Commercial Advance Beta Release

[Jere_Jones]

For those that are curious:

The directshow version of Comskip:TNG has been scrapped. It was just WAY to slow. With no post processing, it would only decode the show at one third the speed of comskip. That was unacceptable and unavoidable. Hence, it is no more.

So I figure the answer is to include an MPEG decoder, but any commercial decoders are between $10,000 and $50,000 for the SDK and that doesn't include royalties. Well, I just couldn't support that, so I'm currently writting my own MPEG video/audio decoder. This may take a while.

I will continue to update comskip with any requests and bug fixes (if I can find the problem! Darn DVB's! )

I will shortly (a week or so) be releasing a program to monitor directories and keep them clean and run comskip (if so desired) and mpg2srt (if so desired).
A deluxe version will be available in the future that will distribute the processing across computers on the net (think server/client).

[setherd]

see it's things like that, that confuse us newbies, the documentation needs to be consistent.

of course this is a common problem especially with software where the users can customize it.

[Stuntman]

I'm trying to get Comskip to use CC for it's algorithm.. but I am not sure I got it right yet. I modified the registry as suggested in other posts, enabled it within my STV (Cayars 17).. and got the following in the log file for last nights "Lost"... What could be wrong, or am I missing something in this??

CC's detected on the following frames - 1 total blocks
--------------------------------------
0 - CC start - 0 end - 116830 type - NONE length - 64 minutes, 58.23 seconds

Caption sums
---------------------------
Pop on captions: 0: 0.00 - 0.00 seconds
Roll up captions: 0: 0.00 - 0.00 seconds
Paint on captions: 0: 0.00 - 0.00 seconds
No captions: 116831:100.00 - 64 minutes, 58.26 seconds
The NONE type of closed captions were determined to be the most common.
Start - 1 End - 694 CCF - 1 CCL - 0 Type - NONE
Start - 695 End - 1596 CCF - 1 CCL - 0 Type - NONE

[iamnaeth]

I'm sorry if this has been covered before but I couldn't locate it with a search or on the comskip options.

Background: I use my HTPC to view movies and record TV at the same time. To get the best result when watching my movies, I use ffdshow w/ zoomplayer and almost max out my CPU. This make them look great unfortunately, whenever comskip begins to run the audio and video of my movies begins to stutter.

Question: Right now, I have comskip set to run only when Sage is asleep and make sure that its awake when I begin to watch my movies. I do see an option that would be infinitely easier though and was wondering if it was available. Is there anyway to schedule a window for comskip to run? Say, only run comskip between 12am-12pm and process all the recordings from that day? I'll be at work between those hours, or be able to setup hours for different days of the week, ie weekends. I don't watch enough TV to make it through all the recordings in one evening, in addition, i don't mind watching shows without the commercials skipped. I can press a button 4 times, hahaha. I do mind my movies being interrupted in the middle of a viewing.

Any solutions would be great, thanks!

[foolio]

Originally Posted by Jere_Jones

For those that are curious:
I will continue to update comskip with any requests and bug fixes (if I can find the problem! Darn DVB's! )

Hi Jere:

can you give some more insight into your fixes for the "Darn DVB's" ?? I think it's in regard to the DVB-S issues I was having with comskip?

[heffe2001]

Anybody build this program on a linux box yet? I remember somewhere towards the front of this thread where it was mentioned that it would be possibly done, but can't remember seeing anything about it after that.

[heffe2001]

Originally Posted by Jere_Jones

I will shortly (a week or so) be releasing a program to monitor directories and keep them clean and run comskip (if so desired) and mpg2srt (if so desired).
A deluxe version will be available in the future that will distribute the processing across computers on the net (think server/client).

If this works from a PC not even running Sage, then this will work instead of a linux version for me . I just want to run the comskip program from my fileserver which doesn't run Sage at all.

[Jere_Jones]

Originally Posted by foolio

Hi Jere:

can you give some more insight into your fixes for the "Darn DVB's" ?? I think it's in regard to the DVB-S issues I was having with comskip?

The problem is that the mpeg decoding library that comskip uses crashes on certain DVB streams and I just don't know enough (yet) to figure out why.

As a seperate problem, if you have comskip working very well on some tuners but not others, then the problem isn't the show, but the tuner's settings. For example, one tuner may record the show a little brighter than another. Since comskip uses one ini for all settings, this can cause comskip to work better on shows from one tuner vice another. A slight adjustment of the offending tuner should fix the problem.

Jere

[Jere_Jones]

Originally Posted by heffe2001

If this works from a PC not even running Sage, then this will work instead of a linux version for me . I just want to run the comskip program from my fileserver which doesn't run Sage at all.

What I am writing is unrelated to sagetv or even comskip. It is just tailored for how comskip/sage/directories interact.

I don't use linux at all so the folder monitor program will not be released for it. (Probably... ) One of the MythTV developers made a linux version of comskip at one time, but I haven't heard anything in a while.

Jere

[phantomfsoc]

Whats the status of CC to use with CS. I know sage now as it built in, but I'd like to use CC to help CS do a better job, but I can't find any of the files to do it
Merci

[turak]

Originally Posted by phantomfsoc

AMD xp 2500, 528m DDR, Asus ATI 9550 128m w/ATI Dongle, SageTV Client 2.1, Toshiba 34hf83 HDTV

528m of DDR? How does that work? One 512mb DIMM and a 16mb SIMM?

[phantomfsoc]

Jeeze, I've had that sig for ages and no one noticed. Must be a slow news day when we're checkin out each others Signatures..... I'm over it thanks.... for makin me look stupid in front of everyone

[turak]

Originally Posted by phantomfsoc

Jeeze, I've had that sig for ages and no one noticed. Must be a slow news day when we're checkin out each others Signatures..... I'm over it thanks.... for makin me look stupid in front of everyone

No problem You need to enable CC in your capture card. This should help.

[Jere_Jones]

Originally Posted by phantomfsoc

Whats the status of CC to use with CS. I know sage now as it built in, but I'd like to use CC to help CS do a better job, but I can't find any of the files to do it
Merci

You don't need any extra files to use closed captions with comskip. If you have the captions are embedded in the MPEG then comskip has access to them.

There was a time when I thought about using the smi/srt files, but it ended up easier/faster/better to pull them straight out of the show.

Jere

[phantomfsoc]

Thanks Jere,
I have the embeded ones working, so you just saved me some time...
Thanks alot

[julesjohn]

I have noticed that Comskip performs its analysis on some files and not others, but it may be due to how I am putting the machine into hibernation. My SageTV HTPC uses Sagewake and therefore I usually force hibernation (from my remote) when I have watched my last show in the evening.

So that said I am wondering if that affects Comskip processing or not. I have it set to background processing. It just seems it gets out of sync. Not sure.

[Jere_Jones]

Originally Posted by julesjohn

I have noticed that Comskip performs its analysis on some files and not others, but it may be due to how I am putting the machine into hibernation. My SageTV HTPC uses Sagewake and therefore I usually force hibernation (from my remote) when I have watched my last show in the evening.

So that said I am wondering if that affects Comskip processing or not. I have it set to background processing. It just seems it gets out of sync. Not sure.

I am almost certain that if you put your computer to sleep while comskip is running that bad things will happen. The decoder is not designed for that type of abuse.

Someone somewhere posted a utility that would shut the computer down after the cpu usage dropped. That may help.

Jere

[julesjohn]

As I said I do use Sagewake, but maybe I need to note to the creator of Sagewake about its interaction or it needing to be aware of Comskip. I did so here. And his response is here but here it is quoted too in case you find it useful...

Originally Posted by mwhitlock

Comskip should process the PBT_APMQUERYSUSPEND Windows broadcast message and return BROADCAST_QUERY_DENY if it is currently processing. This will deny SageWake's request to suspend/hibernate the system.

Of course, there really should be no problem suspending during Comskip processing if he's doing it right. ;-)

Thanks.

[julesjohn]

Feature Request: I noted this on Cayers DVD Burner thread here, but I thought I would note it in the Comskip thread too.

Great to have the option of DVD burners within SageTV STV's to burn DVDs that utilize the Comskip data when burning. So the output would strip the commercial sections out of the file and burn in a continuous fashion the movie file. I realize we could use editing software, but why go through that when we have the Comskip data already and we can edit the data for it within the comskip dat files.

Anyway just something to keep on the radar, but if the DVD burner coders don't talk to the Comskip coders then this won't get done or done correctly anyway. Hence...putting it on both threads. Thanks!

[Cayars]

Well I answered this in the other thread too. The functionality you just asked for is already in DVDBurner.