Question about comskip and showanalzyer

[TechBill]

I had SageTV for almost over a year now and been using Dirmon and Showanalzyer but lately it seem that network are able to fool it or get around it somehow and also that the commerical across network are either getting shorter and longer too.

I am aware I can adjust the showanalzyer and I have done that many time trying to tweak it but if I tweak for one set of networks it breaks on other set of networks so I am unable to tweak it so it give best results across all networks on DirectTV.


Last time I didn't choose comskip because I wanted something that can be started as soon the recording start and comskip wouldn't support this and only work when the recording end so I am wondering if that had change and also when I watch TV I can always tells when the showanalzyer had kicked in (or many dirmon doing it) because of millisecond pause which watching TV which I am sure it task the CPU at the start before settling down lower cpu usage. Do comskip have similar issue as well too?

There a module comskip montior and it is any better than dirmon?

Any suggestion or inputs? My HTPC spec is below in my signuatre


Thank you
Bill

[blade]

Originally Posted by TechBill

Last time I didn't choose comskip because I wanted something that can be started as soon the recording start and comskip wouldn't support this and only work when the recording end so I am wondering if that had change and also when I watch TV I can always tells when the showanalzyer had kicked in (or many dirmon doing it) because of millisecond pause which watching TV which I am sure it task the CPU at the start before settling down lower cpu usage. Do comskip have similar issue as well too?

I've been running comskip on shows as they record for several years now. I regularly process 2 sd and 2 hd shows at the same time as they are recording.

I use dirmon2 and comskip.

[TechBill]

Originally Posted by blade

I've been running comskip on shows as they record for several years now. I regularly process 2 sd and 2 hd shows at the same time as they are recording.

I use dirmon2 and comskip.

Thanks for the reply.

I will have to try comskip again and see how it is.

Last time I tried it over almost a year ago showanalzyer was giving a better result than comskip for me and I couldn't run comskip while it was recording.


Bill

[megamojo]

To have comskip run while the show is recording you just need to set the option live_tv=1 in the comskip.ini file. You also need to make sure dirmon does not have any of the "wait until..." options checked so that it starts processing the file right away. When you're processing the files in real-time as they are recording it uses very little CPU since it can only process them in real-time speeds since that's all the data that is there. My server has an athlon x2 4600 (2x2.4Ghz) and I never notice when comskip is running, even on 3 SD shows at the same time.

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by TechBill

I

I am aware I can adjust the showanalzyer and I have done that many time trying to tweak it but if I tweak for one set of networks it breaks on other set of networks so I am unable to tweak it so it give best results across all networks on DirectTV.

I've never tried it, but IIRC, you can set up different profiles so that showanalyzer will use different settings for different shows. You can use the webserver tie-in to have showanalyzer determine what channnel a show was recorded on, and use the proper profile for that channnel.

[MavRic]

Do the HD Extenders HD-100 and HD-200 work with this as well? I understand the analyzing of the show is done on the server side, but can i load the user interface portion into the HD extenders?

I guess i'm a bit ignorant on this topic...does SageMC even work on HD extenders? I tried it once and things got very screwy...maybe i didnt follow the instructions properly.

And how CPU intensive is commercial skipping? I'd like this for live TV so we can tune in after the show has started. My SageTV server is a Intel C2D 3.1ghz with 2GBram and I'm exclusively using HD extenders.

[azsndvl]

MavRic,

I am a new user to SageTV. I have (2) HD-200 Extenders wired to a WHS/SageTV Server Box in my home, that I just recently put together over the holidays. I had this setup for about a few weeks, with default STVs. Last night, I decided to install the SageMC UI (latest 16x9 build) on the SageTV Server to check it out. I followed the instructions in the forums and it installed just fine. I was also able to bring it up through the extenders.

I have not yet played with ComSkip, so I can't comment on that part of your question, but I do plan to try this, hopefully tonight.

I'm running SageTV Server on WHS on a Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, 2.4 GHz Processor with 8GB Ram (but only 4 being used, due to WHS limitation), with (2) Happauge HVR 2250s.

[Djc208]

Originally Posted by MavRic

Do the HD Extenders HD-100 and HD-200 work with this as well? I understand the analyzing of the show is done on the server side, but can i load the user interface portion into the HD extenders?

I guess i'm a bit ignorant on this topic...does SageMC even work on HD extenders? I tried it once and things got very screwy...maybe i didnt follow the instructions properly.

Yes, the HD100/200 support comskip playback with the right plugin installed, and that includes SageMC. I have it running on my HD100, as do many others. Mine looked weird at first but turned out it was just because some of the defaults were different from how they looked on the server for some reason. Once I corrected that everything was fine.

And how CPU intensive is commercial skipping? I'd like this for live TV so we can tune in after the show has started. My SageTV server is a Intel C2D 3.1ghz with 2GBram and I'm exclusively using HD extenders.

Commercial skipping speed depends on the file format. MPEG2 (either SD or HD) is very fast, especially with a server like you have. I'm talking less than half the amount of time of the actual show. H.264 content is much slower, though improving. I haven't timed mine but I think at best it's closer to real time for that.

[MavRic]

I installed comskip and it analyizes as 1 hour show at max. quality level (6GB / hour) in 4 mintues, so i guess that shoudl be fine.

At least some sort of justification for my CPU..hahah...just running sage doesnt exactly give it a workout

[CollinR]

With Sage Job Queue (SJQ) you can run multiple ini files based not only on channel but the title of the show being scanned. So if normally USA network is fine but "Monk" doesn't do so hot, you can account for that.

In addition to the rest of it's featureset which is rather massive.
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25147