Comskip in Sage V4

[mightyt]

Thanks a lot Blade ... I will check it out tonight !!!

Farmboy03 ... Don't sweat it ... you takre care of that cold and get some R&R ... ZZZzzzz .... Cough .... ZZZzzz ...

Thanks!!! , T.

[farmboy03]

Here are my DirMon setup screens:





I was using Sage version 2.28 and installed Version 4 over that. I created a copy of the SageTV3.STV file before I started customizing it.

Please let me know if I can be of any more assistance.

[White94Cobra]

Here's a quick tip. I hope it helps somebody.

I had all but given up on getting comskip to work acceptably. It always seemed to jump 1 to 10 seconds too early. This made it more of a nuisance than a solution. I recently decided to give it a try again, and mapped the manual comskip forward and back (custom 4 and 5) to the left and right buttons on my remote and disabled automatic skip. I use Girder, so now when I hit left or right, it sends both the left or right command, and the custom 4 or 5 command. Since custom 4 and 5 (currently) do nothing in the menus, it has no impact while navigating Sage. Also, since left or right do nothing while watching a show, there are no side effects when watching a show. When a commercial starts, I just hit the right nav button on my remote and about 95% of the time, it is within 1 second of the show starting again. The other 5% of the time, it is within 10 seconds. It also makes skipping through a show very fast.

This single feature has significantly improved the WAF... She no longer groans when we watch something on Sage instead of Tivo.

[JasonJoel]

Don't know if this applies to you, but if you are using the COMKIP import, I have ALWAYS had an issue with it skipping the commercials wrong.

In my case, COMSKIP detects the commercials correctly (as seen in Video ReDo), but that stupid import doesn't seem to do the time math correctly, and skips wrong.

However, if I use Malore's STV outright (not just the imports for the V4 STV), it skips perfectly.

Something to think about.

Jason

Originally Posted by White94Cobra

Here's a quick tip. I hope it helps somebody.

I had all but given up on getting comskip to work acceptably. It always seemed to jump 1 to 10 seconds too early. This made it more of a nuisance than a solution. I recently decided to give it a try again, and mapped the manual comskip forward and back (custom 4 and 5) to the left and right buttons on my remote and disabled automatic skip. I use Girder, so now when I hit left or right, it sends both the left or right command, and the custom 4 or 5 command. Since custom 4 and 5 (currently) do nothing in the menus, it has no impact while navigating Sage. Also, since left or right do nothing while watching a show, there are no side effects when watching a show. When a commercial starts, I just hit the right nav button on my remote and about 95% of the time, it is within 1 second of the show starting again. The other 5% of the time, it is within 10 seconds. It also makes skipping through a show very fast.

This single feature has significantly improved the WAF... She no longer groans when we watch something on Sage instead of Tivo.

[ToxMox]

Originally Posted by JasonJoel

Don't know if this applies to you, but if you are using the COMKIP import, I have ALWAYS had an issue with it skipping the commercials wrong.

In my case, COMSKIP detects the commercials correctly (as seen in Video ReDo), but that stupid import doesn't seem to do the time math correctly, and skips wrong.

However, if I use Malore's STV outright (not just the imports for the V4 STV), it skips perfectly.

Something to think about.

Jason

Check that your comskip settings in the STV are set to NTSC and not PAL under Detailed Setup - Customize - ComSkip Playback Options.

[JasonJoel]

Thought I did, but I'll try it again sometime soon.

Jason

Originally Posted by ToxMox

Check that your comskip settings in the STV are set to NTSC and not PAL under Detailed Setup - Customize - ComSkip Playback Options.

[AJ Bertelson]

Is there a vdub pluggin that can utilize comskip or do we have to use video redo?

[mightyt]

AWESOME!! Took a swipe at ComSkip without really reading a lot of docs ...

Just followed farmboy03's post and screenshots ...

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...58&postcount=5

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...3&postcount=22

And Wa-La!

I now have Auto ComSkipping !!! Even my wife was impressed ... Saying, "now we really don't have a potty break." So, I reminded her of the pause button!

Anyway, I have a quick question ...

It appears that I set my Sage Recordings Folder in DirMon, and
ShowAnalyzer scans them in those folders for commercials, and
It creates .txt files with the commercial info, and
Nielm's Plugin uses the text files to skip commercials.

After getting it all installed and configured I figured out to click the Start Processing button in DirMon to scan all of the files in my Sage Recordings Folder. It then processed all the files until complete. BTW, Just to test performance out I started recording 2 shows while ComSkip was running and my CPU Utilization hung between 60-70%. Not sure if that is good or not??

Anyway, finally the question ... Will ComSkip automatically scan shows as they record or do I have to manually kick it off all the time?? If it automatically scans, when does it do so?? Overnight? When shows are or are not recording and being played back? While sleeping? Or just after each show records?

Thanks, T.

[Jere_Jones]

Originally Posted by mightyt

Anyway, finally the question ... Will ComSkip automatically scan shows as they record or do I have to manually kick it off all the time?? If it automatically scans, when does it do so?? Overnight? When shows are or are not recording and being played back? While sleeping? Or just after each show records?

If you use DirMon then ComSkip (or SA ) will run automatically. Your other questions will depend on how DirMon is set up as all of them are configurable inside of DirMon.

Jere

[mightyt]

Originally Posted by Jere_Jones

If you use DirMon then ComSkip (or SA ) will run automatically. Your other questions will depend on how DirMon is set up as all of them are configurable inside of DirMon.

Jere

Thanks ... Got it! Not sure how I could have missed that in DirMon!!

'Nother question ... I notice that TXT and XML files in with my MPEGS folder ... How do these get cleaned up??

Reason I ask is I manually recorded "Maid in Manhatten" last night ... this morning my Sage Server was locked up with the ifinite spinning Sage logo ... I had to hard reset the box and when it came up, the MPEG was gone and the recording didn't show up in Sage, but the TXT file was there????

So, I just deleted it (The TXT file) ... But how will this TXT file thing not get out of control?

OH ... I also noticed that DirMon does not automatically launch with Windows ... I suppose I should put it in the Starup Folder, correct?

Thanks again, T.

[Jere_Jones]

Originally Posted by mightyt

'Nother question ... I notice that TXT and XML files in with my MPEGS folder ... How do these get cleaned up??

DirMon to the rescue again. Everything in the target block will get deleted if there is not a corresponding file with a source extension.

Originally Posted by mightyt

OH ... I also noticed that DirMon does not automatically launch with Windows ... I suppose I should put it in the Starup Folder, correct?

Correct.

Jere

[mightyt]

Originally Posted by Jere_Jones

DirMon to the rescue again. Everything in the target block will get deleted if there is not a corresponding file with a source extension.

Correct.

Jere

Outstanding ... Thanks! Jere ... Now I am kicking myself for not installing this sooner ...

T.

[RedCoat999]

Question: In the Commercial Skip menu item in the Sage setup menu, there are two offset times. What are they for? I find that when entering commercial breaks, it seems to break too early, and would like to see a little of the fade-to-black or commercial so I know it worked correctly.
Thanks

[mightyt]

Originally Posted by RedCoat999

Question: In the Commercial Skip menu item in the Sage setup menu, there are two offset times. What are they for? I find that when entering commercial breaks, it seems to break too early, and would like to see a little of the fade-to-black or commercial so I know it worked correctly.
Thanks

Is that a special part of SageMC ?? I don't have that with my ComSkip plugin??

[ewerx]

Excuse my ignorance but how come the old Cayars way (with comskip.exe being automatically called from Sage) doesn't work anymore?

It is working fine for me in 2.2.8, and I am about to upgrade to 4.1 and would rather just keep it working the way it's been working.

Is this external DirMon/ShowAnalyzer method better? It seems more complicated.

[blade]

I think the old way still works. It's just that Dirmon and SA work better IMO.

Dirmon will automatically delete the .txt files when they're no longer needed and SA is much faster than comskip. I run it on a celeron 366 and it can process a 30 minute show in 30 minutes. In other words I can watch "liveTV" and my antique cpu can provide "real time" commercial detection. More modern cpu's can easily process a show in 2-5 minutes. If/when it's possible to run multiple instances of SA on a single machine it would be easy to provide "real time" commercial skipping for multiple shows at once.

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by ewerx

Is this external DirMon/ShowAnalyzer method better? It seems more complicated.

I prefer the speed of the registered version of Show Analyzer. It is just fast, and that is that.

The old comskip.exe should still work fine because the output file is in the same format. If you don't want to use DirMon, Jere wrote a comskip.exe proxy to launch Show Analyzer as if it were comskip.exe. The nice thing about DirMon is that it cleans up the orphaned files for you. Also, you can have show analyzer and dirmon installed on a different machine. If you have a slow HTPC and a fast gaming machine, you could have your commercials detected by the fast machine across the network and that fast machine won't need to have sage installed.

I think that Show Analyzer does a better job of detecting commercials at least for me, in my area of the world. There also is a part of Show Analyzer called the School House that helps SA improve your detection settings. It is easier than configuring the comskip.properties file. At least that is what it is for. I havn't used it because it just works fine for me.

Lastly, unless I'm mistaken, development of the comskip.exe program isn't going on anymore. Jere is constantly working on improving his software.

I'm not a paid spokesperson of his products, I just think it was well worth the price for the registerd version. He will send you a trial key if you would like to try the software at full speed, that way you can make your own conclusions.

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by blade

I think the old way still works.

You beat me to it.

[mightyt]

Ditto ... I have been using the DirMon / SA trial for the last 2 weeks and love it ... Got get me registered ... I am now spoiled and it's driving me nuts not having it, plus the expired trial pop-ups make you crazy ...

But ... definitely the way to go in my books ... sorry I waited so long to take the ComSkip plunge ...

[Vlar]

My dirmon/SA installation works great on my server system, but I can't get the client box to read the generated txt files. I've read about having the paths on both machines either mapped the same or use the network address, which I tried both but the client still doesn't pick up the files. I'm assuming this is in the sage setup, specifiying video recordings directory. I'm using SageMC so I'm under the impression that I dn't need to use the comskip STVi? Am I missing something?

This might not be related, but on my client, I don't have an option to import STVi ..only two options to import STVs. Is this a client thing?