Starting to test Comskip with h.264 support

[vexhold]

I think I have comskip and cm running, but I have yet to see any commercials go "bubuy"

How long does it usually take for a .ts hour long show?

And do you only see the results when it has completed a job?

How do you make it run more than one instance of comskip?

Sorry so many questions, but I just gotta know.

Thanks

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by vexhold

How long does it usually take for a .ts hour long show?

this is dependent on your hw and the resolution (HD take longer) of the file. comskip seems to scale across 2 cpus well, I haven't seen it take advantage of 4, so higher freq 2 proc would probably do better.

Originally Posted by vexhold

And do you only see the results when it has completed a job?

you can configure comskip to write commercial spans as they are found:

live_tv=1

Originally Posted by vexhold

How do you make it run more than one instance of comskip?

if you use DVRMSToolbox, you can configure the number of instances that will be run using the workers setting. don't know about other ways to manage invocation.

personally, I allow [up to] 3 instances to run at a time.

[vividweb]

You could try this, http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...&postcount=253, SJQ 2.0.0 instead of Comskip Monitor. I haven't made the change yet, but it looks very promising. The ability to use multiple computers to process the files and to assign priorities to certain jobs has definitely caught my attention.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by vividweb

You could try this, http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...&postcount=253, SJQ 2.0.0 instead of Comskip Monitor. I haven't made the change yet, but it looks very promising. The ability to use multiple computers to process the files and to assign priorities to certain jobs has definitely caught my attention.

DVRMSToolbox has a similar feature set, but doesn't require that Sage is installed on each PC.

It can also wake up (WOL) the remote computer before delegating a task to it. There's no job priority, but as it's intended to be completely automated based on the file's metadata that kind of intervention should be unnecessary.

The interface is only 2' though, no configuration through Sage.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by babgvant

DVRMSToolbox has a similar feature set, but doesn't require that Sage is installed on each PC.

It can also wake up (WOL) the remote computer before delegating a task to it. There's no job priority, but as it's intended to be completely automated based on the file's metadata that kind of intervention should be unnecessary.

The interface is only 2' though, no configuration through Sage.

Just to clarify, you do not need SageTV installed to run the SJQ 2.0.0 task client software. Clients run outside and independent of SageTV. Only the server portion needs to run within SageTV.

Of course, each client machine must have your SageTV recording directory accessible to it in order to process the recorded files. There are options when configuring a client to remap directories (as seen on the server) to the corresponding directories as seen on the client. For example, if your recordings are stored in D:\tv on your server then jobs assigned are going to point to D:\tv for the file paths, but you can configure your client to remap those directories to, say, \\sageserver\tv. If you install a client on Linux you can remap the Windows paths to proper Linux paths pointing to your samba mounts from the sage server, etc.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by Slugger

Just to clarify, you do not need SageTV installed to run the SJQ 2.0.0 task client software. Clients run outside and independent of SageTV. Only the server portion needs to run within SageTV.

my bad, missed the distinction b/w the server and client pieces.

[edbmdave]

I noticed it is out, and curious if the public version supports h264 files. If so what type (mp4? or mv4?)

[Djc208]

My understanding is that no, the public version does not. You have to donate and get added to the donations area to access the version that supports h.264 files. It's well worth the money too.

As for what files it does support it was designed to work on the .ts files generated by the HD PVR. Not sure what other variants it may work on though.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by Djc208

My understanding is that no, the public version does not. You have to donate and get added to the donations area to access the version that supports h.264 files. It's well worth the money too.

As for what files it does support it was designed to work on the .ts files generated by the HD PVR. Not sure what other variants it may work on though.

It will also do .mpg files.

Gerry

[Djc208]

Originally Posted by gplasky

It will also do .mpg files.

Gerry

Yea, those too

[erik]

Comskip can process .mpg (Program Stream files) .ts and .tp (Transport stream files) and .dvr-ms
Video can be mpeg2 or h.264
Audio can be mpeg2, ac3 or aac

As there are still some reports of problems with the h.264 there is no public version.

[erik]

Comskip build 0.80.008 with double speed h.264 decoding is released to the early access area

[babgvant]

Thanks Erik

[JREkiwi]

Erik, I'm still having problems with my PS h.264/AC3,HE-AAC and h.264/HE-AAC recordings. The logs looked a bit more promising in the 007 version, but still not getting decoded. No change in 008.

John

[Djc208]

007 fixed my problems with HD PVR files, looking forward to the speed increase, it took forever to go through the already recorded h.264 files, and I still have to wait a good while before I get comskip on new files.

Thanks for the hard work.

[erik]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

Erik, I'm still having problems with my PS h.264/AC3,HE-AAC and h.264/HE-AAC recordings. The logs looked a bit more promising in the 007 version, but still not getting decoded. No change in 008.

John

The problem is with the way you are recording.
Comskip can not correctly detect h.264 inside .mpg files (yes, it should be solved).
Could you record in .ts instead?

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by erik

The problem is with the way you are recording.
Comskip can not correctly detect h.264 inside .mpg files (yes, it should be solved).

I previously sent you a PM with some info I got from SageTV about detecting h.264 inside .mpg.

Originally Posted by erik

Could you record in .ts instead?

It's possible, but SageTV say not to do it, as there may be playback issues with non-monotonically increasing timestamps.

John

[erik]

I am busy with that but it means I will make a complete different demuxing/decoding frontend allowing comskip to decode almost all input formats.
That's because I received test samples with mp3 and mpeg4 sound, and more different input formats to come

[WhiteWhisker]

Originally Posted by erik

Comskip build 0.80.008 with double speed h.264 decoding is released to the early access area

out of curiosity what speed is to be expected on h.264 files currently? I am processing rather large 3 hour HD basketball games and its taking approx 6 hours to process each, seems to be about 11fps or so? I am running on an athlon 64 x2 4200+ at medium priority...is this about right?

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by erik

I am busy with that but it means I will make a complete different demuxing/decoding frontend allowing comskip to decode almost all input formats.

Thanks Erik, that sounds like the Nirvana of commercial detection to me, and a whole pile of work for you.

John