Utility: Comskip

[Stuntman]

Originally Posted by blade

On some shows comskip marks the first and last 2-3 seconds of the show as a commercial. This causes sage to get stuck in a loop and I have to turn off comskip support in sage or fast forward to get past the first few seconds.

I seem to recall reading about this problem before, but can't recall if a solution was found or not. Any help would be appreciated.

I also had a couple shows that went into a 2 second or so loop.. one at the very beginning and another at the very end.. hitting 'skip' on my remote jumped past those areas and all was well again (except for the lip sync issue I've already posted about).

[erik]

I am investigating how to best remove the short commercial segments identified at the start.
Do expect a solution in the next Comskip build

[Stuntman]

Just curious.. does anybody know the difference between what edl=0 and edlx=0 does in the comskip.ini? I see a new .stvi that is supposed to use the .edl output of ShowAnalzyer and I'd assume comskip for commercial skipping.. not sure which comskip line to alter to create the correct format..

thanks!

[iceman]

I use comskip to do my commercial detection processing. The problem is that I have 2 HD cards in my server and record HD & SD files in .TS format. I do not want to record in MPG format as I know I can do. The comskip STVI available including the newest one which handles EDL files does not recognize .TS files and therefore NO COMSKIP options show up on the menu and the timeline is also missing the commerial detection marks. I've had suggestions from Nielm and others to modify the outputted .XML file after the STVI has been imported and look for MPG. Once found change (append) to it the checking for .TS as well. I have done that and it doesn't work either. So can someone tell me how to get a COMSKIP STVI working with .TS recorded files ? I need it bad !!!!!

Some one Help Me

[hemicuda]

Just started out w/ this STVi this afternoon... If I can get the breaks worked out for my Science Channel shows (hardest transitions IMO) I'll be tickled. 1 Q, are the comskip breaks supposed to show up in the progress bar in Sage? if so, all I'm getting is a deep green color across the entire width of the bar.

Edit - I see someone else has this issue posted in another thread. I too have the problem of getting stuck in a loop at 0:00:00 and have to skip forward more than 11sec to clear it.

EDL contents:

0.03 1.77 0
539.11 754.65 0
1140.47 1380.95 0
2127.29 2347.68 0
2950.81 3206.50 0
3599.53 3599.56 0

I know the first commercial is around 8:59.

[Stuntman]

Just discovered that the .edl files created using comskip create a file that mixes both 'spaces' and 'tabs' as deliminators.. this may not be a problem to most, but it is different than the way Jere's SA works and it causes the new stvi that supports .edl comskipping from working... is there a reason for the mixed way of doing this.. can it be standardized.. or am I missing the issue here all together

[erik]

On popular request I will change the output to tabs in the next build.

[tsokeefe]

Originally Posted by erik

I am investigating how to best remove the short commercial segments identified at the start.
Do expect a solution in the next Comskip build

Is it possile this is the reason the show starts at about 3 minutes even though there was a commercial, a minute intor of the show another commercial than the main show? I just got everything up and running and notice this issue to be my only concern.

[erik]

This is a very special case which needs dedicated tuning.
Make sure you set min_show_segment_length to less than double the short show segement that is in between the two commercials at the start of the recording.

[Stuntman]

Does comskip decode the closed captioning embedded within the .mpg file??? Assuming that that data is in fact encoded into that .mpg file..

When I enabled CC as an option within comskip it has, so far, always not found anything.. which leads me to believe that either there is something I'm missing, or that that data is not encoded by sagetv or my hauppauge encoders....

[erik]

Only certain MPEG cards are able to encode the CC data.
Don't know which, only PVR250?, can't test.
Comskip can decode the CC data if present.
If SageTV can not decode its most probably not possible.
CC is not realy needed for USA conditions.

[hemicuda]

Opus4 pointed me to App K in the manual. It says the 250 and 350 encode CC to the mpg. Also, some renderers(?) settings can cludge the display of CC. Still tweaking that part myself

[tsokeefe]

Originally Posted by erik

This is a very special case which needs dedicated tuning.
Make sure you set min_show_segment_length to less than double the short show segement that is in between the two commercials at the start of the recording.

Thanks Erik, did not work for me. The setting was 125. The segment that it missed was 31 seconds so I set it to 60 and reran the dirmon after saving the comskip ini. Did I miss something?

Also, why would I be getting txt files for each show?

One other question for the masses. Is there a way to run dirmon in standby or systray?

[erik]

125 should have been fine.

Could you mail me
you comskip.ini file, the .csv file and a text describing what the errors are?

[cenwesi]

Say, can you help me with my comskip, i have tried all sort of settings and i can never get comskip to detect the commercials correctly. I only get 2 detections which is 100% wrong all the time. I used to have an old version of comskip that i never ever touched anything and it worked flawlessly.

[blade]

Originally Posted by cenwesi

Say, can you help me with my comskip, i have tried all sort of settings and i can never get comskip to detect the commercials correctly. I only get 2 detections which is 100% wrong all the time. I used to have an old version of comskip that i never ever touched anything and it worked flawlessly.

Are you using Dirmon2? If so comskip probably isn't able to find it's .ini file. If you put the .ini file in your system32 folder it will work. There may be a better solution by now. I haven't kept track of it.

[hemicuda]

Originally Posted by blade

Are you using Dirmon2? If so comskip probably isn't able to find it's .ini file. If you put the .ini file in your system32 folder it will work. There may be a better solution by now. I haven't kept track of it.

I've noticed the times when I let the debug window open that the first place comskip looks is in the directory where it resides. Mine is in /system32 as recommended so when it looks in the %path% it finds the ini there anyway. $0.002

[blade]

Originally Posted by hemicuda

I've noticed the times when I let the debug window open that the first place comskip looks is in the directory where it resides. Mine is in /system32 as recommended so when it looks in the %path% it finds the ini there anyway. $0.002

There was a bug with Dirmon2 where comskip could not find the .ini when it was in the same directory as comskip. Like I said before I have not followed it so I do not know if it has been fixed or not; however, I have seen others recently who still had the problem.

The problem was discussed at length on these forums awhile back.

[erik]

I can't find the problem in Comskip so simply add the parameter specifying where comskip can find the ini file.

[tsokeefe]

Originally Posted by erik

125 should have been fine.

Could you mail me
you comskip.ini file, the .csv file and a text describing what the errors are?

Sorry to be dumb erik - what csv file. I have the comskip ini.