Starting to test Comskip with h.264 support

[Eckwell]

Originally Posted by erik

Thanks!

I see you use CCextractor, did you aver have the opportunity to text the extraction feature of Comskip?
It does NOT work on h.264

I ran some tests on the 010 version a while ago and found timing to be off by quite a bit. I can test it out again though. ccextractor only takes about 5-10 minutes to run on my HDHR mpg 1 hour recordings though, so it is fine to run as its own process. Although I am not sure what the comskip 020 timing is on the same recordings so maybe I will give it a test.

For the HD-PVR h.264 recordings I have CC enabled on the DirecTv box so they are "embedded" in the recorded video.

[erik]

From the changelog

Changes in 0.80.012
- Bug solved: The .smi and .srt files contain duplicated data when a logo is found for the first time.

This duplicated data caused the timing to be wrong

[Eckwell]

Originally Posted by erik

From the changelog
This duplicated data caused the timing to be wrong

Great! I will give it a try.

I ran the 1.8 Gig file I have of Little Einsteins from the HDPVR through the DONATOR version of 020 and it took 1:45 on my 3.0 gig P4, but only about 25 minutes on the Q6600. looks like its time for that upgrade! I don't do comskipping on the SageTV server, I use my idle LAN server (XP PC) for that.

[Fluffdaddy]

Donation version of Comskip using the latest version
Comskip Monitor

R5000HD...Dishnet.........works 75-80%

HDHomeRun OTA............works 100%


PVR-500 card...................works 100%

Two Hauppauge HD-PVR on via Comcast cable ............Does NOT Comskip 0%..........I'm lost

Tried different settings for .......volume_slip

Can someone point me in the right direction as to why I get NO comskip with my Hauppauge HD-PVR's, when it works fine with the rest?
This is driving me nuts

thanks

[gplasky]

Comskip doesn't do it by itself. Did you add the .ts file extension to Dirmon2, Comskip Monitor or Sage Job Queue. (Or whatevr you're using.)

Gerry

[Ender]

In your csm.properties file in the process.file.extensions= line have you added .ts?

oops it looks like I was beaten to the punch.

[Phydeaux]

Just wanted to send some positive feedback to Erik and a brief question.

Granted, I don't record a lot of TV, but I consistently record the Daily Show every night and Comskip nails it every time. The commercials are perfectly cut out without any loss of program content. The only minor issue I have is that the final commercial of the show is basically where Comskip marks as the end of the show. In fact, the Daily show always comes back for just a couple of seconds for their "Moment of Zen". Comskip doesn't pick this up, I assume because it's generally only a handful of seconds long. No loss in my estimation...

My question is... does Comskip "learn"? Because I swear that it's gotten better with the Daily Show over the last couple months (although I haven't upgraded the version of Comskip from v.80_23). It started off decent but has only gotten better and better.

FYI, I feed it .ts files from an R5000-HD

Great program Erik! When are you and the author of TSPE (Transport Stream Packet Editor) going to integrate your products to automate cutting commercials vs. marking them in h.264 TS files?

RLW

[Fluffdaddy]

No I did not add ".ts" to my Comskip Monitor.

Hope that's my problem

thanks

[erik]

Originally Posted by Phydeaux

Great program Erik! When are you and the author of TSPE (Transport Stream Packet Editor) going to integrate your products to automate cutting commercials vs. marking them in h.264 TS files?

RLW

The transport stream editor requires byte positions for cut positions and at the moment I can not reliably output byte positions.
Its only a matter of time at my side. And some people asking for it

[Fluffdaddy]

Yep .ts file extension was my problem.

Seem to be working now.....thx guys

[brzez]

Consider me one of the people asking for output of ts packet byte positions for TSPE. I'd be willing to donate more to make this happen.

[Skiier__Dude]

Hey guys,

Several weeks back, I downloaded the beta driver for the HDPVR and it fixed the issue I was having with AC3 (Dolby 5.1) audio.

Not long after that, I noticed that the commercials were no longer being properly marked -- sometimes only one commercial would be marked, if at all. Prior to the HDPVR driver upgrade, commercial skipping worked perfectly so I am wondering if the Dolby 5.1 audio is having an odd interaction with Comskip.

I'm now using the latest donator version of Comskip 80_23. I've set Volume_Slip=150 and have tried Detect Method = 43 and 47 with the same results.

Right now, I am re-running the Comskip process on an older recording where the audio is PCM and a new one where the audio is 5.1 to see if the commercials are marked properly and should have the results in a few hours.

Anyone else seeing similar results?

[Eckwell]

huh... i am wondering if that is why my files are not comskipping correctly all of a sudden. I need to do some research to find out...

[erik]

You may have to set
max_volume=0
as the audio level in the dolby broadcast is not correctly normalized and setting the level to 0 will enforce a automatic tuning of the max volume level.

[Skiier__Dude]

Originally Posted by erik

You may have to set
max_volume=0
as the audio level in the dolby broadcast is not correctly normalized and setting the level to 0 will enforce a automatic tuning of the max volume level.

Thanks for the reply Erik.

I made this adjustment and the results are the same. I also even experimented to see if Dolby was the issue and set my audio output from my STB to PCM and found that Comskip is marking more commercials but they aren't even close to being in the right spots. With Dolby as the output, I may get a couple of marked commercials if at all and they generally are not correct.

I'm using Detect_Method = 47
max_volume=0
volume_slip=150

[erik]

Could you follow the procedure from the "How to ask for help" topic?
That will allow me to give better support

[judoGTI]

Originally Posted by erik

The audio and video are out of sync so you need to set
volume_slip=40
and because logo quality is bad you may set
logo_filter=4

Hey Erik

Im not sure if I am having the same issue or not but audio tends to lag about 1 second behind the video in both HD and SD. Can this be adjusted in the comskip.ini?

Thnks!

[erik]

The volume_slip setting is designed for that purpose.
Remember that comskip only reads the recording.
It never changes something in the recording.

[btrcp2000]

Originally Posted by Fluffdaddy

Donation version of Comskip using the latest version
Comskip Monitor

R5000HD...Dishnet.........works 75-80%

HDHomeRun OTA............works 100%


PVR-500 card...................works 100%

Two Hauppauge HD-PVR on via Comcast cable ............Does NOT Comskip 0%..........I'm lost

@fluff-

what are your server specs if you don't mind? I'm going to be working on this in the next few days with both r5000 dish and hdpvr cable box, and wondering if the first thing I need to do is replace my dual with a quad.

Also, what do you mean it works 80%? What happens in the other 20%, is it just skipping at the wrong points requiring manual rewind/ff, or something else?

[pvrpenguin]

Does comskip with h.264 have minimum system requirements? Ever since moving to the donator version of comskip my server has been crashing daily.

My server is an Athlon 2.3 GHz with 1GB RAM. I am using comskip-monitor to process .mpg and .ts files. I thought the .ts files may have been causing the problem but even just processing .mpg causes the server to crash. I am using the latest version 023 of comskip.

Is there a more stable version I can use?
Since the server hangs I have no way of knowing what has gone wrong so at this point am just assuming it is comskip since no hangs occur if I turn off monitoring.

Is there a way for comskip to output a log in order to determine if something it is doing is causing the whole server to hang?