Commercial Advance Beta Release

[foolio]

thanks for the clarification, jere!

Was wondering if someone could answer this - now that I got my dvb-s working with sagetv - does the frame size/resolution have an effect on the comskip?

My dvb recordings are 544x480 - does this affect logo detects, etc? if so, any chance you can have a parameter in the comskip ini for resolution?

thanks

[zoundz]

Originally Posted by foolio

...now that I got my dvb-s working with sagetv...

What DVB-S and how did you get it working? I'd love to make my 1020a hook in with SageTV.

[fizzylime]

Sorry guys in advance for this lame question... new to Sage and just getting started playing around with all the great options. That said I need a little clarification related to getting comskip to work on SageTV Client. In the FAQ's it says to set up your recordings directory using UNC, which I get. What I don't get is the part about if, for example, you have your recordings directory on D:/SageRecordings, that this is "saged" as Recordings_d. Does this refer to how Sage internally references the directory? Can someone explain this in terms my feable mind can understand?

[foolio]

Originally Posted by zoundz

What DVB-S and how did you get it working? I'd love to make my 1020a hook in with SageTV.

check out the last 20 posts in the general sage forum about dvb-s - Im using it with my skystar2

[JasonJoel]

Lets see...

The idea is that on the Sage server you specify your video directory as a UNC path (\\machine\share).

Then when the sage server is looking for drive space, etc, it uses that UNC path.

On the client, it also uses this setting to gain access to the video files. So you need to insure that the client machine can connect via that UNC path.

That is how using UNC paths makes things work better on the client - it uses the exact same reference to the location of the video file as the server.

When programs (like COMSKIP) execute, they look for the video file at the location the sage server says it is at. So if you are just using local drives, it will look by drive letter. Such as F:\VIDEO, if that were your video directory name.

Now when you run the same programs on the client, they will look for the video file at the SAME LOCATION. So the client would also look at F:\VIDEO.

If you had the drives mapped the exact same on the client as the server, it would still work! For instance if you had F: on your client mapped to the F: on the server, COMSKIP, et al, would still work.

That is a pain though, as each share uses a network connection on the server machine - which there are a limited number of- regardless whether the drive is in use or not at the time, and it takes the end user actually mapping all of the drives on the client machine correctly.

Does that help make any sense?

Jason Bottjen

Originally Posted by fizzylime

Sorry guys in advance for this lame question... new to Sage and just getting started playing around with all the great options. That said I need a little clarification related to getting comskip to work on SageTV Client. In the FAQ's it says to set up your recordings directory using UNC, which I get. What I don't get is the part about if, for example, you have your recordings directory on D:/SageRecordings, that this is "saged" as Recordings_d. Does this refer to how Sage internally references the directory? Can someone explain this in terms my feable mind can understand?

[fizzylime]

Yes... that clears it up some, but I'm still confused by the FAQ's explaination of how to set this up. For example, my server (Zeus) has all SageTV recordings going to its' D:\Recordings drive. So on Zeus I should set up the folder as shared and on the client I should set it up as to read \\Zeus\Recordings right? I did this and SageTV works but not ComSkip. So according to the FAQ's, I should really be setting it up like the following right? \\Zeus\Recordings_d\Recordings Now, I haven't tried it, but only because I don't get it. What, exactly, does "Recordings_d" refer to?

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by fizzylime

So according to the FAQ's, I should really be setting it up like the following right? \\Zeus\Recordings_d\Recordings Now, I haven't tried it, but only because I don't get it. What, exactly, does "Recordings_d" refer to?

I believe "Recordigns_D" would be the shared name of drive D. For lack of a better reference at my finger tips, see page 15 of the v2.1 manual for a little UNC info.

\\Server\Shared path name\directory name

The SageTV community website comskip FAQ says:

So if the name of your Sage server is MySageBox and you store your recordings in D:\SageRecordings which is saged as Recordings_D then you would want to use \\MySageBox\Recordings_D\SageRecordings.

I think the word I bolded (saged) should be shared.

- Andy

[fizzylime]

That clears it up... Thanks!

[DIBU]

Originally Posted by Opus4

I believe "Recordigns_D" would be the shared name of drive D. For lack of a better reference at my finger tips, see page 15 of the v2.1 manual for a little UNC info.

\\Server\Shared path name\directory name

The SageTV community website comskip FAQ says: I think the word I bolded (saged) should be shared.

- Andy

it workes

[ajuhawk]

Jere,

I'm having problems with version 0.64 crashing. I've got the verbose set to 2 and it's spitting the following out at the end of the log file

The second run ended with an error code of -1073741819
Successfully deleted batchfile - C:\Program Files\Frey Technologies\SageTV\comskip.bat

I've also seen the following

The second run ended with an error code of 1
Successfully deleted batchfile - C:\Program Files\Frey Technologies\SageTV\comskip.bat

It seems to be crashing at various points in running...if you need further info let me know and I'll get that to you.

-AJ

[Jere_Jones]

Any negative error codes indicate an unexpected crash. I'll need to see the entire log. Just send it to my email in my signature.

An exit code of 1 means that comskip found commercials. It is a normal exit even though Sage may report a failure. An exit code of 0 means that commercials were not found, but the program exited normally.

Jere

[JasonJoel]

Hey Jere. Just wanted to say thanks for all of the work you've done on this. I'm actually combing through the code to see if there is any bright ideas I can come up with. Since I do pattern detection as part of my normal work living, I thought I would take a look. (haven't gotten very far through it yet)

One of the ideas I had was to make a signature database of everything I record and then taking some sound statistical principals to run regressions on the analysis to see what really fits best overall (assuming I need to live with one set of detection settings for all shows). Would take some time before you had any statistically meaningful data, but might be interesting. I think you might have mentioned something like that before? What did you find?

Anyway, even though you are going non-open source on your future versions, I still think you should setup a paypal account or something for donations. I know your work has added more benefit to my PVR than pretty much any of the other more cosmetic UI changes. I would be happy to donate. Just as I have to other people on these boards for tools I use daily and think are essential to the experience.

Anyway, keep up the good work.

[krustyjonez]

All,

Does anyone have any tips on improving comskip detection accuracy on sporting events? I watch a lot of soccer on Fox Sports World & GolTV and comskip seems to struggle discerning the commercials. It either detects programming as commercials or fails to find anything. Both channels have closed captioning available during their programs. Is the ticker of scores at the bottom throwing off comskip? I can't seem to tell from the log.

I've attached a recent log and my comskip.ini in case anyone can tell something. I'm using the version of comskip packaged with the latest Cayars STV.

Thanks,

Jon

[abasu2003]

in the comskip.txt file, what would the conversion to timestamps involve?

[Jere_Jones]

Originally Posted by abasu2003

in the comskip.txt file, what would the conversion to timestamps involve?

The numbers in the *.txt file are framenumbers. To convert to timestamps, just divide by your frame per second rate. For NTSC, it is 29.97. For PAL, it is 25. The number you get after dividing by the frame rate is how far into the show that "point" is in seconds.

Jere

[Jere_Jones]

Originally Posted by krustyjonez

All,

Does anyone have any tips on improving comskip detection accuracy on sporting events? I watch a lot of soccer on Fox Sports World & GolTV and comskip seems to struggle discerning the commercials. It either detects programming as commercials or fails to find anything. Both channels have closed captioning available during their programs. Is the ticker of scores at the bottom throwing off comskip? I can't seem to tell from the log.

I've attached a recent log and my comskip.ini in case anyone can tell something. I'm using the version of comskip packaged with the latest Cayars STV.

Thanks,

Jon

I think the biggest thing throwing off comskip is that it didn't find a black frame for over 50 minutes. Judging by your log file, I recommend you try it with a detection method of 3. That will only use the black frame and logo detection. It will be more conservative in determining commercials and will (almost) never mark the show as a commercial.

Jere

[Jere_Jones]

Originally Posted by JasonJoel

Since I do pattern detection as part of my normal work living,

Doesn't everyone?

Originally Posted by JasonJoel

One of the ideas I had was to make a signature database of everything I record and then taking some sound statistical principals to run regressions on the analysis to see what really fits best overall (assuming I need to live with one set of detection settings for all shows). Would take some time before you had any statistically meaningful data, but might be interesting. I think you might have mentioned something like that before? What did you find?

I've thought seriously about this, but the sticking point was always the signature. How do you assign a number to a series of changing pictures and have the difference in those numbers proportional to the difference in the pictures? Ignoring, of course, shifts in luminosity. I'm open to new ideas.

Originally Posted by JasonJoel

Anyway, even though you are going non-open source on your future versions, I still think you should setup a paypal account or something for donations. I know your work has added more benefit to my PVR than pretty much any of the other more cosmetic UI changes. I would be happy to donate. Just as I have to other people on these boards for tools I use daily and think are essential to the experience.

Anyway, keep up the good work.

Thanks for the kind words. I guess I could share the PayPal account that I already have.

For those of you that would like to donate, here is a donation link to my PayPal account. All I ask is that donations be over $0.32.

Jere

[Cayars]

Hey Jere,

How about an update on what you've been up to and how you're making out on the TNG?

[foolio]

does the frame size matter for comskip? i notice i get better results recording off the pvr-250 with the expected size of 720x480. It isn't very good with my DVB-S recordings of 544x480. is this because of problems with logo detection?

[Jere_Jones]

Originally Posted by Cayars

Hey Jere,

How about an update on what you've been up to and how you're making out on the TNG?

Sure.

What I've been up to

I've been spending most of my time working around the house and taking care of the family. Except for New Year's weekend, we went to Miami. WOW!! That was a good time.

Now, everyone is healthy, the holidays are over, and it's back to life as normal. Oh how I would love to work on CommDetect. Unfortunately, I have to send my laptop (my development machine) to get a broken hinge repaired. So I'll be without it for at least a week.
BUT, after that, I should be back in the game.

Progress report on CommDetect

CommDetect is working on all types of files (mpg, divx, avi, etc) that I have throw at it.

CommDetect can be told which decoder to use. (make a huge difference in quality of detection and speed)

CommDetect is utilizing video and audio.

CommDetect is not utilizing captions yet.

CommDetect is REALLY slow! (ComSkip runs at about 180fps on my development machine vs. CommDetect's 85fps)

CommDetect can show what it is detecting.

Logo detection takes about 15 seconds.

The detected logo can be overlayed onto the preview so you can SEE what was isolated. Different color's show if individual pixels match the expected logo or not.

Jere