Comskip Playback for v7

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by jbuszkie

And aren't you supposed to be on vacation??

Just got back. Spent a few days camping with the kids in Disney.

[kurt]

I have been using comskip for a few years, just upgraded to 7 and now nothing, Went to plugin area and added comskip playback,, status bar changed to reflect comercials are there but there is not skip.. what is wrong with my setup please.

[BigSwifty]

First a huge shout-out to you and other members who code these plug-ins. I am having no luck with this on a new install. Worked fine before on XP. I attach the generated error. Any thoughts?

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...n1/CSerror.jpg

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by BigSwifty

First a huge shout-out to you and other members who code these plug-ins.I am having no luck with this on anew install. Worked fine before on XP. I attach the generated error. Any thoughts?

That's a bug. I'll file a bug report with the developer

Tom

[BigSwifty]

Thanks again!

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by BigSwifty

Thanks again!

Can you reproduce that bug? If so, how?

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Can you reproduce that bug? If so, how?

not that it really matters but this discussion should probably be in the Commercial Detector thread so people don't get more confused between comskip playback and commercial detection.

[Slack]

Dunno who to thank. the thread starter razrsharpe or the guy he mentions "JREkiwi".

In any case I thought some major malfunction had afflicted my comskip / comskip monitor setup with my move from v6 to v7.

The fix was as simple as a lunch time read in the forums and a moment or two in front of the tv.

Thanks to you both.

As a convert from ReplayTV since before my kids were born (2001) I vow they will always ask to skip the commercials.

[RetroBox]

I am not sure if it is possible, but is there a way to specify a delay for Comskip to start processing commercials? I'm not talking about the settings related to starting Comskip immediately or after show is finished recording. The issue I'm trying to resolve is that Comskip tends to eat the "previously on" part of my shows as well as previews of what's coming next. This would be solved if I could somehow tell the program to ignore commercials for the first and last 5 minutes of every recorded show... is this possible?

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by RetroBox

This would be solved if I could somehow tell the program to ignore commercials for the first and last 5 minutes of every recorded show... is this possible?

iirc there is an item in the comskip.ini file that will tell comskip to ignore commercials in the first/last x minutes

[RetroBox]

Originally Posted by razrsharpe

iirc there is an item in the comskip.ini file that will tell comskip to ignore commercials in the first/last x minutes

Awesome, I will take a look at that... kind of forgot about the .ini file in favor of a plugin feature, but that makes a lot more sense. I will try it tonight; thanks!

[CptKirk]

I had posted what I had thought was UI slow down due to Win7 but I think it is something related to Comskip Playback.

I was recording to d:\tv and switched to \\htpc\tv. Read the posts on that and everything is fine. All recorded shows show that now for the file location.

Running the SageTV UI on the server, all good. Watch through the HD300, all good.

On on new laptop with SageTV Client I'm having problems.

Whenever I enter 'All Recordings' menu section and try to do any movement (up, down, left, right) I get the spinning circle cursor for 10 seconds or so. Also, the comskip bar is a solid green with no commercial breaks shown.

So far on the Client the only plugin I have installed is Comskip Playback v2.0.6.

If I uninstall it or disable it then the 'All Recordings' menu section has no delays at all. But, of course, there is no comskip available.

If I install Commercial Detector UI v1.31 I get the same results since it also installs Comskip Playback.

The log attached is with only Commercial Detector UI v1.31 installed (along with the plugins it auto-installs). I turned on server and client logging. Restarted both the server and the client. Duplicated the slow behavior on the client. Then shutdown the client.

[tmiranda]

Some observations:

- You have lots of Plugins (40+) and SageMC installed. Try running the stock STV with just ComskipPlayback installed and see if the problem persists. Add in Plugins one at a time until you see the problem.

- One of the Plugins is causing exceptions, it's not clear from the logfile which one it is but I do not think it's ComskipPlayback.

- Your have PodcastRecorder installed, I know there is a memory leak in there that will cause your system to drastically slow down. (I need to remove that Plugin from the repository.)

- Please tell me the contents of the following directories: SageTV\CommercialDetector, SageTV\CommercialDetector\comskip, and \SageTV\comskip.

Tom

[CptKirk]

Is the log file from the client showing all of that?

I've never installed or used SageMC or PodcastRecorder.

On the server I have the following installed:

Commercial Detector
Commercial Detector UI
Comskip Playback
Jetty Web Server
log4j
Microsoft SQL JDBC
Nielm's Sage Utilities
Nielm's Sage XML Info
SageMyMovies
SageMyMovies API
SageTV Web Interface
sagex-api - SageTV API Extensions

On the client I have the following installed:

Commercial Detector
Commercial Detector UI
Comskip Playback
sagex-api - SageTV API Extensions

How could the log file show 40+ and SageMC? I'm just starting out and have been very conservative. So Comskip, Web interface and MyMovies are all I've added so far.

Directories on the server:

SageTV\CommercialDetector

..CommercialDetector.DB

SageTV\CommercialDetector\comskip

..<empty>

\SageTV\comskip

..comskip.dictionary
..comskip.exe
..comskip.ini
..comskip.txt
..comskipGUI.exe
..debugwindow.htm
..HideRun.exe
..manual.htm
..PostProcessing.bat
..readme.txt
..tuning.htm

Directories on the client:

SageTV\CommercialDetector - Doesn't exist

SageTV\CommercialDetector\comskip - Doesn't exist

\SageTV\comskip

..comskip.dictionary
..comskip.exe
..comskip.ini
..comskip.txt
..comskipGUI.exe
..debugwindow.htm
..HideRun.exe
..manual.htm
..PostProcessing.bat
..readme.txt
..tuning.htm

[JREkiwi]

On the client can you access \\htpc\tv\ ?

John

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by CptKirk

Is the log file from the client showing all of that?

I was looking at another logfile somebody else sent, my bad.

Note to self - Don't do Sage things and try to get the kids to bed at the same time....

[CptKirk]

tmiranda - I was wondering if something like that had happened

JREkiwi - That was it. I had shared the \tv directory on the server and gave 'Everyone' full control access. I had not subsequently tried to access \\htpc\tv from the client. When I did so I got the username/password prompt.

I guess 'Everyone' is not really everyone as far as Win7 is concerned. I didn't want to add user accounts on the server to match user accounts for the folks at home. Since all my machines are now Win7 I gave Homegroup sharing a try.

I shared the \tv directory on the server to the Homegroup with read/write access. After that I could get to \\htpc\tv from the client with no username/password prompt.

I then installed the Comskip Playback plugin on the client and it is working just great with the large lag gone.

[Fuzzy]

You dont' have to add user accounts to the client to access the server shares. Everyone is not the same as Public. Everyone means every user on the server. You can use your server's username and password when you get prompted for the logon credentials on the client, even if that user doesn't exist on the client. It will then save those credentials, and you won't have the problem anymore.

[jlmdxtv]

Has anybody got the "always_keep_last_seconds=" value to work?

It looks like the parameter is set in the Comskip.txt file, not the Comskip.ini file.

I shutdown SageTv and downloaded the latest Comskip files from http://www.kaashoek.com/comskip/ set both the starting and ending values to 120 in the .txt file, restarted and no luck. The regions are still being scanned for commercials.

thanks, john

[JREkiwi]

The comskip.txt file is just a help file with the list of available options.

It needs to be in comskip.ini to work. If the line isn't in there, just add it.

John