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YouTube confirms your pause screen is now fair game for ads
(www.theverge.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
.......how?
Video content never changes, but the order and content of ads do. Automated browser, record the video 2-3 times. Diff the frames and slice out the ones that don't match between runs.
I remember back in the day, there was programs that would identify ads and remove them off on air programs. I would imagine something like that would be possible. Although at that point, just skipping the "platform" altogether might be a better solution.
My guess: Youtube-dl derivative then an ffmpeg script to detect black frames that usually sandwich commercials on TV and delete the video inside those frames.