Sensible-cinema [5] allows you to apply pre-programmed delete lists (e.g. Edit Decision Lists [2]) to DVD’s you own.

I.e. you can 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.

It is currently in beta, though will always be free software, even after release. It also includes a library of EDL’s that go along with various DVD’s, we need volunteers to help it to grow!

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

Note: please install from the zip files at rogerdpack.t28.net/sensible-cinema and not from gitub’s “downloads” button. See the “install” section.

It basically allows you to create an edited video version of the DVD, onto your hard drive, and you can watch it there.

How? Sensible cinema basically takes the original DVD, slices out the bad parts, then combines it back into a new file and gives you the result. It is basically a linear editor [1] that applies Edit Decision Lists [2] to videos. It wraps a few freely available open source programs [3] to accomplish the editing for you. It also has a few “realtime viewing” options available, again based on open source software [3].

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

Also note that just because an edited video lacks profanity…does not immediately make it an inspiring experience. I’d suggest carefully evaluating your real values, 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 and common sense media are good references for discovering the “uplifting” level of movies [4]. kids-in-mind.com is also a good reference for profanity levels, though sometimes it misses profanities, and it also lacks timestamps to know when the profanities occur. Hence this project. Also note that even if you happen to 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.

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”

5

Also known to us as “paranoid cinema” (our inside joke :).

Installation ==

Installation instructions available here: rogerdpack.t28.net/sensible-cinema NB that you want to download from there only, not from github, and the file you want to get is called “latest-sensible-cinema.zip”

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

See the accompanied how_to_create_your_own_delete_lists.txt file.

Creating an edited DVD ==

See also is_it_legal_to_copy_dvds.txt for some caveats you should understand. I don’t actually know how I’ve never burned a DVD. Windows DVD Maker might help, www.dvdflick.net might help. iDVD might help on mac. DO NOT MAKE ILLEGAL COPIES OF DVD’s. See is_it_legal_to_copy_dvds.txt.

FAQ ==

1. How do I watch these on my TV, not just on my computer?

2. You also might be able to move a laptop over to near your TV and hook it in from your laptop.

Or buy a very long monitor cord and plug it in from your desktop/laptop.
You could also buy a projector, attach it to your laptop, and then use that to watch it.
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 desired, as the existing one costs money).
If you're really ambitious and bleeding edge you could even try VGA over an Ethernet cable, too: 
http://ps3mediaserver.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5731#p34279
You may be able to create your own edited DVD, see section "Creating an edited DVD"
You may be able to come up with some real-time player editor, too, see section "related works" et al

1. I want to give an edited DVD to a friend, how do I do that well?

2. Give them the original unedited DVD and a link to sensible-cinema’s website.

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 create it yourself, or employ somebody to create it. Make sure to submit it back to us when you’re done, so that the rest of the users can benefit from it. Fortunately just one person has to do it, once, for everybody to benefit, and the editing process is not too bad.

We also have a subtitle parser which really helps locate profanity more conveniently, so that will help you build your delete list.

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

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 producers put in certain scenes (read: sex scenes) just to get a desired rating. I don’t want those scenes, but still want to be able to enjoy said movies :)

I once tried Clearplay (a “filter”ed DVD player) but (for me) it didn’t cut it. It costs money monthly (I’m too cheap to pay–and many many other people don’t use it because of this…). Their filters sometimes don’t cut out all unwanted content (ex: Saints and Soldiers left profanity in…which wasn’t what I had expected), so if they differ in standards somewhat, you’re out of luck.

Others have noted that sometimes their edit timings (or perhaps DVD players) are slightly mismatched so that it will end up muting sections just previous to profanity, while not muting the profanity itself, or so I’ve heard. Clearplay apparently also runs a rather confusing subscription policy, so I’m told [1], as well as selling DVD players that are a bit lackluster at times [2]. Their DVD players aren’t quite as readily accessible (read: can’t buy at walmart anymore), nor as cheap to buy as some out there. Clearplay also has little community collaboration/review (though you can email them feedback I suppose). 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.) If there isn’t one, you basically have to request one and then hope they get around to it. They might never get around to it, or it might take a bit longer than you’d hope. Also, some people watch movies only on computer, and they no longer seem to offer a computer player, just hardware DVD players. They also don’t edit streamed online movies either (last time I checked, anyway), nor offer a blu-ray player.

I also emailed them once (2003?) to inform them I’d be making an open source equivalent, and haven’t heard back, which I assume to mean implicitly they’re all for it (in reality this project is more like in-home cleanflicks than clearplay, anyway) Also clearplay isn’t quite flexible enough, editing out only profanity/sex/violence et al (and based only on their own criteria). Some users may want to, for example, skip the intro to specific movies (like older movies with long songs and no content during the intro) because…it’s deemed boring. Or skip commercials in some recording. Or use it on their home dvd’s. Clearplay does not allow for that.

Also clearplay doesn’t seem to users for example leave comments on their filters, to improve them, etc.

So overall I wanted to build my own that overcame some of these hurdles, hopefully.

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

See also the “Overly Verbose History” section.

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."

Overly Verbose History ==

It was preceded/inspired by EDL’s in editors in the 90’s, cleanflicks (both analog and digital incantations late 90’s), then mplayer began to support EDL, zoomplayer added a scene-cut editor, code.google.com/p/movie-content-editor came along, and also many other editors have historically supported EDL for content creation and/or playback (see wikipedia’s “edit decision list”), and also mythtv/XBMC’s EDL support (as suggested by the phantom edit [1], oreillynet.com), VLC also added playlists with optional start and stop positions per entry. I knew the right elements were ready for sensible cinema.

See also the “related” section, and “motivation” section.

Originally the project started as a prototype to “watch hulu (online) and netflix instant movies edited” (it uses/used screen snap-shotting (of specific locations where the digits are, based on windows position) and then tracks, using OCR of the on-screen timestamp of the player, to monitor it for specific times, and react appropriately. However, this functionality, though working and available, is disabled currently for potential patent issues. Some older released versions had it enabled, but not the later releases. Then I realized I could basically create the same effect using the (possibly more patent friendly) pre-processing style, like cutting out bad scenes, like cleanflix did. It basically was implementing Edit Decision Lists (EDL’s) using playlists and VLC. I.e. play from second x to y, now play then from z to second mu, muted, now from q to r, etc. I just passed VLC a playlist, it did all the work for me, without any necessary real-time tracking. There are a few released versions with this feature enabled. They avoid real-time tracking by specifying “play from here to here” not “skip from here to here” as some other editing players do. Then it occurred to me that you could grab the several clean segments off a DVD, and piece them together to create an edited version. This also avoids realtime tracking, so I included that ability. The playlist option is disabled in later releases, as it was deemed too user-non-friendly, because VLC timing is “different” than standard DVD players, so I decided to just use standardized timing, though it worked fine for VLC playbacks. Many releases had built-in support for mplayer’s EDL format, but I took it out to concentrate on the cleanflicks side of things.

You can see a full list of other features that have been published and demonstrated in the accompanying change_log_with_feature_list.txt. Each feature works in some released version of sensible-cinema though some features have been removed in later versions.

1

www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2005/06/make_your_own_phantom_edit_wit.html

Related ==

The concepts aren’t 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.videoredo.com/en/index.htm lets you “cut out” offensive content (commercials et al) and burn DVD’s from mpeg’s/h264 streams 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 supporter–also contains links to some other editors’ support for EDL’s) 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 (was a helper kit for cutting VHS tape) 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. Microsoft’s magnified basically copies DVD’s screen output if mouse is placed over playing 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 ZoomPlayer MAX’s scene cut editor Anydvd HD’s “magic file replacement” for DVD’s/blu-ray’s RiffTrax

License ==

See the included LICENSE.TXT file for licensing and usage terms (basically it’s released under gplv3). Some other programs are (distributed separately and) used, if present. These are typically released under their own copy of the gplv2 license.

All files are © 2010 Roger Pack EDL files themselves are released under the Creative Commons License.

Troubleshooting ==

If you run into some snag, it possibly could 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 the 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! “DVDNAV stream read error!”

this typically means a dirty or scratched DVD.

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

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

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 audio.  Not to fear, just download the "ffdshow tryouts" (google for it)
  and, when it gives you the option, be sure to check "mpeg2 video" and then
  it should "just work."  You could also optionally just play the file in VLC Media Player or smplayer
  (there's a button for that).  Installing "AC3Filter" may help if you have no audio.

If the picture is too grainy/pixelated or the process is too slow, let me know and I’ll work on making it better. No really, I have some ideas, but want to know if there’s need first.

Thanks ==

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

The combination of these tools made programming this actually something of a pleasure, and a breeze cross platform.

Feedback/Development ==

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

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 / github.com/rdp/sensible-cinema

If you want to donate something, please consider donating to a charity of your choice. No really. Do it for this!

Competition/use of files ==

Note that competition/use of files from sensible cinema is welcome!

In fact, the current end goal is to publish the delete lists (EDL’s) as a separate repository, under the creative commons license, meaning that even for profit users can use them for whatever other use they want, hopefully good uses :)