Share your comskip tunings?

[Grasshopper]

I finally managed to get Sage Job Queue running and configured to trigger Comskip processing jobs. The next step is to tune Comskip to find commercials accurately, before SJQ runs hundreds of jobs. So I began this trial-and-error process, and then it occurred to me: There must be hundreds of experienced comskip users right here on this forum. Surely some of them have spent hours upon hours tuning their commercial processing, and surely some of them would be willing to share the resulting .ini files?

For whatever it's worth, I'm in the US, and watch basic cable, SD and HD. Thanks so much if you're willing to share your well-tuned .ini, you'll be saving me (and others) a ton of time.

[Fluffdaddy]

All you uber tweakers, yes please share

thanks

[freedml]

The stock settings work well for me...

[ElGato]

They used to work well for me, but seem to have gotten worse over time, not sure if this is version specific or not.

Anyone care to comment if certain versions perform better than others? Afraid I didn't take not of the version I started with, but on the latest now.

[Skirge01]

I've only been using comskip for a couple of weeks now, but it seems to work quite well. I recall making one setting change to 150, based on the instructions. I think it was related to volume, but can't remember at the moment. Other than that, I'm using stock settings.

That said, I've found that it may cut off a few seconds of the show prior to the skip and it tends to come back a couple of seconds early sometimes. I have also noticed several commercial breaks that completely get missed. Also have seen it believe a commercial is the show, plays through that one commercial, then skips the rest of the commercials and comes back to the show.

All that said, it doesn't happen all that often and overall I'm quite happy with the results. If someone has some tips or tweaks to address the above things, I'm certainly open to hearing them.

[freedml]

If you set 'padding' to 1 or more then it will not cut off, but I find it more annoying than the occasional cut off. If I could set it to 0.5 I probably would. If a cut off is annoying, I just press the 'left arrow' and it plays the cut off part. Then 'right arrow' to continue.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by freedml

If you set 'padding' to 1 or more then it will not cut off, but I find it more annoying than the occasional cut off. If I could set it to 0.5 I probably would. If a cut off is annoying, I just press the 'left arrow' and it plays the cut off part. Then 'right arrow' to continue.

That's good to know. I'll give that a shot and see how it works. You're probably right that 0.5 would be ideal.

As for that "left arrow" press, that doesn't work for me when it's just before the commercial break, since when I jump back, it's too far and then it jumps to the end of the skip! My only option is to bring up the menu, turn off auto comskip, watch the 2 seconds, bring up the menu again, and turn comskip back on. Kinda annoying. I've actually thought about mapping a single button to turning comskip on and off as a result of this--admittedly very minor--issue.

[Wirenut]

I got a question... in the comskip.ini file....

Does anybody use these settings anymore?

sage_framenumber_bug=0
sage_minute_bug=0

Or should we use them?

I set them to 1 and it works well for SD... but can be a little hit and missy for HD [mpeg2] files.

Wirenut

[freedml]

Sounds like you're using one of the 'rewind' buttons, not a 'left arrow' navigation button. 'left arrow' turns comskip off (blue bars) and moves playback to the beginning of the detected commercial break.

[QueOnda]

Mine runs great stock. There are sometimes are promblematic for some channel/shows. The only change I made was the livetv=1, so it can comskip'n a live file.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by freedml

Sounds like you're using one of the 'rewind' buttons, not a 'left arrow' navigation button. 'left arrow' turns comskip off (blue bars) and moves playback to the beginning of the detected commercial break.

Oh man, you're right! I didn't realize the left arrow did anything while watching TV. Does right arrow turn it back on and/or jump to the end of that particular skip? I'll need to check out the rest of the options I didn't even realize existed until now. Thanks for the enlightenment!

[erik]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

I've only been using comskip for a couple of weeks now, but it seems to work quite well. I recall making one setting change to 150, based on the instructions. I think it was related to volume, but can't remember at the moment. Other than that, I'm using stock settings.

Set
volume_slip=150
to improve h.264 results.
If you do not use h.264 then don't change this setting

[lazysean]

That said, I've found that it may cut off a few seconds of the show prior to the skip and it tends to come back a couple of seconds early sometimes.

This happens on mine all the time. I eventually gave up my attempts to tweak comskip any further because I found that I just didn't understand the decisions it was making, and all the changes I tried just seemed to make it even less reliable. For instance, this continued to happen even when all my settings made black frames, silence and aspect ratio changes to be the only scene change markers. When that's the case, why on earth would it ever jump back to a show a few seconds before or after the end of a commercial break? Or is comskip accurate and SageTVPlayer can't correctly skip to the right frame?

Either way, I've basically just accepted now that it's better than having no commercial skip feature at all, and I just live with it. If someone knows how to make it work right, though, I'd be thrilled.

[freedml]

Did you try padding=1?

[rlrl]

i hate that it does a comskip right at the end of a show just as next week's previews are going to be shown. i wrote a script to post process the comskip files to remove the last line so it doesn't skip at the end of a program.

[Peter_h]

Originally Posted by rlrl

i hate that it does a comskip right at the end of a show just as next week's previews are going to be shown. i wrote a script to post process the comskip files to remove the last line so it doesn't skip at the end of a program.

The latest version added the ability to skip a set interval for the beginning and end of a recording. I set mine to not process the last 3 minutes, works perfectly.

[Wirenut]

Originally Posted by Wirenut

I got a question... in the comskip.ini file....

Does anybody use these settings anymore?

sage_framenumber_bug=0
sage_minute_bug=0

Or should we use them?

I set them to 1 and it works well for SD... but can be a little hit and missy for HD [mpeg2] files.

Wirenut

So Anybody notice these settings in the ini file?

[lazysean]

Originally Posted by freedml

Did you try padding=1?

I tried it both ways. Either way, it works correctly on some shows and not others. I have been unable to detect any real pattern.

Does anybody use these settings anymore?

sage_framenumber_bug=0
sage_minute_bug=0

I've noticed them and tried to use them, but have never found any documentation that says what they do or whether they're still relevant. I think I have them set to 1, and I do watch mostly SD so maybe that's why it seemed to help on my system.

[freedml]

If it's important enough, I think using DirMon2 you could run Comskip with different settings files on specific shows.

[Wirenut]

Yeah. I did some experimentation this am and have found that the settings make no difference on the determined cuts.

Probably deprecated parameters from old versions.