Setting Up PlayLater

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

I haven't delved deeply into it yet, but I just started using Playlater to grab some shows that I can't get on cable, or older shows that I'd like to watch again.
The shows record just fine and I can view them in SageTV just fine. However comskip doesn't want to run on them. I am saving them via Playlater settings in mp4 format and mp4 is one of the valid extensions in my comskip settings (via the SageTV plugin). If I use the plugin to search for files it shows all the Playlater files as "queued", but they never process.
Any clues where to look?

I use the donators version just fine. Most of mine are from Amazon and Netflix so don't have commercials to skip but I have used it on those that do and it worked fairly well.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

Are the mp4's h.264 video encoding? Are you using the donator's version of comskip or the free version?

It should be using the donator version, I have paid for it. Now that you mention it though, I wonder if an update to the plugin might have put the free version back in. I hope not, I'll have to check that.

Not sure on the encoding. There is only an option for recording with Mpeg-4 or PLV. I'm assuming the PLV stands for Play Later Video or something like that?

Checking the media information in VLC for a couple of the PlayLater recordings says the codec is H264 - Mpeg-4 AVC (Part 10) (avc1). Checking the properties from the file information in Windows Explorer just says Mpeg-4.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

I haven't delved deeply into it yet, but I just started using Playlater to grab some shows that I can't get on cable, or older shows that I'd like to watch again.
The shows record just fine and I can view them in SageTV just fine. However comskip doesn't want to run on them. I am saving them via Playlater settings in mp4 format and mp4 is one of the valid extensions in my comskip settings (via the SageTV plugin). If I use the plugin to search for files it shows all the Playlater files as "queued", but they never process.
Any clues where to look?

I think the sagetv comskip plugin only launches comskip for recordings, which these are not. You'd have to have something else launch comskip for playlater. Comskip doesn't really parse them out very well anyway. It turns out, that PlayLater puts chapter marks in the file at the commercial breaks, so I'm going to make a quick program to extract those marks into .edl's, and the use dirmon2 to launch it on any .mp4 in the PlayLater folder.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I think the sagetv comskip plugin only launches comskip for recordings, which these are not. You'd have to have something else launch comskip for playlater.

Correct. If you are using the default STV make sure you have the UI Mod installed. If you do you will see the "Run Comskip" button for the video.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I think the sagetv comskip plugin only launches comskip for recordings, which these are not. You'd have to have something else launch comskip for playlater. Comskip doesn't really parse them out very well anyway. It turns out, that PlayLater puts chapter marks in the file at the commercial breaks, so I'm going to make a quick program to extract those marks into .edl's, and the use dirmon2 to launch it on any .mp4 in the PlayLater folder.

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Correct. If you are using the default STV make sure you have the UI Mod installed. If you do you will see the "Run Comskip" button for the video.

My guess is that an update to the Commercial Detector UI plugin for SageTV overwrote my donator version with the free version. I stupidly never put the donator version in a separate folder so I'm not all that surprised this happened.
This morning I went out and downloaded the latest donator version (from sometime in April) and this time installed it into a separate folder. Went into commercial detector and pointed it to the the new donator folder for the EXE and INI files.
Rescanned for files to process and this time not only did the PlayLater files show up in the files to process line, they also showed up in the queue and currently processing lines.

Just as an FYI, I had earlier used the tools to edit metadata and switched them from imports to recordings so that hadn't been the issue at any point.

Thanks, everyone, for the suggestions and making me get off my lazy butt and install the latest donator verion of comskip. I'd been meaning to do it for quite a while. I think the version I was running previously was from 2013!

[Fuzzy]

Okay, so I couldn't find a decent way to extract chapters from the .mp4 files, but ffmpeg does a good job of copying them into other containers, specifically mkv, and mkvextract can then output them as xml. I then wrote a little vb.net program to read in the xml, and create an .edl file for all chapters named 'Advertisement'.

The added benefit here is that I remux the file into .mkv, which cleans up the timeline (which is sometimes hosed up by PlayLater). Bad timeline means even if the .EDL is there, it won't be right.

So, I have a batch (.cmd) file that you pass the .mp4 file to, and it launches ffmpeg to remux the file to .mkv (very fast). It then launches mkvextract and saves its output as a temporary file. It then launches my program (CHP2EDL.EXE), which reads in the temp file, and generates a .edl file for the show. Seems to work great so far, and I just set it up with dirmon2, and added a season of a show to PlayPass to see how it handles things on the auto. If it works out, I'll figure out a way to package it up and share it out. Much nicer and WAY faster than comskip (like a couple seconds per show).

[bclenney]

Originally Posted by talbot3

I just recently started using playlater to record my Hulu queue. I just pointed the playlater download folder to a folder I created in my sagetv video import folder. BMT and sagetv automatically fetch metadata and fanart and add it to my recordings. Its been working pretty good so far.

I also found a program on github to automate playlater recording my Hulu queue. https://github.com/CodePenguin/PlayPass/releases

Wow! I've wanted something like this for years. Scheduling is something that PlayLater has always been missing. Thank you for posting about it!

[samgreco]

Originally Posted by talbot3

I just recently started using playlater to record my Hulu queue. I just pointed the playlater download folder to a folder I created in my sagetv video import folder. BMT and sagetv automatically fetch metadata and fanart and add it to my recordings. Its been working pretty good so far.

I also found a program on github to automate playlater recording my Hulu queue. https://github.com/CodePenguin/PlayPass/releases

How did you setup BMT and Sage to import these into Recordings? I have it setup to import as imported video, which is what I normally do for non-recorded TV shows. But I'd love to treat PlayLater stuff as recordings.

[talbot3]

It's a setting for BMT. In the BMT web app under configuration -> Phoenix-> fanart metadata options, check the import TV media types as recordings box.

[samgreco]

Yeah. I know about that setting. But then ALL TV types get imported as recordings. Thanks for the response though. I think that the only way I can get what I want is to do it manually.

[Fuzzy]

I use gemstone, so I don't need them to be flagged as 'recordings', as all tv types will be displayed as such anyway.

[samgreco]

I'm using Gemstone too. But I got in a habit early (before Gemstone) of separating my active recordings from my library of TV shows. And I am so far down that path that it's hard to do it differently.