Plugin: CommercialDetector

[freewheeling]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Attach a logfile for me to look at please. Set the debug level in the plugin to Trace.

If comskip finds commercials it returns a 1, if it fails to find commercials it returns a 0. Anything other than a 0 or 1 indicates an error. I've never seen a 3 so I'd lik to see a log to figure out what is happening.

I did. It's above, but I'll post it again.

[tmiranda]

Sorry, I did not see the previous log.

Comskip is being run on a .ts file, which is OK if you are using the donators version of comskip. The comskip that is being called is in the default location (..\SageTV\SageTV\comskip)

Are you using the donators version?
Did you overwrite the default comskip with the donators version?
Did you set to config properly?

If you put the donators version of comskip in a separate location and pointed the plugin at it, there is a problem with the plugin.

if you overwrote the existing comskip or did not point the plugin at it there is a problem with your configuration.

Tom

[freewheeling]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Sorry, I did not see the previous log.

Comskip is being run on a .ts file, which is OK if you are using the donators version of comskip. The comskip that is being called is in the default location (..\SageTV\SageTV\comskip)

Are you using the donators version?
Did you overwrite the default comskip with the donators version?
Did you set to config properly?

If you put the donators version of comskip in a separate location and pointed the plugin at it, there is a problem with the plugin.

if you overwrote the existing comskip or did not point the plugin at it there is a problem with your configuration.

Tom

Thanks for taking the trouble to look at the log file. Unfortunately I don't even know what the donator's version is. As far as I know there's only one version of comskip in the system, and it's in the default location. I normally use VideoRedo to process files and remove commercials, but I only use it while I'm running VideoRedo itself, and certainly not from a SageTV plugin.

I enabled the icon, so now there's a little comskip icon in the details for the videos, but it's still not skipping any commercials. Just to see what would happen I clicked on comskip.exe and the comskipGUI.exe and they briefly ran in a dos command window and stopped. I did a search of all the drives and comskip.exe seems to be listed in only one place.

I am running AnyDVD in the background. I wonder if that interferes somehow?

Update: I checked the location that the plugin points to, and it's the comskip subdirectory under SageTV, which is correct. The maximum number of concurrent jobs is 1.

Update 2: I was wrong about the icon. It doesn't show unless I set CS & NoCS, so the icon indicates that there's no comskip on the file. It's a little hard to see without my magnifying glass.

[tmiranda]

OK, now it's making more sense.

comskip has two versions, a free version and a donator's version. (Donator's version means you make a contribution to the author and he sends you a special version.) The free version will only process .mpg files. You need the donator's version to process .ts files. The logfile you attached showed you are trying to use the free version (what comes with CommercialDetector) to process .ts files, and that will not work. What type of tuners do you have?

AnyDVD should have no impact.

[mzup]

I have this installed and working fine, but my question is you mention that there is an ability to click a button or something to run comskip? I don't see it or know where to look. can you help me? I would like to select an existing show and run comskip against it.

[freewheeling]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

OK, now it's making more sense.

comskip has two versions, a free version and a donator's version. (Donator's version means you make a contribution to the author and he sends you a special version.) The free version will only process .mpg files. You need the donator's version to process .ts files. The logfile you attached showed you are trying to use the free version (what comes with CommercialDetector) to process .ts files, and that will not work. What type of tuners do you have?

AnyDVD should have no impact.

So, I get the donator's version, install it in a different location, and point the plugin to that location? I'm using Hauppauge HD-PVR as the capture device, recording directly from the Comcast Set Top Box.

Update: OK, I got and installed the donator's version and pointed the plugin to the right exe and ini files and rebooted. After running it on the recordings there's now a CS logo next to the listing, and there are log and txt files associated with the recordings in the recording directory. However, the txt files are empty and there are no edl files, and no commercials have been identified and skipped. I tried running the program in a command window and got the error message "Comskip: missing option<file>"

I looked at the tuning manual and the user manual, and they both seem incredibly complicated. And since I'm not getting an edl file anyway, something is still wrong.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by mzup

I have this installed and working fine, but my question is you mention that there is an ability to click a button or something to run comskip? I don't see it or know where to look. can you help me? I would like to select an existing show and run comskip against it.

1. Install the CommercialDetector UI from the "UI Mod" section of the plugin manager.
2. Go to Setup->Detailed Setup->Customize and look for Comskip Playback Options (at the end of the list.)
3. Configure "Button Options" to show the buttons.
4. Go to a recording, or group of recordings and bring up the options menu. Look for Run Comskip or Delete comskip files.

Tom

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by freewheeling

So, I get the donator's version, install it in a different location, and point the plugin to that location? I'm using Hauppauge HD-PVR as the capture device, recording directly from the Comcast Set Top Box.

Update: OK, I got and installed the donator's version and pointed the plugin to the right exe and ini files and rebooted. After running it on the recordings there's now a CS logo next to the listing, and there are log and txt files associated with the recordings in the recording directory. However, the txt files are empty and there are no edl files, and no commercials have been identified and skipped. I tried running the program in a command window and got the error message "Comskip: missing option<file>"

I looked at the tuning manual and the user manual, and they both seem incredibly complicated. And since I'm not getting an edl file anyway, something is still wrong.

Good progress!

To get edl files (and not txt files) edit the .ini file and add (or change the property if it exists)

output_default=0
output_edl=1

If it creates .edl or .txt files and there is nothing in them it means it did not find any commercials. Post the .ini file and I'll see if I can help you tune it. If I were you I'd also do some searching on the comskip forums to see what .ini files people are using for HD-PVR recordings.

You are very close.

To run comskip from the command line just type:

comskip --ini=PathToYourIniFile PathToYourRecording.ts

Tom

[tmiranda]

Beta 0.40 is now available in the plugin repository. Changes:

- Fixed bug that would cause failure on some linux systems when not running Sage as root.
- Added option to manually scan library for recordings without comskip information.
- Added support for UI to display CS icon in header.
- Added support for UI to display different color CS icon if MediaFile is currently being processed.
- Slightly more friendly if accidentally running as a SageClient.
- Eliminated duplicate stdout and stderr lines from comskip.

I'll be updating the UI Mod soon that will take advantage of the improved CS icon support.

Tom

[freewheeling]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Good progress!
Post the .ini file and I'll see if I can help you tune it. If I were you I'd also do some searching on the comskip forums to see what .ini files people are using for HD-PVR recordings.

You are very close.

Here's the ini file. There is an output_edl line, but not an output_default line. As far is tuning, I wonder if there's a way to "borrow" the Ad Detective parameters used in VideoRedoTVSuite. It usually gets pretty close, although sometimes mistakes programming for a commercial or visa versa. For instance, some serial programs have a "catch up" section that is usually identified as a commercial, and in the "America the Story of US" series a lot of the Bank of America commercials were deliberately formatted to look like the program (although they usually misrepresent the role that the original Bank of America played; plus it's not even the same institution since they just bought the name in the 1990s).

Anyway, I'm pretty familiar with using VideoRedo.

Update: Uhhh... apparently I don't have the donator's version. I thought that the link provided immediately after I made the donation would take me to a donator's version, but apparently you have to wait for the author to process the donation by hand. WTF?

[mzup]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

1. Install the CommercialDetector UI from the "UI Mod" section of the plugin manager.
2. Go to Setup->Detailed Setup->Customize and look for Comskip Playback Options (at the end of the list.)
3. Configure "Button Options" to show the buttons.
4. Go to a recording, or group of recordings and bring up the options menu. Look for Run Comskip or Delete comskip files.

Tom

Thanks that's what i was missing. One more question. I used to use dirmon to run batch file that ran comskip then ran videoredo to cut them out. Is there a way to set it to point to my batch file? I've tried but it doesn't run it. I added %1 as a variable to pass in case I needed to do that but it still didn't run.

[tmiranda]

So now we know why no commercials were not detected. Once you get the donator's version you should be good to go.

VideoReDo and comskip are two completely different animals and use different methods to detect commercials. There is no way to adapt the parameters.

Pointing the plugin to a batch file instead of comskip.exe is not supported. If there is a demand for something like that I'll look into how difficult it would be to implement.

[tmiranda]

Version 1.10 of the UI Mod is now available. Changes:

- Show comskip icon in header if comskip is active.
- Change color of comskip icon next to show that is being processed.
- Changed minimum Comskip Playback STVi requirement to 2.0.5.

[tmiranda]

I'm working on supporting ShowAnalyzer but I have very little experience with using SA in a "real life" situation. If you are a ShowAnalyzer user and willing to help me test please let me know. I've have a basic version working now.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I'm working on supporting ShowAnalyzer but I have very little experience with using SA in a "real life" situation. If you are a ShowAnalyzer user and willing to help me test please let me know. I've have a basic version working now.

SA should be pretty simple to integrate. However, because of it's internal queue system, it's not exactly the same as comskip. If you call ShowAnalyzer.exe with the media file, it will add that file to it's built in queue. If you don't want that behavior, and want to instead, track when a thread is completed, you can call ShowAnalyzerEngine.exe with the file directly. This will create a process to handle that file immediately, and the process will close upon completion. This would pretty much mirror the way comskip does it, with the exception of not needing to pass an .ini file, and different return codes.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

SA should be pretty simple to integrate. However, because of it's internal queue system, it's not exactly the same as comskip. If you call ShowAnalyzer.exe with the media file, it will add that file to it's built in queue. If you don't want that behavior, and want to instead, track when a thread is completed, you can call ShowAnalyzerEngine.exe with the file directly. This will create a process to handle that file immediately, and the process will close upon completion. This would pretty much mirror the way comskip does it, with the exception of not needing to pass an .ini file, and different return codes.

Yes, I already implemented it using ShowAnalyzerEngine.exe. Getting to work was easy, getting it to work "in the wild" (where people have a large number of different, and unexpected, environments) and getting a usable UI is another story.

[freewheeling]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

So now we know why no commercials were not detected. Once you get the donator's version you should be good to go.

VideoReDo and comskip are two completely different animals and use different methods to detect commercials. There is no way to adapt the parameters.

Pointing the plugin to a batch file instead of comskip.exe is not supported. If there is a demand for something like that I'll look into how difficult it would be to implement.

Thanks, Tom. I downloaded and installed the donator's version, and modified the ini file with the ouput_default=0 line. I am now getting an edl file and it's finding and skipping *some* (but not all) commercials. I understand that VideoRedo can input the edl files (or at least some kind of output from comskip) so I can use that as input to identify where it's not sensitive enough to find commercials and tweak it there. Also, I think there is a batchfile plugin for SageTV, but don't recall what it is. Something that ends in a "Q" I think. Oh yeah, SJQ by Slugger.

[tmiranda]

You can make comskip produce .vprj files by setting one of the .ini parameters. Something like output_vprj=1.

I do not have an HD-PVR but I'm sure comskip can be tuned to do a pretty good job. You can also use ShowAnalyzer, which I am working on now.

If you want to do more than just run a commercial detection program you will be better off using SJQ. This plugin is really meant to just run comskip.

Tom

[phelme]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Version 1.10 of the UI Mod is now available. Changes:

- Show comskip icon in header if comskip is active.
- Change color of comskip icon next to show that is being processed.
- Changed minimum Comskip Playback STVi requirement to 2.0.5.

Is there some configuration to enable the showing of icons in the header or on the recording being processed? I'm not seeing either. I have the latest STVi as well.

[freewheeling]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

You can make comskip produce .vprj files by setting one of the .ini parameters. Something like output_vprj=1.

I do not have an HD-PVR but I'm sure comskip can be tuned to do a pretty good job. You can also use ShowAnalyzer, which I am working on now.

If you want to do more than just run a commercial detection program you will be better off using SJQ. This plugin is really meant to just run comskip.

Tom

Well, it worked a couple of times... but now isn't processing files. I checked the CommercialDetector parameters, and it apparently has a queue of 17 files, but doesn't seem to be doing anything on any of them. I manually tried to run comskip on two files, but checking the log it only started on one of them, and hasn't really done anything on that. I restarted the log, because it was crammed with a lot of irrelevant stuff from the last few days, so the attached file is relatively small... but I can't find anything in it that's a clue to what's going on. I've also attached the ini file I'm using, but apart from changing the types of detection (a change that worked pretty well on one file) all I did was enable VideoRedo output. However, it wasn't working even before I did that, so I don't think that's the problem. The show that it worked well on was an episode of NCIS called "Angel of Death" so I included that edl file, but it did not work on another episode of NCIS or an episode or Rubicon. Sort of frustrating. It's like it just started to work, and then quit.

The Rubicon and other NCIS episodes seem to have log and logo files, but no edl file, so it's no longer outputing edl.

Update: One more thing. I tried to delete the log and logo files, but the one for the second NCIS episode started again right away. It occurred to me that the problem might be that the queue is using different versions of the ini file, and only the latest one works. So the queue is backed up, and I don't know how to zero it out and start over. Doesn't seem to want to do that.