Skipping "short" recordings

General Support / Questions Commercial Removal
1

Hi everyone,

Is there a way to have MceBuddy not attempt commercial-removal on recordings less than X amount of minutes?

2

Hi @Atreyu3361,

Currently, MCEBuddy doesn’t have a direct “Minimum Duration” slider in the GUI to skip processing, but you can achieve this using a few different methods depending on your goal:

1. Using a Conversion Task Filter (Best for skipping entirely)

If you want to completely skip short recordings (like accidental 1-minute clips or short news segments), you can use the File Size filter. While not exactly time-based, size usually correlates with duration.

  1. Open Settings → Conversion Tasks.
  2. Select your task and click Change.
  3. Click Expert Settings (or Advanced Settings).
  4. Look for the File Size filter. You can set a minimum size (e.g., 500MB) so MCEBuddy ignores anything smaller.

2. Using Comskip settings (Best for skipping commercial removal only)

If you want the file converted but want to skip the commercial scanning part for short videos, you can modify the comskip.ini file:

  1. Go to your MCEBuddy installation folder (usually C:\Program Files\MCEBuddy2x\comskip).
  2. Open comskip.ini with Notepad.
  3. Look for a setting called min_show_segment_length. While this is usually for segments within a show, Comskip generally won’t perform well on very short files.
  4. Note: A better way is to use the Selection Filters in MCEBuddy to only run a specific “No Commercials” task for certain shows, as described in the Advanced Settings Guide.

3. Monitoring “Minimum Age”

If your short recordings are happening because MCEBuddy is grabbing files while they are still being recorded, you should adjust the Minimum age setting:

  1. Settings → Monitor Locations → Change.
  2. Set Minimum age before processing to something like 30 or 60 minutes. This ensures the DVR has finished the recording before MCEBuddy touches it.

If you specifically need a time-based (minutes) filter rather than a size-based one, this would currently require a Custom Command script to check the duration before processing, which is a bit more advanced.

How short are the recordings you’re trying to skip? Knowing the typical file size might make the Size Filter the easiest “set and forget” solution for you.