PHD in Comskip Needed?

[tsokeefe]

Hi all - after reading all the forums about comskip, I feel I need a PHD to figure it all out. I downloaded comskip STV, loaded it, I see it, I downloaded dirmon and show analzer. I have no idea what to do from there to make it work.

Why so many complexities, why not one program that incorporates all the necessary component. Now please forgive my naiveté, I am only about a month old using sageTV and loving it.

Can someone walk me through all the steps needed to make comskip work with basic functions. What programs are required from who, are there costs or freeware, what are the basic functions in those programs that need to be set up. If there already is a step by step out there, I would love to see it.

THanks friends for your help on this.... Signed fast forwarding through my commercials

[blade]

You need a program to process the shows. Either ShowAnalyzer or Comskip. The official SA thread is here. The paid version is much faster and better than the free one. I think it's like $10-15. If you decide to go with Comskip, it is free and I get slightly better results with roughly the same performance as the paid version of SA. Basically to install comskip you just download the file discussed here and unzip it to a directory and you're done. Personally I think comskip is a little simplier and less intimidating for a new user to setup.

Next you need to setup Dirmon2. Read this (at least the first page or two). If you set the parameters that are circled in red in the examples that should get you going. If you choose comskip over SA you set it up the same way. Just point it to the comskip.exe instead of showanalyzer.exe.

When you run Dirmon2 it should launch comskip or SA and generate a .txt file which will be read by the comskip import you added to your stv.

[tsokeefe]

Hey Blade - thanks - I went with comskip. I have comskip and dirmon working, they are creating txt files next to my recorded sage video files. In sage the comskip stv is loaded and enabled, but after dirmon is completed running for that show, sage does not show me the breaks like in the sample jpg's dirmon shows. Do I need to do something else for sage to pick up the text files? Also, does dirmon have to be up and running all the time for it to pick up new recorded shows, or is it running in the backgroup after I close it (probably dumb question, but perhaps there is a way to sys tray it that I don't see in the options....) Thanks again for the assistance.

[mayamaniac]

If you are running SageTV Client from a separate PC, then you need to map the same letter drives as it is on your SageTV server PC. The other way is to switch to UNC Path. Basically, the comskip plugins needs to be able to access the comskip text files through your network using the same path as SageTV.

[tsokeefe]

Thanks Mayamaniac - I am afraid it is from the same PC. I have not even tried it from my MVP yet.

I am using a sata drive connected to a PCI sata board on the same PC though, does that make a diff? SageTV and comskip STV are loaded on C drive, comskip program and dirmon are loaded and running on on F drive, but the media content is located on K drive along with the txt files that dirmon creates.

[tsokeefe]

I think it is working now - not sure how, the next program dirmon did, I went into sage, opened the program but it only found 1 commercial and there were over 10 or so. The one is skipped, it looked great. Any thoughts on why it would miss so many commercials? Do I need to do signifianct tuning. If so, where do I start?

[blade]

I don't know if it's been fixed or not, but there used to be a problem with comskip not being able to find it's .ini file when using Dirmon2. When this happens commercial detection is horrible if it detects anything.

I copied the comskip.ini to my system32 folder and it solved the problem. This page and the next few after it discuss the problem of finding the .ini file and possible solutions. There may be better solutions or a fix by now, but I haven't kept track of it.

[mayamaniac]

Its probably what blade said, the .ini bug, so try his fix to see if it works. Also in Dirmon logs, are there any errors whenever it comskip start processing?

[tsokeefe]

Wow folks - I appreciate it, moved it to system 32 I think it is working through MVP as well...

But... there is a sliver of show in the beginning and a sliver of show at the end that it is editing out.... any thoughts on these?

[blade]

Originally Posted by tsokeefe

Wow folks - I appreciate it, moved it to system 32 I think it is working through MVP as well...

But... there is a sliver of show in the beginning and a sliver of show at the end that it is editing out.... any thoughts on these?

Yep, try upgrading to the latest version. I believe it was posted earlier today and that bug is supposed to be fixed. I haven't tried it myself yet.