Filtering a specific voice - Is this possible?

skrev i meddelelsen news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Sometimes the commercials use a "compander" to make the commercial louder (and more annoying) - the compander changes the ratio between the RMS level of the sound and the peak level; the RMS moves closer to the peak so the volume appears louder. Generating a command on comparison of Peak-Peak measurements vs RMS is possible, IMO.

This is old, someone must have done such a design already.

But, why bother with all that?

What I would do is to get a digital recorder - one that removes commercials automatically is the best. That way "The Man" is not dragging you along by your nose so you can watch TeVe when you want, not when "they" want!

Here in the DK they tend to schedule the interesting stuff you want to watch too late for you to bother watching it* - I need 8-9 hours of sleep in order to not get depressed - so I have to get to bed before 22:00.

If you are up for some DIY-hacking then MythTV is good:

Voiceprint and aa audio&video delay; when the computer says it's him, cut the audio. Delay period depends on the percentage of errors acceptable and the processing power available.

On a sunny day (Sun, 25 Jan 2009 03:29:38 -0600) it happened snipped-for-privacy@invalid.com wrote in :

See newsgroup comp.speech.research And the answer is yes, but it is very complicated, so forget it.

When you've built one, sell them on TV...

And hire him.

Billy Mays: Come on, guys. Buy this product to get rid of this commercial...

Crazy idea: First "cut" use your sound level idea to pass loud sound to the second "cut"s which are formant filters (yes, the spelling is correct). Adjust the filters for max sensitivity to his voice spectrum and a majority decision from level detectors would be the mute signal. At least you might have fun building and testing it...

x-no-archive:

The word is "compressor" or "limiter" not compander. Mark

It's probably impossible, electronically. I'd recommend just doing what you're doing; I do that to about a half-dozen different commercials, and some program content.

But I don't have to reach very far for my remote, and I always know where it is.

Kinda like filtering spam - if the "Subject" line looks like spam, I preemptively delete it (if it's email) or just ignore it (on the NG.)

The best censor you have is your brain; I don't want a machine to do my thinking for me, thank you very much.

All remotes have an "offensive" button, abbreviated OFF. I had a friend who called it the Program Improvement Button.

Hope This Helps! Rich

Billy Mays! How funny. I'm glad to hear that I'm not alone in my hatred of this annoying sob. This guy has the most irritating voice I've ever heard. Why in the HELL do companies continue to use this clown? I can't hit my remote's mute button fast enough when I hear that puke start talking.

The guy who wins second place is Vince from the ShamWow commercials. Hmmmm...maybe we're watching too much teevee?

So, to answer your question : I'll bet it is possible to do what you want (that is, to recognize a particular voice rather than just knocking his teeth out). It would involve some pretty heavy duty signal processing. You may want to post this over in comp.dsp. Assuming that this is possible, the best technique would be to delay the entire video/audio feed, do the recognition during this delay, and then act on the dsp's results before the signal is allowed to reach your eyes and ears.

Thanks for the laugh.

Bob

he

he

=3D- Hide quoted text -

You should listen to the Billy Mays commercials just long enough to find out what he is selling so that you can avoid buying it. I have yet to find any BM-touted product that does what he says it will.

Now if he starts including warnings about 4-hour erection side- effects, I might be interested.