Utility: Comskip

[rsagetv99]

This is probably a stupid question, but I set Output_EDL=1 and it is not creating EDL files, do I need to set some other parameter as well?

Does the EDL file get created in the beginning just like the .txt or does it get created at the end of processing?

[clmolnar]

The .edl file is not created until the end of processing.

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by rsagetv99

This is probably a stupid question, but I set Output_EDL=1 and it is not creating EDL files, do I need to set some other parameter as well?

I'm not sure if it's case sensitive, but all lowercase definitely works.
output_edl=1

Originally Posted by clmolnar

The .edl file is not created until the end of processing.

Except when you are processing while recording

John

[clmolnar]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

Except when you are processing while recording

John

Oops! Thats true! I don't use the process while recording feature.

[rsagetv99]

Originally Posted by hemicuda

I moved up from build 65 to 68 about a week ago. Now I'm seeing comskip cut shows several seconds to over a minute before the commercial starts. It's also been marking "long" sections of commercial space as show in some cases. It does well for about the first 1/2 of a program then seems to lose track. All my recordings are SD w/ CC data embedded. I'm going to reset Comskip Monitor to use the 65 release and see what happens. Great work on the releases so far, Erik. WAF is high.

I'm having this same problem with 79_98. My shows are a mix of HD and SD. Both seem to be having this problem.

Was there a fix for this?

[Eckwell]

What does the standoff=8000000 do?

I too am having some detecting issues and just wondered about that setting?

thanks

[rsagetv99]

Originally Posted by rsagetv99

I'm having this same problem with 79_98. My shows are a mix of HD and SD. Both seem to be having this problem.

Was there a fix for this?

BTW, I tried setting detection method to 255, and I am still having the same problem.

[opy01]

Just curious, whats the average show time between comercials? I just had an infomercial last about 5 minutes and comskip didnt remove it because the minimum show time was 125 seconds. I had to change the minimum show time to 305 seconds to skip it. Do I need to just adjust this only if theres an unusually long comercial or can I leave the time like that? I am not sure if I would end up losing part of a show with that setting.

Edit: So much for that, Erik had me fixed up in no time. Thanks Erik!

[betagamma06]

Hi, I'm new... but I know how good is ComSkip; shall I use it under Ubunto.
Did somebody have already built it?

Under http://www.kaashoek.com/comskip/ there are only exe for Windows.
Where I can download the source.... I can try to compile it myself.


Thanks in advance for your hit!

[evilpenguin]

Download
The Comskip and Comclean distribution zip files for Windows are available through this link
Comskip and Comclean files for downloading
The source of Comskip is available through svn

Just grab an SVN client and you should be good to go.

Also, apparently it works pretty well under wine if you don't want to go to the trouble of compiling it for linux.

[erik]

Most people that use Comskip on linux do run it using wine
Seems to be very simple.
Look here
http://www.kaashoek.com/comskip/view...st=0&sk=t&sd=a

Those that compiled comskip under Linux got a slower execution speed because the codecs I use are handoptimized objects for which I do not have the source.

[betagamma06]

The link to the SVN was wrote to small for my eyes!

Many thanks!

[erik]

Just noticed some people are re-using a comskip.ini that was posted here.
This file contains at the end 3 lines

play_nice_sleep=12
play_nice_start=1
play_nice_end=2359

These will cause Comskip to slow done to prevent overloading of the disk.

If you want to disable this then you must DELETE the three lines
Changing them to

; play_nice_sleep=12
; play_nice_start=1
; play_nice_end=2359

or

# play_nice_sleep=12
# play_nice_start=1
# play_nice_end=2359

Does NOT disable them and will lead to disappointing Comskip performance

[erik]

I have added CC decoding to Comskip but before releasing I need some people to test.
Who is willing to receive a test version of Comskip, set verbose=10 and run Comskip on some recordings from various channels and see if the CC is decoded correctly?
The log file will contain the full CC transcript, it will also dump the XDS (such as V-Chip) data but not yet decode that data.
It should work on .mpg, .ts or dvr-ms files
Can not be combined with setting skip_b_frames != 0
It also contains test code to output a .srt file.

From the changelog

Changes in 0.79.133
- Added functionality to decode ATSC Close Captioning data. Will work on any file (mpg, ts, dvr-ms) that contains this information.
- Added the ability to generate a .srt file, Set output_srt=1 to enable. This is done by integrating ccextractorwin. Send me feedback on what other output formats of ccextractor are usefull.
- Added the ability to dump the user data stream from the mpeg recording. Set output_data=1 to enable. this will generate a .dmp file that could be compatible with ccextractor

[bcjenkins]

If it will run in wine I will run it on a few files for you.

B

[erik]

Its the regular executable so it is supposed to run.
Will mail you the zip file.

[Eckwell]

i can run it against some HD mpgs...

And .smi format for CC is useful.

Does Comskip contain the ccextractor code? or does it call ccextractor?

[erik]

Comskip contains the ccextractor code but it does not use the ccextractor file reader. The ccextractor decoder is coupled to the user data stream from the comskip mpeg decoder. Its a VERY crude integration. You will notice how crude when you look at the generated log file.
For the CC used by comskip itself an internal CC decoder is used, its based on the CC extractor decoder. The XDS extractor is own written, but not complete yet
Can you PM me for your mail address?

[erik]

Try build 133

[erik]

The Comskip release history till build 133

Changes in 0.79.133
- Added functionality to decode ATSC Close Captioning data. Will work on any file (mpg, ts, dvr-ms) that contains this information.
- Added the ability to generate a .srt file, Set output_srt=1 to enable. This is done by integrating ccextractorwin. Send me feedback on what other output formats of ccextractor are usefull.
- Added the ability to generate a .smi file, Set output_smi=1 to enable. This is done by integrating ccextractorwin.
- Added the ability to dump the user data stream from the mpeg recording. Set output_data=1 to enable. this will generate a .dmp file that could be compatible with ccextractor
Changes in 0.79.132
- Bug solved: The dvrmstv xml output file is missing the first commercial when it starts within the first second of the recording
Changes in 0.79.131
- Improved the previewing on dvr-ms recordings.
- It is now possible to disable the combining of blocks for strict or non-strict commercial length checking by setting the combined modifiers to 1.0
- Improved the automatic video PID selection when the stream switches to a new PAT
Changes in 0.79.130
- Audio detection on DVR-MS files still proved to be difficult when skipping frames. Some improvements have been implemented (I hope). Should also improve when not skipping frames.
Changes in 0.79.129
- Bug solved: The XML output file missed the first commercial when it started within 2 seconds from the start
- Improved the detection and decoding of sound in dvr-ms files.
- Improved the aspect ratio detection
- Bug solved: When max_repair_size=0 and skip_b_frames != 0 the amount of position of the identified commercials is completely wrong
Changes in 0.79.128
- It should now be possible to use the preview window on dvr-ms files. Not extensively tested and probably full of bugs. I need your feedback to improve (only for donators)
Changes in 0.79.127
- The previous build(s) generated a huge debug file called camples.csv. Is disabled now
Changes in 0.79.126
- Extra workaround implemented to prevent no sound detection on certain dvr-ms recordings
Changes in 0.79.125
- It is strongly adviced to set max_repair_size=0 for HDHomerun recordings.
- Bug solved: Comskip crashes under certain rare conditions
- Some HDHomerun recordings contain a track without sound, after 50 frames without sound another track is automatically selected
Changes in 0.79.124
- Setting skip_b_frames=2 will have Comskip skip frames on HD but not on SD, only available for donators
Changes in 0.79.123
- Adding output_aspect=1 to you ini file will instruct comskip to generate a .aspects file. This file lists the input resolution and aspect ratio changes. This information can be used for more efficient transcoding or automatic aspect ratio switching during playback.
Changes in 0.79.122
- Comskip can now skip frames to speed up processing, should work on HD streams. Set skip_b_frames=1 in your comskip.ini, only available for donators
Changes in 0.79.121
- New detection method added: RESOLUTION_CHANGE (detect_method 8), replaces the unused FUZZY_LOGIC (which is always on). Resolution_change will insert a hard cutpoint when the resolution of a digital recording changes.
- Improved accuracy during reviewing of cutpoints. Comskip could be up to 15 frames off during preview.
Changes in 0.79.120
- Bug solved: Comskip crashes when the recording changes from 1080i to 480i or 720p.
Changes in 0.79.119
- Bug solved: Preview failed on certain TS files.
- During preview the 's' and 'f' keys will jump to Start and Finish of the recording
Changes in 0.79.118
- Bug solved: Previewing TS files failed once viewing near the end of the recording
- Added ini parameter: edge_step=1 Set to 2 when you need extra speed on scanning for logo's on HD files. Will make logo detection slightly worse
Changes in 0.79.117
- Bug solved: On certain MPEG PS recordings no audio was detected leading to much worse detection quality
Changes in 0.79.116
- Fixed a bug that could cause the preview to freeze when reviewing .txt or .csv files
- Improved the demux to better find the audio stream on HD TS recordings, not having audio will make detection quality much worse.
Changes in 0.79.115
- Changed the Zoomplayer Chapter list using AddChapterBySecond to output integers instead of floats
- Default comskip.ini file has now output_edl=1 to ensure correct skipping in SageTV and GBPVR
Changes in 0.79.114
- Increase input buffer to reduce strain on disks when running multiple comskip in parallel
- Solved the long outstandig "Why does Comskip find a very short commercial at the end of the recording" bug
Changes in 0.79.113
- Added a specific setting for live_tv_retries for dvrms files to avoid dvrms users having to edit the ini file
- Bug solved: Comskip sometimes stops processing before the end of the recording.
- Writes progress to stderr including percentage done
Changes in 0.79.112
- Bug solved: Comskip crashes when the video size changes during logo searching.
Changes in 0.79.111
- Bug solve: On certain dvr-ms recordings audio decoding fails resulting in a lot of "Audio error" messages.
Changes in 0.79.110
- Added the output file for DVRMS Toolbox, enable with output_dvrmstb=1 in the ini file. A second commandline parameter can be used to specify the directory where the dvrmstb xml file should be written. Setting live_tv=1 will also have this xml file updated during scanning.
Changes in 0.79.109
- Improved the blackframe detection during live_tv processing
Changes in 0.79.108
- Changed the dvrmsstandoff algoritm. For a 8MBit/second recording you should use live_tv_retries=300, The higher the bitrate the lower the retries.
Changes in 0.79.107
- Added the dvrmsstandoff parameter for dvr-ms, default is dvrmsstandoff=120000, set dvrmsstandoff to the amount of kilobytes to stay from the end of the file when processing during recording. Make sure you set live_tv_retries high enough to allow the buffer to fill while waiting.
Changes in 0.79.106
- Increased the waiting time for the writing of dvr-ms files during live tv, set live_tv_retries=4 or higher if needed
Changes in 0.79.105
- Bug solved: Removed the bug that was introduced in build 104
Changes in 0.79.104: Do not use build 104!!!!!!!
- The default comskip.ini file is not very agressive, I changed the settings to be more agressive. If you start to miss parts of the show revert back to the comskip.ini that is in build 103
- Bug solved: Invoking comskipGUI.exe without any arguments could cause Comskip to crash.
- Bug created: Build 104 will ALWAYS display the debugwindow, even when called as a hidden process
Do use build 102 or earlier
Changes in 0.79.103
- Improvements for the for realtime scanning of dvr-ms input, may not work
Changes in 0.79.102
- Experimental implementation of Live_tv for realtime scanning of dvr-ms input
Changes in 0.79.101
- Solved a big bug in the audio decoding a. A lot of content should no longer cause a crash or bad decoding.
Changes in 0.79.100
- Some variable bitrate recordings failed to seek during preview, added variable_bitrate=1 in the ini file as default. Set to 0 if you want to fall back to unreliable byterate seeking
Changes in 0.79.99
- Changed the Zoomplayer chapter file to use seconds instead of frame numbers to solve alignment problem with digital broadcast
- The default ini file now disables the heuristics as results are too broadcast dependend. Enable with care
- Added the .vdr output format defined by the Linux Video Disk Recorder software and used by XBMC to autoskip commercials. Enable by setting output_vdr=1 in the ini file.
Changes in 0.79.98
- Removed the enable_mencoder_pts=1 setting and instead introduced the output_edlp=1 setting enable generating a pts based mencoder file
- Added a parameter logo_filter=0, default is disable. Set to the size of the filter to apply to improve unreliable logo recognition. Setting logo_filter=4 often solves most problems
Changes in 0.79.97
- Improved logo recognition
- When enable_mencoder_pts=1 is set in the ini file the generated .EDL file will use the PTS information for the cutpoints to support mencoder. Does ony work for TS files. Running comskip on the .CSV file will always be done as if enable_mencoder_pts=0
Changes in 0.79.96
- Bug solved: The executable name generated with output_mpeg2schnitt=1 was incorrect and the mpeg2schnitt_options did not work
Changes in 0.79.95
- Build 94 can not preview certain transport stream, do not use build 94
- Bug solved: Certain recordings do not seek correctly in the preview mode.
Changes in 0.79.94
- Bug solved: Some weird encoded transport streams could not be decoded
Changes in 0.79.93
- Bug solved: Sometimes the first commercial in a EDL file starts at 0.03 i.s.o. 0.0
- Bug solved: Certain transport stream recordings with PID's above 256 could not be decoded.
Changes in 0.79.92
- Reduced the minimum acceptable logo_fraction before disabling logo detection to accomodate for huge postpadding in australian recordings. New default is logo_fraction=0.40 i.s.o. 0.50