Commercial Advance Beta Release

[ToxMox]

What is this 2 pass setting you guys are talking about? I can't seem to find it in the ini.

[Jere_Jones]

It is two_pass_logo in the ini file.

Remember that not all possible settings are in the ini file. Only the ones that you want to override the default settings.

Jere

[ToxMox]

so you are saying that two_pass_logo defaults to true?

[Jere_Jones]

Yep.

Jere

[sleonard]

I see where you're coming from. This will be kindof a comskip manager service. It would monitor certain folders and if a new mpg showed up, it would start processing it.

Yes, but in a "perfect Sage world" instead of just monitoring folders it would communicate w/ the Sage service to get show name, channel, and scheduling info.

More than you know. The current ComSkip uses a very stripped down MPEG decoder that is very fast. The ComSkipTNG is going to be a DirectShow application (necessary to process files of different codecs), and the best speed I can get is only half what I get now. Ugh

It sounds like it might also work on DivX?

The profiles are easy. I'll have to figure someway for ComSkip to get information out of SageTV on demand. Something like:

It appears you are already working on exactly what I'm thinking about.

I assume you would save the profiles as .ini files. I would save them with a name such as showname.ini, e.g. - if the filename were TheWireSlapstick-984007-0.mpg comskip would save a TheWire.ini. It would be chosen for any episode of The Wire.

Another idea. Perhaps it would create 2 .ini's. A showname.ini and a channel.ini that had information specific to a channel such as logo descriptions.

The feed back is a little harder, but is needed. It's on the backburner for thought.

This is the key but I have know idea really how this would be accomplished and I'm not a programmer either. But I can think about how I would like it to work. Hopefully this helps stimulate ideas.

This isn't well-formed yet but i would think that I would want it a lot easier for the user than editing .ini files. Maybe this little part could be handled by an STV? A setup page that lets you tell comskip that the 3rd commercial break started ~15 sec. too soon or the 4th show segment had a commercial that was not detected and it was at ~43m 30s. Comskip would then re-analyze the video learning from the feedback and then adjusting the show and channel .ini's.

It doesn't hurt to dream

Keep up the great work, I'm looking forward to seeing your new version when it is released. I can see the paypal orders streaming in

BTW, how should we refer to the new version? I assume its name will be different than the open source comskip.exe

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by Jere_Jones

<snip>
I don't understand what CC data has to do with real time processing.
Jere

ComSkip seems to work much more accurately with CC data in the file.

Because of this I was wondering if it is possible to not use other detection techniques and get ComSkip to run even faster while still keeping the accuracy.

As an example, how important is logo detection when you have CC data?

If I were to try and not use certain detection mechanism, which are the most time consuming/process intensive as far as ComSkip is concerned?

[Jere_Jones]

Originally Posted by Cayars

Because of this I was wondering if it is possible to not use other detection techniques and get ComSkip to run even faster while still keeping the accuracy.

The biggest speed boost I have seen is setting verbose=0. This should decrease running time by 10% or so.

Originally Posted by Cayars

As an example, how important is logo detection when you have CC data?

For the shows that I run, logo detection is the most important. And after the logo is locked on, there isn't really any performance hit.

Originally Posted by Cayars

If I were to try and not use certain detection mechanism, which are the most time consuming/process intensive as far as ComSkip is concerned?

Sadly, the most time consuming/process intensive is decoding the MPG. It uses about 98% of the processor time. There's nothing I can do about that. I've done (IMHO) a pretty good job of getting ComSkip to process all the different sources of information as fast as possible. Try running a show with detect_method=1 and see if you get that large an improvement.

Are you running the 0.64 I posted last night? That version should solve a lot of the speed problems with livetv=1.

Jere

[krutaw]

Originally Posted by Jere_Jones

Sadly, the most time consuming/process intensive is decoding the MPG. It uses about 98% of the processor time. There's nothing I can do about that. I've done (IMHO) a pretty good job of getting ComSkip to process all the different sources of information as fast as possible. Try running a show with detect_method=1 and see if you get that large an improvement.

Wow, now here's a thought... What if an MPG decoder card was used on the system to decode the mpg? I realize there's probably quite a bit of work that would have to be done in order to access the stream in the mpg decoder card, but it would probably speed up the commercial processing.

Whatcha think Jere?

[Jere_Jones]

Originally Posted by krutaw

Wow, now here's a thought... What if an MPG decoder card was used on the system to decode the mpg? I realize there's probably quite a bit of work that would have to be done in order to access the stream in the mpg decoder card, but it would probably speed up the commercial processing.

Whatcha think Jere?

I don't think so. I think it's kinda like asking the new guy at work to do something. It doesn't get done fast, but it still saves you time because you're not doing it.

However, I've been wrong before.

Do you have any references I can check out?

Jere

[nielm]

Originally Posted by krutaw

What if an MPG decoder card was used on the system to decode the mpg?

Most assisted MPG decoding on graphics cards only works when the decoded stream is displayed directly on the graphics card - there is no way to redirect the decoded raw video stream back to the CPU to be processed by something else...
This is why filters such as FFDSHOW don't work withMPEG2 decoders when hardware accelleration is enabled.

[Crashless]

I'm running the pvr350 and currently enjoy about 3-10% usage during live TV watching on my underclocked amd 2600+. I haven't tried the RT comskip yet because krutaw's vbscript has been so great. My system only needs a 2hr window to mark commercials on all of my recorded programs for the day. I might give this a try today, but I'm expecting a huge increase in my CPU usage as comskip will be decoding the stream in addition to the 350. I'll post my results anyway though.

[sleonard]

What does the latest setting "livetv=X" do. It isn't listed on the wiki pages yet.

Thanks,

Scott

[Cayars]

This setting allows Comskip to write out the txt file while it's still processing the file. This allows an STV to use the file as it's being generated (real-time). The STV needs to be written to do this and to keep updating the timeline.

[abasu2003]

Originally Posted by JasonJoel

There is a setting to force COMSKIP to not take all available resources...

If you set the "play_nice_Start" and "play_nice_end" in the COMSKIP.INI file it will only use up to 50% of your CPU for COMSKIP during the hours that fall within the play_nice start & end. (At least I think it is 50%, been a while since I looked).

I've been trying to find a centralized place where all of the comskip options are defined and I can't find it. I looked in the wiki but it doens't seem to be updated. For the time being, cna someone tell me what the format of the above option should be (i.e. is it military time play_nice_Start=1500?).

[ajuhawk]

Originally Posted by abasu2003

I've been trying to find a centralized place where all of the comskip options are defined and I can't find it. I looked in the wiki but it doens't seem to be updated. For the time being, cna someone tell me what the format of the above option should be (i.e. is it military time play_nice_Start=1500?).

yes it is military time. If you look in the FAQ attached to Jere_Jones posts he has a lot of info in there. particularly at http://www.sage-community.org/index....ComSkipIniInfo

-AJ

[Jere_Jones]

Originally Posted by abasu2003

I've been trying to find a centralized place where all of the comskip options are defined and I can't find it. I looked in the wiki but it doens't seem to be updated. For the time being, cna someone tell me what the format of the above option should be (i.e. is it military time play_nice_Start=1500?).

Did you find this? It says version 0.62, but it's still good for version 0.64 since the last 2 were only bugfixes, and I don't remove options from one version to the next.

Jere

[foolio]

Originally Posted by Jere_Jones

Did you find this? It says version 0.62, but it's still good for version 0.64 since the last 2 were only bugfixes, and I don't remove options from one version to the next.

Jere

Hi Jere:

could you tell me what number to use for detection method if I want to use all technique except for CC? (my source doesn't have CC)

I can't figure out the math logic involved:
detect_method - a sum of the detection methods to be used (1 - 255):

-- 1 = black frame detection
-- 2 = logo detection
-- 4 = scene change rate monitoring
-- 8 = fuzzy logic
-- 16 = closed captioning
-- 32 = aspect ration

So AR (32) + FUZZY LOGIC (8) + SCENE DETECT (4) + LOGO (2) + BLACK FRAME (1) = 47??

why is everything 255??

[sleonard]

why is everything 255??

My guess is to leave room for 2 more detection methods.

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by foolio

Hi Jere:

could you tell me what number to use for detection method if I want to use all technique except for CC? (my source doesn't have CC)

I can't figure out the math logic involved:
detect_method - a sum of the detection methods to be used (1 - 255):

-- 1 = black frame detection
-- 2 = logo detection
-- 4 = scene change rate monitoring
-- 8 = fuzzy logic
-- 16 = closed captioning
-- 32 = aspect ration

So AR (32) + FUZZY LOGIC (8) + SCENE DETECT (4) + LOGO (2) + BLACK FRAME (1) = 47??

why is everything 255??

That's just the logic us programmers use. 255 is just a DO EVERYTHING.

In your case you should still be able to use 255 and not have to single out the CC data. If CC data isn't in the file, it won't be used.

[Jere_Jones]

Originally Posted by foolio

Hi Jere:

could you tell me what number to use for detection method if I want to use all technique except for CC? (my source doesn't have CC)

I can't figure out the math logic involved:

Looks to me like you got if figured out perfectly.

Originally Posted by foolio

why is everything 255??

The detect_method is actually a decimal representation of a binary flag sequence. Make sense? If not, think of it like this:

255 = 0xFF = 11111111b
 
11111111b basically means:
 
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | - Black Frame
| | | | | | --- Logo Detection
| | | | | ----- Scene Changes
| | | | ------- Fuzzy Logic
| | | --------- Closed Captioning
| | ----------- Aspect Ratio
| ------------- Reserved for future use
--------------- Reserved for future use

A one in a certain position means "use me" and a zero means "don't use me".

Since you don't want to use Closed captioning, you should change the Closed captioning bit to a 0 and get 11101111b which is equal to 239 or since the leftmost 2 bits aren't used yet you could also go with 00101111b which (as you discovered) is 47. The end result: using detect_method=239 or detect_method=47 will give you the same results.

Of course you could also ignore this entire post and do exactly what you did that already gave you the correct setting.

Did that help or just confuse you more?

Jere