== Overly Verbose History ==

Sensible Cinema was preceded/inspired by EDL's of 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, 
http://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"),
such as 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.  Ffmpeg, mencoder were high quality video editing open source tools. 
Once I discovered all of these previously existing programs, I knew the right elements were ready for 
something like 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 snapshots (of specific locations where the digits are expected, based on windows position) 
and then tracks, using OCR of the on-screen (convert to timestamp), to monitor it for specific times relative 
to an EDL, 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 have the same effect by instructing a video player (VLC) to "play from second x to y"
ok "now play from z to q muted" etc. (so kind of a stop and go video player, kind of like controlling the remote for you).
It basically was implementing Edit Decision Lists (EDL's) using playlists and
VLC.  
I just passed VLC a playlist, it did all the work for me, without any necessary real-time tracking.  This seemed patent friendly,
so I went with this.  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 one could grab the several clean segments
off a movie file, and piece them together to create an edited clean version ( a la cleanflix ).  This also avoids 
realtime tracking, so I also included this ability.
The playlist option is disabled in later releases, as it was deemed too user-non-friendly, and because VLC timing
is "different" than standard DVD players, so I decided to just use standardized timing, though it worked fine
for VLC playbacks.
I replaced it with support for mplayer's EDL format, which works better, and has consistent timing, though is still a bit buggy.

You can see a full list of other features that have been published and demonstrated
in the accompanying file change_log_with_feature_list.txt.  Each feature mentioned works 
in some released version of sensible-cinema though some features have been removed in subsequent versions
(they're all available as rubygems).

Who knows what the future will hold...

[1] http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2005/06/make_your_own_phantom_edit_wit.html

== Related ==

The concepts I use aren't novel.  Some other previously existing related type examples:

Edited "airplane edit" style movies.
Commercial TV (ABC, NBC) show their own (edited) movies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_video_editing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edit_decision_list#Systems_supporting_EDL_playback.2C_not_just_EDL_cutting lists a lot of players that support EDL DVD playback in some form or another.
http://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" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091369/parentalguide) which you could use to translate into a sensible-cinema compatible list.
Normal DVD's versus "directors cut" versions of movies (one is at times preferable, content wise)
http://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
http://college.swankmp.com/insti/edited.asp prisoners apparently have access to a few "edited" versions of movies (not many though, but there are some listed there)
http://www.videoredo.com/en/index.htm lets you "cut out" offensive content (commercials et al) and burn DVD's from mpeg's/h264 streams
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto/articles/device_control.aspx Windows Media Encoder supports EDL's by timestamp
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/edl.html
http://www.amazon.com/Make-Edited-Movies-ebook/dp/B004EYT3BU
http://www.sharewareconnection.com/fast-compress-content-and-anti-profanity.htm replaces profanity in web pages with euphemized content.
http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2005/06/make_your_own_phantom_edit_wit.html (mplayer has had this ability for awhile, with no complaints).
http://clearplay.com a commercial "filtering" DVD player See the "motivation" section for a description.
  It does offer a few features that sensible cinema supports but disables by default, for patent reasons, 
  like automatic (user flexible) content decisions.
http://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).
http://forum.bsplayer.com/feature-requests-feedback-suggestions/7157-chapter-playlist-scene-cut-3.html
http://www.inmatrix.com zoom player's "scene cut editor"
http://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)
http://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.
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/191/tn_19151.html Adobe Director MX 2004 can "script" DVD playback.
DVD's themselves allow for "scripted" playback of certain content, allowing controls for jumping from location to location, switching audio/video tracks, etc.
http://code.google.com/p/movie-content-editor (player written in Python, controls VLC based on subtitles and user-input, using edit decision lists in realtime)
http://forums.gbpvr.com/showthread.php?10606-Automated-Cutting-and-Transcoding-Guide-Using-Mencoder/page45
http://www.imdb.com/swiki/special?ParentalGuideHelp (search for "scene description")
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Removing_Commercials
showanalyzer http://www.dragonglobal.biz/showanalyzer.html and comskip analyze videos to look for "segments to cut out" automatically (commercials, in this case, but the principle still applies) 
Old-school: using the remote control with the pause, mute, stop, fast forward, and play buttons, along with previous knowledge of "questionable" scene locations
The scissors and old VHS tapes (Clean Flicks' origin, if I remember correctly).  http://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.  Really any editor can do this.
http://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 built-in magnifier basically copies DVD's screen output if mouse is placed over playing DVD.
http://superuser.com/questions/85278/how-can-i-cut-scenes-out-of-a-dvd
http://blog.josephhall.com/2008/09/command-line-dvd-authoring-part-1.html
AviSynth can script dvd playback http://forum.doom9.org/archive/index.php/t-109558.html
ps3 media server has edl support: https://github.com/chocolateboy/PMS-EDL maybe would work with DVD's dunno
Anydvd HD's "magic file replacement" for DVD's/blu-ray's
RiffTrax allows for an audio "overlay" to a DVD playback, have their own player to coordinate the two.
dove.org worked with New Line Cinemas to release edited versions of a few films (the mask etc.) http://betterlogic.com/roger/2011/06/dove-edited-films/
Avatar DVD was released with an audio track that was "euphemized" of the profanity.