Commercial Skipping - Tell Us How You Do It

[mistergq]

When I used BTV - and pre-hd, I would cut commercials out of programs. Once I started using HD-PVR, I stopped cutting commercials.

As to the remote, with the 30 second and 10 second skips, I can navigate that so fast that it does not matter to me.

[nick_l]

I use a 30 second skip ahead method. I find if I don't at least give the commercials a passing glance I never know what new shows are available.

Nick

[hemicuda]

Originally Posted by nick_l

I use a 30 second skip ahead method. I find if I don't at least give the commercials a passing glance I never know what new shows are available.

Nick

I've found that to be a distinct issue. If we always 'right-click' through the markers we usually miss previews. Unless they have the watermark logo.

[paulbeers]

For many years I went without comskip. My wife and I just always used the 2.5min skip and 10 second skips. It was only in the last 6 months that we started using comskip. I've been using Sage for what 5 years? Just after 2.0 came out (whenever that was). We did use comskip for a short time a few years ago, but it seemed so inaccurate and seemed to cause quite a bit of instability in my server (may have been the crappy celeron 766mhz computer we were using at the time).

I still need to upgrade to the new comskip that works with h.264 recordings, but now that everything is stable, I don't want to mess with it!

[rmac321]

Brent,

I voted "other" before I saw your comment about choice 3.

I use comskip with SageMC set to autoskip.

[david1234]

Originally Posted by Brent

I'm kind of surprised to see at least 27% (out of 55 votes so far) not using commercial detection on SageTV. That just tells me I assumed too much in thinking commercial detection was one of the top 3 reasons to use an HTPC...

Our...
#1 reason to build a dvr- the VCR looked like crap with OTA analog recordings on the new plasma!

#2 was getting multiple tuners set up reasonably cheaply

Comskip only really moved up the list when my daughter started being able to understand what the commercials wanted her to understand!

[toricred]

I voted other because I use autoskip also.

[Clift]

We use SageMC and the right arrow with H.264 comskip. My wife loves to show it off to visitors. We also use the 30 sec skip when watching time-shifted "live" TV. We also use auto skip when we're watching recorded movies.

[bcjenkins]

Comskip under wine no autoskip (we use the arrows) as I am too lazy to tune Comskip.

B

[brandypuff]

I'm a bit confused on how to use Comskip with SageMC. i see options in the menu for SageMC to enable Comskip but Comskip needs to be running on the server to create the EDL files that SageMC uses to skip commercials, right?

[brandypuff]

So how do i use SageMC with comskip? Do i still need to install and run comskip on the server? I see menu items in SageMC to enable comskip.
I assume i need to generate the *.edl files on the server and then SageMC will use them to skip the commercials?

[Brent]

Originally Posted by brandypuff

So how do i use SageMC with comskip?

Give this a read. It addresses much more than what you're asking, but I think it might help clear up how to use with SageMC also. Bottom line, I use comskip monitor with comskip. Works perfectly whether I'm using SageMC or any other STV.

[brandypuff]

That is helpful

[wayner]

Comskip with autoskip in SageMC (I voted option 3). I don't have it enabled for realtime and I watch a lot of sports in near-realtime so I end up with a lot of manual skipping since the .edl file is often not ready - especially for H.264 files as it takes my server about 1X actual time to finish comskipping. Using SJQ to initiate the comskip jobs.

[tonaeli]

We are long time Replaytv users and have have always loved auto commercial skip--when things began migrating to digital we looked at various options(Tivo etc.) and would not even consider them unless they had commercial skip. We are currently using sagetv with comskip and auto skip enabled--it seems to work real well--having trouble getting the wife to give up the replays though

[agitate]

I voted number 3, but thought it was worth mentioning that I actually have comskip tuned to be very sensitive with a low minimum scene change time so that it detects lots of "breaks". This enables me to skip through the ad break in smaller chunks (although it still does quite often just detect one big ad break). The benefit of this method is that in difficult situations where comskip is failing to detect the entire break, I can still skip through it, but in smaller chunks, usually (hopefully) with one of the chunks ending at the real end of the ad break.

[SWKerr]

I love commercial skip. I was a BeyondTV user first so I expected commercial skip with Sage. I actually used comskip with BeyondTV for awhile because it gave better results than the built-in tool and it moved with me to Sage. I tried Show Analyzer for awhile but that experiment stopped with the lack of HD-PVR support.

I have played with the setting quite a bit but have never found anything that works better than the defaults. Tweaks seem to help some shows but harm others. It is very much driven by logo detection so some show are perfect and some are not as good. Overall I say about 50% are perfect and 40% are pretty good. The remaining 10% are way off but it almost never identifies part of the show as a commercial.

I use SageMC and have it set to auto advance. Love this feature on the perfect shows. For the manual skip I use 1 minute skip forward and 15 seconds back. I will skip forward to something that looks like show and then a few skips back till I see adds. The real problem is comskip is so accurate I am usually not holding the remote. (Although my wife will deny that)

[Skirge01]

I wish I could get mine that accurate. Mine still has a tendency to cut off the last couple of seconds before a commercial break on one or two shows, plus it cuts off several minutes prior to a break on another couple of shows.

[TallMomof2]

Commercial skipping is either the number one or number two reason I went with a HTPC. Went with SageTV because it worked best with my HD-PVR. ComSkip isn't perfect but it works well enough for me. My DS loves it for his NFL Network recordings. I just love not watching commercials.

[brb84]

I also use Dirmon with comskip running in SageMC with autoskip. It's absolutely glorious. The cool thing I added a couple months ago was "live" TV processing - within about 5 minutes of recording a show, comskip will start searching for commercials. If I start a show 15 minutes late, I will usually have all the commercials marked before I get to them!

I will also echo someone else's sentiment that seeing the comskip options in SageMC can be confusing. I just ignore those and let Dirmon handle all the scheduling.