Utility: ShowAnalyzer Beta

[FidgetyRat]

Actually, I take that back. SA is running awful now. I'd say its hit or miss if I even get it to work.

50% of the time I have perfect skipping. The other 50% I either get 1 mark on the bar, or none at all.

I WISH i remembered what old version I used to run because that ran perfectly. I would completely revert back to that. But alas.


Anyone have an estimate on the best previous version that had reliable execution with good detection? This newer version is just plain awful.

[dwalton22]

Originally Posted by Stuntman

I'm having timing issues as well.. Things are jumping in and out of shows what appears to be a couple/few seconds early.. wasn't an issue until I put in the QAM recordings..

Do you see this more with 720p recordings than 1080i? Some of our local stations will broadcast 480i commercials in the middle of a 720p show. You end up with an mpeg file where the framerate is 59.94 for the show but 29.97 for the commercials. The inconsistent framerate causes the commercial markers from showanalyzer to be off.

[geogecko]

Originally Posted by dwalton22

Do you see this more with 720p recordings than 1080i? Some of our local stations will broadcast 480i commercials in the middle of a 720p show. You end up with an mpeg file where the framerate is 59.94 for the show but 29.97 for the commercials. The inconsistent framerate causes the commercial markers from showanalyzer to be off.

That is so annoying, you would think they would upscale it or something. It's not like it costs more to broadcast a commercial in 720 or 1080...if the show is already in that format.

[GollyJer]

Originally Posted by geogecko

That is so annoying, you would think they would upscale it or something. It's not like it costs more to broadcast a commercial in 720 or 1080...if the show is already in that format.

It seems like it would make it easier to detect these commercials though.

[Stuntman]

Is this something that is being worked on, or will we be out of luck for a while? Nothing is more annoying that missing a scene or more due to a bad cut.. I'd rather just fast forward through the commercials at that point!

[lovingHDTV]

Unfortionately, this has been my experience with SA for the last year or so. I've converted to comskip and have not had any problems at all.

The one thing that I miss is SA's ability to not process when a show is being recorded or during playback. But it is more important to get the commercials marked correctly at this point so I just black out the time of day that I do most of my viewing.

hope this helps,

[dwalton22]

Originally Posted by Stuntman

Is this something that is being worked on, or will we be out of luck for a while? Nothing is more annoying that missing a scene or more due to a bad cut.. I'd rather just fast forward through the commercials at that point!

Sage says it isn't a bug and the guy who wrote showanalyzer has been AWOL for the past few months The other scenario where I see a problem is when the show recorded for either too long or too short. I started a thread about it here

Getting back to this 720p thing though...I have an hour long 720p show that I've flagged the commercials in with both ShowAnalyzer and ComSkip. Both of them correctly find the commercials and the timestamps match up if I play the mpg file with something like WMP. If I play the commercial in SageTV and use the "click left/click right" buttons to jump to the commercial breaks then things get really screwy. Say the commercial starts at 7min 00sec and ends at 10min 0sec, if I click left to take me to 7:00 the timebar shows 7:00 but the mpeg is actually playing from the 30 or 40 seconds later in the show?? I can RW or FF skip to get things back on track but it seems like the timestamps are really hosed and that makes it look like SA/comskip didn't find the correct commercial breaks when in reality they did.

I noticed when comskip runs that it is complaining about a lot of timeline errors. I'm going to give Video Redo's Quickstream Fix a try and see if that fixes this.

[Stuntman]

Originally Posted by lovingHDTV

Unfortionately, this has been my experience with SA for the last year or so. I've converted to comskip and have not had any problems at all.

The one thing that I miss is SA's ability to not process when a show is being recorded or during playback. But it is more important to get the commercials marked correctly at this point so I just black out the time of day that I do most of my viewing.

hope this helps,

Comskip has always given me problems.. it dices up my timeline too much.. perhaps it is TOO sensitive and I've never figured out how to tune it back.. the other issue, which is a huge WAF issue is that there is no way to tell comskip to ignore the final xx minutes of a show. My wife insists on watching the previews for the next week and comskip always cuts those out.. SA lets me ignore the first and/or last xx minutes of any recording..

I guess I can try comskip again and perhaps Erik can help me with some of my settings.

[erik]

Originally Posted by Stuntman

he other issue, which is a huge WAF issue is that there is no way to tell comskip to ignore the final xx minutes of a show. My wife insists on watching the previews for the next week and comskip always cuts those out..

Changes in 0.79.87
- Added ini parameter min_commercialbreak_at_start_or_end=39, any commercials shorter than that size in seconds at start of end of recording will not be remove.

Do combine with
disable_heuristics=4

[Stuntman]

Originally Posted by erik

Changes in 0.79.87
- Added ini parameter min_commercialbreak_at_start_or_end=39, any commercials shorter than that size in seconds at start of end of recording will not be remove.

Do combine with
disable_heuristics=4

I just upgraded to the latest release (10/24/2007). The heuristics setting was 4 by default. I don't see the parameter you mention, but I pasted it in exactly as you posted.. I'll watch now to see if this works! I also changed my detection method to 239 from the default of 111, which I believe uses everything EXCEPT CC, which I don't capture..

I'll keep my fingers crossed!

Thanks Erik!

[FidgetyRat]

do you guys suggest switching to comskip? I have been with SA for a very long time now and am hesitant, but the performance of SA is getting much worse with each update.

[Stuntman]

Originally Posted by FidgetyRat

do you guys suggest switching to comskip?

Well, certainly it won't hurt anything! I switch back and forth as I experiment.. generally SA gave me better results, but Comskip has better support from it's writer.. Erik gave me some suggestions just above this reply.. minutes after my posting stating issues I'd had with Comskip! I'm going to try it again, with his help, and see how it goes!

I'd say.. Go For It! It is a great program and worth an evaluation at the very least!

[malbec]

I used SA first. I love the interface, but yeah, I hate to say it, I would recommend comskip at this point.

[dwalton22]

Originally Posted by dwalton22

I have an hour long 720p show that I've flagged the commercials in with both ShowAnalyzer and ComSkip. Both of them correctly find the commercials and the timestamps match up if I play the mpg file with something like WMP. If I play the commercial in SageTV and use the "click left/click right" buttons to jump to the commercial breaks then things get really screwy. Say the commercial starts at 7min 00sec and ends at 10min 0sec, if I click left to take me to 7:00 the timebar shows 7:00 but the mpeg is actually playing from the 30 or 40 seconds later in the show?? I can RW or FF skip to get things back on track but it seems like the timestamps are really hosed and that makes it look like SA/comskip didn't find the correct commercial breaks when in reality they did.

I noticed when comskip runs that it is complaining about a lot of timeline errors. I'm going to give Video Redo's Quickstream Fix a try and see if that fixes this.

Quickstream didn't fix the problem. Is anyone else seeing this issue when they left/right click to navigate commercial breaks?

[Stuntman]

Originally Posted by Stuntman

I just upgraded to the latest release (10/24/2007). The heuristics setting was 4 by default. I don't see the parameter you mention, but I pasted it in exactly as you posted.. I'll watch now to see if this works! I also changed my detection method to 239 from the default of 111, which I believe uses everything EXCEPT CC, which I don't capture..

I'll keep my fingers crossed!

Thanks Erik!

SA did pretty well tonight, but it still missed the last scene of 'The Office'.. even with the setting in the .ini to ignore the any commercials less than 60 seconds at the beginning and end of the show.. For some reason NBC didn't put it's logo on that last 'scene'.. I guess the SA forum is the wrong place to be discussing this

Sure would be easier if there was an 'always_ignore_first' and 'always_ignore_last' option.. IMHO

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by erik

Changes in 0.79.87
- Added ini parameter min_commercialbreak_at_start_or_end=39, any commercials shorter than that size in seconds at start of end of recording will not be remove.

Do combine with
disable_heuristics=4

Erik,

Even if I set the INI to higher than 39 seconds it still defaults to 39 seconds.

I set my INI
min_commercialbreak_at_start_or_end=180

Yet in the log I see
min_commercial_break_at_start_or_end=39

[erik]

Typo

should be
min_commercial_break_at_start_or_end=....

Maybe we should open a separate thread for this en keep this one on topic.

[davephan]

I want to minimize or hide the popup ShowAnalyzer popup window. I tried using several different things in the DirMon2 "run" configuration, they were:
C:\Program Files\Dragon Global\ShowAnalyzer\ShowAnalyzer.exe -no status
C:\Program Files\Dragon Global\ShowAnalyzer\ShowAnalyzer.exe -nostatus
C:\Program Files\Dragon Global\ShowAnalyzer\ShowAnalyzer.exe -invisable

The popup ShowAnalyzer window does not pop up, but each job in the job queue list is run for a few seconds, but nothing actually gets processed.

I want to be able to either hide or minimize the ShowAnalyzer popup window, but there does not seem to be an option that works to minimize or hide the pop up window.

Does anyone know how to hide the ShowAnalyzer popup window?


Dave

[geogecko]

Originally Posted by davephan

Does anyone know how to hide the ShowAnalyzer popup window?

Dave

I don't know if there is a way to use a command line option to do what you are wanting, but you can configure ShowAnalyzer to do it automatically.

Configure ShowAnalyzer
Global>>Settings>>Interface
Set Show Status Window to No

If you also do not want system tray icons, set that to No as well.

If you don't want to see anything, then set Invisible Mode to Yes, this overides all settings within "Interface."

[davephan]

Jason,

That configuration changed worked! That popup was driving me crazy. I was trying to get the ShowAnalyzer to start minimized or hidden from DirMon2. I did not notice that configuration setting in ShowAnalyzer.

Thank you for your help!

Dave