PowerDirector won't auto detect the commercials for you. Cyberlink used to have software that did this, but I don't think it ever made it into PowerDirector.

Yes, Multi Trim is exactly the tool you should use. Allows you to trim the videos precisely, you can cut out all the commercials in one go. You could also do it right in the timeline using the Split button.

https://help.cyberlink.com/stat/help/powerdirector/17/enu/index.html?08_02_00_splitting_a_clip.htm

Ash

Quote PowerDirector won't auto detect the commercials for you.

That's not quite accurate. Right click on your recording in the Media Library and choose Detect Scenes...



It will take some time, but you'll end up with all of the scenes blocked off on the right, and you can add or remove the markers as needed:



When you click OK, you'll see your video split into individual clips in a special folder in the Media Library. You can delete them or drag them onto the main timeline as you see fit.

Right, that might work too! Thanks Optodata! Though I believe is makes cuts based on change of shot or location? I've never tested it on a TV show to see what it might do.

I was referring to the old commercial cut that was available in PowerCinema and some other their software.

Ash

Thanks for the suggestions, I tried "Scene Detection" - it does not separate out (or mark) the ads in the video.

I don't know on what basis it's creating the separate scenes, even the actual content sections (without any ads) are split into small "scenes" which I don't want, because then I have to piece together many, many small content scenes. I'm guessing it'll also split the ads into separate "scenes" & then I'll have to remove multiple "ad scenes" !

According to the Help page on Scene Detection - "The scene detection function automatically creates individual clips based on the individual scenes (or pre-edited shots) contained within a video clip." I don't know how it determines "individual scenes" & "pre-edited shots".

So it seems there's no automatic way to remove/mark the commercial ad sections - other than - using Multi-Trim, which is what I'm currently doing by manually scanning thru the video & setting the In/Out markers for the ads & the content.

Scene Detection works by detecting how different each frame is from the one before, and in some situations it'll work exactly as expected if you're looking to remove ads. However, if there are lots of scene changes in the main content, it will also mark those.

You can try reducing the sensitivity by clicking on Stop and moving the slider to the left. You can also lower the Sensitivity once the detection has completed if there are too many scenes, and the detection will run again.



YouTube/optodata

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OptoData -
Thank you for the suggestions.

In my case, the scenes in the normal content (& the ads) will be very different at some point (from 1 frame to next), for e.g.,
-- in the content, when the context or background shot of the story changes, &,
-- in the ads when the ads change
Each of the above will produce different scenes.

So even if I reduce scene detection sensitivity & assuming that all the ads are clearly separated out from the content into separate "ad" scenes, I will have scenes that will have
(a) different story context scenes (each scene w/ similar frames & background shots & no ads), and,
(b) different ads scenes (different frames & background shots) w/ no story content.

So I'll have to do a lot of weaving together of content scenes (that don't have ads). This is going to be too time consuming, it's much faster for me right now to just scan (fast fwd, etc.) thru the video, see the ads, mark their begin/end in multi-trim & then just click on "Produce" to produce the final video.

I appreciate your suggestions, maybe scene detection will come in handy when I want to separate out story lines, or, scenes w/ similar frames, I'll try this out later. For now, I'm going to stick to multi-trim - easy & not too time consuming.