Comskip SageTV vs WMC

[ThePaladinTech]

this may be my imagination, but I thought I'd ask the experts if there is any difference in the recording made by SageTV, WMC, or anything else for that matter?

I'm not sure but it seems like Comskip works better on WMC than on SageTV, this strikes me as odd as the recordings in both cases are coming from a Silicon Dust Prime Tuner.

I thought in both cases the "Raw" stream was just captured to a file so it shouldn't be any different?

One potential difference I do know of is that with sage I am running comskip while the show is live.

My comskip settings are nearly identical for WMC and SageTV. the only differecnes being the output .edl vs whatever WMC uses, and the process live tv option enabled for SageTV.

Like I said, could totally be my imagination, and as I think about... I think I could say that sometimes SageTV does better than WMC.

But still, it seems like if I am recording the same show, using the same hardware, I should get the same result??

any thoughts?

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by ThePaladinTech

this may be my imagination, but I thought I'd ask the experts if there is any difference in the recording made by SageTV, WMC, or anything else for that matter?

I'm not sure but it seems like Comskip works better on WMC than on SageTV, this strikes me as odd as the recordings in both cases are coming from a Silicon Dust Prime Tuner.

I thought in both cases the "Raw" stream was just captured to a file so it shouldn't be any different?

One potential difference I do know of is that with sage I am running comskip while the show is live.

My comskip settings are nearly identical for WMC and SageTV. the only differecnes being the output .edl vs whatever WMC uses, and the process live tv option enabled for SageTV.

Like I said, could totally be my imagination, and as I think about... I think I could say that sometimes SageTV does better than WMC.

But still, it seems like if I am recording the same show, using the same hardware, I should get the same result??

any thoughts?

I think when you set comskip to process live TV it cuts some corners to keep up making it less accurate.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by ThePaladinTech

this may be my imagination, but I thought I'd ask the experts if there is any difference in the recording made by SageTV, WMC, or anything else for that matter?

I'm not sure but it seems like Comskip works better on WMC than on SageTV, this strikes me as odd as the recordings in both cases are coming from a Silicon Dust Prime Tuner.

I thought in both cases the "Raw" stream was just captured to a file so it shouldn't be any different?

One potential difference I do know of is that with sage I am running comskip while the show is live.

My comskip settings are nearly identical for WMC and SageTV. the only differecnes being the output .edl vs whatever WMC uses, and the process live tv option enabled for SageTV.

Like I said, could totally be my imagination, and as I think about... I think I could say that sometimes SageTV does better than WMC.

But still, it seems like if I am recording the same show, using the same hardware, I should get the same result??

any thoughts?

You have to remember that WMC remuxes to WTV files so that probably cleans up the files. If you are using SageTV for OTA and remuxing to mpg it is not that good. That is one of the reasons I use OpenDCT for both OTA and Cable.... using OPENDCT my comskips are more accurate.

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I think when you set comskip to process live TV it cuts some corners to keep up making it less accurate.

Yes, I found that in the comskip documentation recently trying to tune my install and stopped live processing. There is an improvement, but still deciding if it's worth it especially with how I like to watch sports, (delayed start).

I verified by taking something that I had used the "livetv" comskip on that had some cuts a little off and re-running comskip on it without the livetv flag. Same file and same comskip, and the cuts were better.

[alfi33]

I thought that live TV Comskip marks were only supposed to be less accurate during the recording. After the recording finishes, Comskip is able to fine tune it's marks and makes them more accurate. I could be mistaken...

Do you guys that run Comskip on live TV have trouble with it crashing? Comskip regularly crashes on me when I have live_tv enabled.

[ThePaladinTech]

I'll keep an eye out for it crashing, but I don't think mine has since I've returned to SageTV (with v9)

I've found the discussion interesting so far, I'm going to test turning live off and see if it is markedly better.

As I menitoned, it *seems* likes it's worse meaning its not apparent, just a *feeling* it is worse. If I don't see a marked improvement I will leave the live enabled

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by alfi33

I thought that live TV Comskip marks were only supposed to be less accurate during the recording. After the recording finishes, Comskip is able to fine tune it's marks and makes them more accurate. I could be mistaken...

Do you guys that run Comskip on live TV have trouble with it crashing? Comskip regularly crashes on me when I have live_tv enabled.

Once in a while when I have at least three shows recording simultaneously, I find that Comskip crashes on one of the shows. Sage options indicate that I can delete comskip files (even though it never really completed), so I do, and then ask it to rerun comskip on the same show, but it just never happens.

I have also tried to enable the "playnice" feature, to drop CPU usage, but that has virtually no effect on this occasional crash. I have gone back to an earlier version of comskip that does not crash as often, but it still occurs two or three times a week, depending on how heavy the recording schedule is.

[KryptoNyte]

Regarding the original topic, I have both Sage and WMC running, and I have tested the same comskip version on the same program recorded from each at the exact same time (using VAP for VideoRedo) and the auto commercial cuts shown in VideoRedo (created by comskip) are virtually identical.