STV Import: Comskip Playback support for SageTV v4 (v1.3 18/Oct/2005)

[owilsky]

Originally Posted by erik

That parameter has disappearded (got automated reading the mpeg file) about 50 releases ago.

Maybe comskip doesn't need this setting anymore, but nielm's STVi to determine the correct display of the timeline? Just a guess...

[erik]

Originally Posted by owilsky

Maybe comskip doesn't need this setting anymore, but nielm's STVi to determine the correct display of the timeline? Just a guess...

Pardon my quick earlier response. Yes, I do agree.

[ldavis]

Hmmm... if I remember correctly, there was a setting for comskip in advanced options which you can set to PAL or NTSC. Are you sure that you set this properly?

In response, this is set correctly. I have run a calculation based on the actual number of frames vs. 60 mins (for a one hour show) and adjusted the comskip txt file frame numbers. Cut points were perfect.

[JohnBCasey]

Does commercial skip work with a MediaMVP extender?
Is there a particular plugin required to support this configuration?

[cavalli]

On cayars the comskip bars were purple and on this import they are black/dark green. Is this configurable? Is it a .properties function? Is it a graphic file? Only the color of the import?

Thanks!

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by JohnBCasey

Does commercial skip work with a MediaMVP extender?
Is there a particular plugin required to support this configuration?

Yes.
Install the comskip plugin on the MVP like you would on any client or server.

Gerry

[hchucky]

I just made the switch from SA to Comskip to get at HD support. Comskip appears to be analyzing the shows correctly but the jumps do not appear correctly on the time bar when playing the show back.

For example here are the analysis results of one HD show
FILE PROCESSING COMPLETE 212008 FRAMES AT 5994
-------------------
1 1836
69255 77737
97011 101738
140915 149447
177649 187398
209745 212008

but in the time line it only shows 3 jumps and those are not accurate. The SD shows appear to be dead on so I'm only seeing this with the HD recordings. Is anyone else seeing this issue?

HC

[ldavis]

Originally Posted by hchucky

I just made the switch from SA to Comskip to get at HD support. Comskip appears to be analyzing the shows correctly but the jumps do not appear correctly on the time bar when playing the show back.

For example here are the analysis results of one HD show
FILE PROCESSING COMPLETE 212008 FRAMES AT 5994
-------------------
1 1836
69255 77737
97011 101738
140915 149447
177649 187398
209745 212008

but in the time line it only shows 3 jumps and those are not accurate. The SD shows appear to be dead on so I'm only seeing this with the HD recordings. Is anyone else seeing this issue?

HC

There are a couple of problems that you have here:

1.) This was apparently a 720p/60fps show. Currently. the comskip plugin cannot handle 60fps output. There is a fix in comskip by inserting the following:

sage_framenumber_bug=1

If you do not want to re-run this particular file, simply divide each frame number in the .txt file by 2

2.) This was a 1 hour show but the number of frames is about 3 seconds short of that probably due to errors in the mpg file. What will happen is that, although the cuts from comskip are precise, later in the show the cutpoints will get progressively off. In this case, by the end of the show each commercial segment will start 3 secs early and end 3 secs early. This is probably not a big deal but wait until you get a show that has an output frame number that is 10secs or more off. The comskip author also has a fix for this in the current comskip but this has a bug in it so wait for the next release on this.

What we need is for the plugin to support time based cut points and not frame numbers. This would all go away but I have not gotten any response from the plugin authors.

[hchucky]

Thanks for the quick response. I will change that flag and rerun a few shows and see if that helps. Sounds like that will be as good as it gets until a few things are changed in ComSkip and nielm's plugin.

HC

[hchucky]

Well that helped. The number of breaks in the txt file now match the number that show up on the time bar. Detection could have been more accurate though. There were allot of "repairing timeline" errors like the ones listed below. BTW this particular show that I am working with is Commander and Chief but similar errors appear in tech log for all my HD shows.

Here are the first few lines from the log file:

First Frame
Frame: 1 MinY: 58 MaxY: 662 Ratio: 2.12
Video PTS jumped 2 frames, repairing timeline
MPEG2 sound at 22 khz
Audio PTS jumped 3 frames at frame -14, repairing timeline
Audio PTS jumped 3 frames at frame -9, repairing timeline
Audio PTS jumped 1 frames at frame -1, repairing timeline
AC3 sound at 48 khz
MPEG2 sound at 32 khz
Audio PTS jumped 2 frames at frame 155, repairing timeline
Audio PTS jumped 2 frames at frame 173, repairing timeline
Frame: 232 Ratio: 1.83 MinY: 10 MaxY: 710
AC3 sound at 48 khz
MPEG2 sound at 48 khz
Audio PTS jumped 6 frames at frame 351, repairing timeline
AC3 sound at 48 khz
MPEG2 sound at 44 khz
Audio PTS jumped -41 frames at frame 502, audio may get out of sync
Audio PTS jumped 4 frames at frame 476, repairing timeline
Audio PTS jumped 1 frames at frame 492, repairing timeline
Audio PTS jumped 8 frames at frame 504, repairing timeline
Audio PTS jumped 2 frames at frame 516, repairing timeline

HC

[erik]

Please be warned that there seems to be an error in Comskip when detecting some AC3 sound types.
When you see repeatedly the switching between AC3 detected and MPEG2 detected Comskip is failing to detect the sound correctly.
I am working on a solution but no obvious at the moment.

[hchucky]

Thanks Erik!

HC

[Snuffy2]

Is there anyway in the STVi to ignore the commercial txt files for certain channels?

I was using SA, but in my latest tests, have found that the newer comskip seems to be performing better.

There is a feature in SA that ignores a channel range and just generates a blank txt file for those channels.

Using comskip, I don't believe that is possible. Is there anyway to make the STVi just ignore the txt files for certain channels, or a range?

Thanx

[iceman]

I am running 5.0.2 and imported the comskip STVI. Along with this I'm running Dirmon 2 and executing comskip to run against my HD recordings. The comskip process runs fine and creates TXT files with multiple segements created in each one. I enabled autoskip commercials in the comskip playblack options, however whenever I playback any recording which has been run through comskip i see no commercial detection bars in the OSD.

What am I doing wrong? I had this working before but I had to reinstall SageTV from scratch a week ago and now nothing.

Gerry

[RayN]

Originally Posted by iceman

I am running 5.0.2 and imported the comskip STVI. Along with this I'm running Dirmon 2 and executing comskip to run against my HD recordings. The comskip process runs fine and creates TXT files with multiple segements created in each one. I enabled autoskip commercials in the comskip playblack options, however whenever I playback any recording which has been run through comskip i see no commercial detection bars in the OSD.

What am I doing wrong? I had this working before but I had to reinstall SageTV from scratch a week ago and now nothing.

Gerry

I'll second that observation. SD recordings show commercial segments correctly on the timeline but the commercial segments in HD files do notshow at all. I am also running 5.0.2 and the latest comskip STVI.

Ray

[iceman]

RayN,

I know that this comskip STVI showed commericial segments in the timeline prior to version 5.0 going production. I can't remember the last 4.1 beta release number but i know it worked then. I wonder if anyone has an ideas of what might be wrong or what to check out.

Help !!!!! Please !!!

Gerry

[RayN]

Iceman,

Before I installed 5.0.2, I was using 4.1.8. Display of commercial segments always worked with SD files for me. However, even with version 4, I did not have the segments displayed with HD files for those files that I could get ShowAnalyzer to process.

SA 0.7.3 seems to be working on all HD files correctly.

[iceman]

RayN,

I think I figured out why the display of commercial segments doesn't display nor does a comskip enable or disable option show up if a right click of the mouse is done will playing a recording. The reason is that by default in the Sage Properties file the option "mmc/encode_digital_tv_as_program_stream=" is TRUE which means that all recordings will be generated with an extension of MPG. In mine I changed that option to false so that I would generate a transport stream or a file with and extention of TS vs. MPG. Well I changed the option back to TRUE and recorded one show and it created an MPG file. I then ran comskip against it via Dirmon2 and when I played back the recording the commercial segments displayed in the timeline and when right clicking using the mouse the Comskip enable/disable option showed up. I would guess that the comskip STVI is strictly looking at MPG file and not TS files. Well I guess I try my stab at using SageTV Studio to figure it out and I'll let you know.

Gerry

[RayN]

Gerry,

I set my sage.properties file mmc/encode_digital_tv_as_program_stream to False back when Sage first started supporting HD recording because I thought that was required to record an HD file. During the intervening beta updates, I kept the same sage.properties file, overwriting the newly installed with my original.

I scoured the forums today and found no evidence that the stvi to support comskip functions actually recognizes ts files. As far as I could tell, the stvi was last updated October of 2005, before Sage supported HD recording.

When Sage stops recording this evening, I'll change the mmc/encode_digital_tv_as_program_stream to false and record an HD program to see what happens.

Ray

I don't know anything about Studio. If you could find out how to get the stvi to recognize ts files, I think that would be beneficial to many users.

[iceman]

Ray,

I too don't know much about Studio but I'll give it a shot. Maybe will get lucky and someone will scan this forum and see that we need help fixing this STVI. Well until then I'll see what I can do and keep you posted.

Gerry