Detect commercials, UK freeview, HDHomerun

[Scraft]

I have an HDHomerun for watching and recording UK TV. I have been investigating what options I have to detect the commercials. Would SCTE-35 messages be contained within the stream? I think the answer is no. However, this is all new territory for me, so I hope someone can help me confirm.

I used the command:

threefive sidecar http://192.168.2.10:5004/auto/v104

And saved the console output as:
sidecar_tty.txt

I also have the sidecar.txt file that is generated by the above command:
sidecar.txt

Could anyone help me confirm whether SCTE-35 messages are in the stream and, if not, whether there are any other similar methods to detect advertisements? I am aware of Comskip, which provides some alternative ways to detect advertisements and can do a decent job. However, my preference would be to use markers in the stream itself, if available, in order to get the best accuracy.

If the SCTE-35 messages aren't there, does anyone know if UK Freeview, in general, includes these messages? I am wondering whether HDHomerun is just failing to keep them or whether something else is going wrong somewhere in the chain. It is fair enough if UK Freeview doesn't include these messages. That would conclude this particular approach, and I'd instead be open to discovering if there is anything better than Comskip for my set-up.

[superkabuki]

Those guys are dicks man, they use splice null packets. What sane people do is only include scte-35 packets where you need them. Your freeview folks send a scte35 splice null packet every second. Instead of having like 6 scte-35 packets for an hour of television, these guy have 3600 scte-35 packets and 3594 have no data in them. It's late here, in the morning I'll show how to get threefive filter all the splice null packets out and it will make a lot more sense.

[Scraft]

Thank you, that is exactly how it looked to me (a null message every second) but due to my lack of experience or knowledge in this area I assumed it was just a misunderstanding on my part. If it is helpful I can upload the .ts file the above messages came from.

[superkabuki]

try this
logscte35.txt

just rename it to logscte35.py
run it like

python3 logscte35.py http://192.168.2.10:5004/auto/v104

it will write a log named scte35.log of the relevant SCTE-35 and then we'll take a look and see what SCTE-35 data we get.

[Scraft]

Thank you, unfortunately nothing gets written out. I modified the script to log null messages and then a log file is written out. So based on that, I am assuming my stream doesn't have any SCTE-35 messages in? Is that perhaps usual for UK freeview?

[superkabuki]

I figured you were 2&1> to a log file , sorry about that.
If all you're seeing is splice nulls, they maybe just testing to use SCTE-35.
I don't know how freeview works over there, but I do support the UK addressable TV syntax of SCTE-35,
if you're not seeing anything but splice nulls, they are probably testing to start using SCTE-35, I really don't know the system.
With SCTE-35, the standard is to send a message about 4 seconds before the commercial break, you should see a Splice Insert or Time Signal as the Command Name , same place you see Splice Null.
Like I said , threefive does understand UK's addressable tv syntax. If they are using it, you should see it.

[superkabuki]

It's sounds like it is a fairly recent change for them to use SCTE-35, if so , they are probably struggling with it.
My first and third ex-wife lives in Newcastle, I may try to get her to do some leg work for me, but she's not my biggest fan,
she divorced me twice already....

[superkabuki]

f*chin' Geordies, you know? :)