SageMC Commercial Skip

[morfinx]

Admittedly I have yet to mess with this feature so far. But say if I were to enable ComSkip in SageMC settings, would I need to do anything else for it to work (i.e. would I need to install utils like ShowAnalyzer, dirmon, dirmon2, ComSkip Monitor, Comskip etc etc)? Thanks in advance

[warwon]

It never worked for me out of the box.

I set up ComSkip Monitor today and then restart SageMC and it worked within mins.

Shurgs

[morfinx]

Originally Posted by warwon

It never worked for me out of the box.

I set up ComSkip Monitor today and then restart SageMC and it worked within mins.

Shurgs

Did you have to install ComSkip as well, or does the ComSkip Monitor install already include ComSkip?

As I understand, ComSkip only adds a metafile which marks where the commercials are, and SageTV reads it while playing the video to know where to skip over the commercials. The video itself is not actually modified, correct?

[BFisher]

I don't think MC does the actual analysis for commercials - it just executes the commerical breaks based on the edl file created by comskip or showanalyzer. And you are correct, the full show is still there, you can see any of the commercials if you REALLY wanted to

[ke6guj]

Ok, SageMC has an option for "background commercial skipping" that woud trigger comskip to scan the video file, but it is old code that not recommended to be used. The preferred way is to use a scheduler like Dirmon, Dirmon2, or Comskip Monitor to monitor the recording folder for new recordings. They are more feature-filled, such as allowing you to schedule your comm scans for down times, and auto-purge leftover files after the recording is delted.


The scheduler will then trigger comskip or showanalyzer to scan for commercials and save them into a .txt/.edl file. Then, you have SageMC skip the commercials (with "Commercial Auto Skip" enabled) by reading the .txt/.edl file.

[Conejo]

Yea, I saw that SageMC had the selection for Commercial Skip and a forum search turned up this thread: Comskip Monitor Announcement. So I installed it like a happy fool.

I like it because:
1. It's Free
2. It came with the Comskip application
3. Has a 'simple' installer
4. Doesn't require interaction
5. Can set Comskip to analyze .mpg and .ts files.
6. Did I mention, it's free!! Especially when I just wanted to see what it did.

It's installed on the same computer as your Sage Server. It constantly monitors the directories you choose for changes and schedules the Comskip application to run in the background to produce the .txt or .edl files necessary for Sage to skip the detected commercials.

The version of Comskip that's included is a 'few' revisions back, but the instructions say you can install the most recent (v103) in the comskip subdirectory.

SageMC lets you easily set a 'disable auto_comskip' in your favorites (series) for shows where you'd rather have manual control of the timeline.

[morfinx]

Thanks for the info guys My next question is: say if I now want to transcode a show to divx, but with the commercials removed using info generated by ComSkip. How does one go about doing that?

[ke6guj]

I've been doing it manually for now, but what I do is have showanalyzer create a videoredo project file along with the .edl file. I then use videoredo to cut ot the commercials and save a new mpeg. Then, I run the new mpeg through a transcoder.

I beleive evilpenguin's SageMC video tools plugin, http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21419 , will allow you to do it automatically.