.   The 'key' is the fingerprint - as that should be the same across any version. It worked perfectly and could also be used for 'recaps', 'credit/outro's' etc - as you simply applied the same concept across the file for the different marker types.

A huge missed opportunity imo.

Didn't know that, that really is very sad that didn't get developed upon.
Maybe one day.

[pwhodges 2012]

19 hours ago, rbjtech said:

but now some shows have the 'intro' mid way through - so it's not going to catch those either.

For a more extreme case, consider that some recent anime goes straight in to the first episode, and has the OP (for subsequent episodes) used as the ED for the first episode!

Paul

[RanmaCanada 495]

I have noticed lately that Emby has had extreme difficulty with anime. Anything I've added in the last month or so the intro detection is completely borked where as older ones are completely fine.