File: README — Documentation for sensible-cinema (0.21.3)

Sensible-cinema (also known to us as “paranoid cinema” [our own inside joke ha ha]) allows you to apply pre-programmed delete lists (e.g. Edit Decision Lists [2]) to DVD’s you already own.

I.e. you can play or edit a DVD to “mute out” or skip certain scenes.

This allows you to sit back and relax as you watch a more “sensiblized” showing of your DVD.

To use it, basically install it, insert an original DVD that you want to see edited, then run sensible cinema. It will pop up some windows where you choose what to do.

You can either watch it edited, or created an edited version of the DVD, on your hard drive. You could also burn that edited file to a new DVD, if you desire and have a DVD burner on your computer.

How? Sensible is essentially a linear editor [1] that applies Edit Decision Lists [2] to videos, by wrapping a few freely available open source programs [3] to accomplish the editing for you.

Note that the whole process can at times take hours, so budget some time for it.

Also note that just because a video lacks profanity…does not immediately make it an inspiring experience. I’d suggest carefully evaluating your motives, and going with those. Sensible cinema does not a clean movie make of a dirty one. Don’t watch it if it’s not wholesome! Be nice to yourself! dove.org is a good reference for discovering the “uplifting” level of movies [4]. And of course sensible cinema does help a little bit with that, too. Also note that even if you have an edited copy of a DVD floating around, if you have kids, chances are they will eventually find (and watch) the unedited originals, so be careful there, and do what is needful.

Enjoy your movies!

1: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_video_editing
2: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edit_decision_list
3: mostly GPL programs, see www.gnu.org/licenses/ VLC Media Player, Mplayer/mencoder, ffmpeg, et al.
4: lds.org/library/display/0,4945,161-1-11-1,00.html search for the word “wholesome”

Installation ==

Instructions available here: rogerdpack.t28.net/sensible-cinema/

Creating Your Own Delete Lists, or modifying the previously existing ones ==

See the accompanied how_to_create.txt file.

FAQ ==

How do I watch these on my TV, not just on my computer?
You could burn a new DVD with it. First create it on your hard drive. Then use some burning utility.

Dvd Flick is a good one for windows.  There's a screencast of using it within: http://rogerdpack.t28.net/sensible-cinema
DeVeDe almost might work for windows users: http://www.majorsilence.com/devede though it looks less user friendly.
For OS X : iDVD might work well.
You might be able to move your laptop over to near your TV and hook it in from there.  
Or buy a very long cord and plug it in as an extra monitor from your desktop.
You could buy a projector, attach it to your computer as a display, and then use that to display the video.
If you're interested in also being able to "beam" it from your computer to your game console (ex: PS3) ping me--I might have 
something in mind that could help, though hasn't been created yet.  (Playon.tv does something like this, too, but
I might come up with a competitor to it if the same is desired).
If you're really good you could try VGA over an Ethernet cable, too: http://ps3mediaserver.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5731#p34279

I want to give an edited DVD to a friend, how do I do that?
Probably give them the original DVD and email them a link to download and play it using sensible-cinema :) You may want to loan them a DVD burner if they don’t have one and want one, too.

Caveats ==

NB that “someone” has to first create a delete list, per DVD. If one doesn’t yet exist for the DVD you want edited, you could employ somebody to create it, or create it yourself. Make sure to submit it back to us when you’re done, so that everyone can benefit from it. Fortunately only one person has to do it, once, for everybody to benefit, and the editing process is fairly easy.

Also note that if your DVD has scratches that cause it to skip, the time signatures will be off, so clean your discs!

Motivation ==

The initial motivation for the project was that I dislike deity profanity in movies. And really any profanity is jarring, if you’re not used to it in real life, and can put you a bit on edge when you watch a movie.

Also sometimes only certain scenes (read sex scenes) in movies are offensive to me, and don’t contribute to the overall plot, and I’d rather not watch a movie that has them.

But I still want to be able to watch movies at all :)

I tried Clearplay (a realtime filtering DVD player) but (for me) it didn’t seem to cut it. It costs money monthly (I’m too cheap to pay–and many many other people don’t use it because of that…). Their filters sometimes don’t cut out all unwanted content (ex: Saints and Soldiers left profanity in…which wasn’t what I had expected). Others have noted that sometimes their edit timings (or perhaps DVD players) are slightly mismatched so that it will mute sections just previous to profanity, while not muting the profanity itself. Clearplay apparently also runs a rather confusing subscription policy, I’m told [1], as well as selling DVD players that seem to be a bit lackluster at times [2]. Clearplay also has little community collaboration/review (though you can email them feedback). They no longer seem to have a “request a filter” option, though they used to. They also don’t have filters for all movies that I, at times, would like to watch edited (Condorman and Tron lacking last time I checked…probably because they are too obscure.) Also, some people watch movies only on computer, and they no longer have a computer player, only DVD players. They also don’t edit streamed online movies either (last time I checked, anyway). So overall I wanted to build my own that overcame some of these hurdles and was also more accessible/open/cheap. I also emailed them once (2003?) to inform them I’d be making an open source equivalent, and haven’t heard back from them, which I assume to mean implicitly they’re all for the idea :)

I also wanted to get a prototype out there of some of my ideas so that others can’t patent them and pretend that they were first inventors :)

So originally the project started off as a prototype that could “watch hulu (online) and netflix instant movies edited” (it uses/used screen snap-shotting and track, using OCR, the on-screen timestamp of the player, monitor it for specific times, and react appropriately). However, this functionality, though working, is disabled currently for patent concerns.

Some older released versions had it enabled, but not latest releases. Then I realized I could basically create the same effect using (more patent friendly) pre-processing and/or deletion lists (basically Edit Decision Lists enforced using playlists for VLC, like play from second x to y, then from x to mu, etc.). I just pass in a playlist, it does all the work for me, without real-time tracking. There are a few released versions that did this. Then it occurred to me that you could grab the several clean segments off a DVD, and piece them together to create an edited copy. This avoids realtime tracking. This seems reasonably patent friendly, so it is what I release here. I also added mplayer functionality later, which does real-time tracking, as well. The playlist option is currently disabled, as it was deemed too user-non-friendly.

See also the LICENSE.TXT file for more legal information.

1: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002YPRW7S/ref=cm_rdp_product

"...I agree that it is not made clear on their website that if you don't continue your membership, you can't continue 
 to use the [previously downloaded] filters"

2: deseretbook.com/ClearPlay-HDMI-DVD-Player-30-Day-Trial-Membership/i/5038491

"We bought a clearplay player about 2 years ago. It worked great, until it just stopped working. I called their support line, 
 and they told us the model we got was defective, and that the new one was much better and we could get it at a discount, but 
 the next one just died also."

License ==

See the included LICENSE.TXT file for licensing and usage terms (basically it’s under gplv3 for all the source). Some other programs are (distributed separately and) used by this one, typically they are under the gplv2 license.

The concept isn’t too novel. Some other previously existing related type examples:

Edited “airplane edit” style movies. Commercial TV (ABC, NBC) show their own (edited) movies. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_video_editing imdb.com tends to have reasonably good lists of what occurs in movies (find a movie, click on “parent’s guide” on the left). Sometimes it even lists the time signatures for events (ex: “Labyrinth” www.imdb.com/title/tt0091369/parentalguide) which you could use to translate into a sensible-cinema compatible list. Normal movies versus “directors cut” versions of movies (one is at times preferable, profanity wise) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edit_decision_list (it’s a linear editing tool, after all–so see the vast list of those) Clean Flicks (used to) sell edited movies www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/edl.html www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2005/06/make_your_own_phantom_edit_wit.html (mplayer has had this ability for awhile, with no complaints). clearplay.com a commercial editing player (tracks DVD’s while they play–closed source, costs money, no user contribution possible), and only for DVD’s.

It does offer a few features that sensible cinema disables, for patent reasons, like automatic (user flexible) content decisions.  Ours are manual.
Theirs is also a DVD "instant" player, which this is not, except on computer, though you must use theirs, etc (see motivation section, above).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RiffTrax has an interesting idea of “overlaying” audio over the original video, and synchronizing between the two (their re-player does, anyway). forum.bsplayer.com/feature-requests-feedback-suggestions/7157-chapter-playlist-scene-cut-3.html www.inmatrix.com “scene cut editor” of the zoom player wiki.xbmc.org/?title=EDL_(commercial_skipping)_and_SceneMarker_support (XBMC’s scene cut support–also contains links to some other editors) dvdshrink.info “Re-author” mode: to make “movie-only” backups, compilations, combine “flippers”,.… DvdShrink has the ability to “crop or cut parts of a title” etc. The VCR with its record button, coupled with the stop+rewind button. code.google.com/p/movie-content-editor (written in Python, controls VLC based on captions and edit decision lists, in realtime) forums.gbpvr.com/showthread.php?10606-Automated-Cutting-and-Transcoding-Guide-Using-Mencoder/page45 www.imdb.com/swiki/special?ParentalGuideHelp (search for “scene description”) www.mythtv.org/wiki/Removing_Commercials Using the remote control with the pause, mute, stop, fast forward, and play buttons, along with previous knowledge of scene locations The scissors and old VHS tapes (Clean Flicks’ origin, if I remember correctly). www.familysafemedia.com/home_movie_editor.html Windows Movie Maker. Allows for users to cut and copy scenes of movies to their heart’s content. forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=56998 VLC Media Player using EDL’s via playlists Corel WinDVD has “Quick Clip” settings for capturing from DVD. superuser.com/questions/85278/how-can-i-cut-scenes-out-of-a-dvd blog.josephhall.com/2008/09/command-line-dvd-authoring-part-1.html

Troubleshooting ==

Note that you’ll need java previously installed for this to work. You probably already do though. If you run into a snag, it might have failed in “grabbing” the DVD, and only got part of it. Try cleaning your DVD and starting over (delete all files, start again). Baking soda toothpaste might help with cleaning it. If it still errs, report it, along with a screen snapshot and steps of how to reproduce the problem, preferably. See feedback section.

It can fail also because a deletion is past end of DVD, or Also note that if your DVD has scratches that cause it to skip, the time signatures will be off after that point, so clean your discs and try again!

Also make sure you aren’t out of disk space.

Also you could try a different computer (desktop computers’ DVD drives seem to work better at times than laptops’)

Also (for power users) make sure your version of ffmpeg is relatively new, as older versions (r19313) is known to crop wrong. If you don’t know what this means then you’re probably ok and don’t have to worry about it.

“DVDNAV stream read error!”

this typically means a dirty or scratched DVD.

You try to play back a sensible cinema-ized video file and it plays back without

audio or video (example: windows media player)?

This probably means you're using windows media player, and don't have "codecs" installed
  to handle this type of video.  Not to fear, just download the "ffdshow tryouts"
  and, when it gives you the option, be sure to check "mpeg2 video" and then
  it should "just work."  You could also play the file in VLC Media Player or smplayer
  (there's a button for that).

Thanks ==

Thanks to Jarmo for the win32-screenshot gem, mini_magick gem authors, jruby guys, etc.

The combination of these tools made programming this actually something of a pleasure.

Feedback/Development ==

Feedback, including feature requests, comments, etc. welcome:

(for example it’s windows only currently–if you want that changed, send an email, etc.):

Mailing List: groups.google.com/group/sensible-cinema

If you’re a developer and want to help out with programmming or look and feel, etc., please do! See development.txt

You can see a full list of features from the various releases in the file ChangeLog.txt