Auto mute for Hulu commercials

[Nate]

I don't know if anyone here uses Hulu, but I made a little utility:
http://www.mediafire.com/?bngimvlutcz
Just run "hulumute.jar" and then watch Hulu. It automatically mutes the system volume during commercials. It only works when Hulu is full screen though, since it works by watching the color of the pixels at the top of the screen. Source code included.

I know it isn't exactly Sage related, but I wanted to share the love and this is the best place I could think of.

[tw3]

Hey Nate this is a great utility, I've used it a lot. But it looks like Hulu has just updated their video player. So this tool no longer works. Do you have an update?

-Ted

[tw3]

Ok I was able to update the source code to match the ads in the new player.

http://www.mediafire.com/?otl4r3hwqpy5xh7

[MickeyM191]

Thanks to both Nate and tw3 for the effort on this. I stumbled upon this code after a quick Google search for a hulu automuter that works in Windows.

I've found though, that when the Hulu show is playing in full screen on a 16:9 ratio monitor (1280 x 720, in my case), the advertisement text is not in a black bar along the top but instead within the advertisement video itself. This would lead to certain lighter-colored advertisement backgrounds affecting the color of the points sampled by this program. I did some logging/debugging and altered the source code to check instead for one matching color within an array of 8 different colors. It's not perfect, the rare ad will still slip through, but it catches the ads much more consistently than before.

I figured I would share this with those affected and made an account for these forums just for this purpose. Here's the link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vdnilv8f0a5b4gz/HuluMute.zip

I'll post any future updates here as well.

[MickeyM191]

I've finished another update that creates a black frame to cover up the visuals of the advertisement (without covering up the area that is checked, of course). So now that the ads are automatically muted and covered up, you would never know they were there. Of course the content provider still gets revenue from ads being played, and the ad breaks are much shorter than with any alternative ad blocking options (For example: AdBlock Plus blocks the content from loading, but Hulu's default "blank" ads are muuuuuch longer than regular ad breaks.)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/acr2g8oq6v...luMute_0.2.zip

This is tested working on a Win 7 Ultimate x64 PC, running Hulu from Firefox 17. There may be issues for others with UAC, as I have my PC set to never prompt, but if needed just run the .jar as an administrator.

The included utility, saved as keepfullscreen.exe, and the Flashhook Module.dll that goes with it is from here, and is used to prevent Hulu's flash player from exiting fullscreen mode when another event occurs.

Try it and let me know how it works for you.

[wbarber69]

could you make this work with win8 hulu metro app?

[MickeyM191]

For anyone that's interested, I will have future updates and other information available at hulumute.wordpress.com

Originally Posted by wbarber69

could you make this work with win8 hulu metro app?

I don't currently own a Windows 8 PC, nor do I have any experience as of yet with that operating system. Does the program not work when watching videos in fullscreen after navigating to Hulu with any internet browser?

[wbarber69]

it works with the in browser player but not the metro app.

[Naylia]

Need to get this working as a plugin! Would be awesome on the hardware clients.