Utility: Comskip

[erik]

That should work too.
If not, I like to know.

[erik]

Originally Posted by jlindborg

wish I knew why my behavior is so different from other folks here... you guys have a creepily consistent set of output regardless of shows you're processing. Seems pretty wierd given all the folks using Comskip. But the actual logic it's using is a bit beyond me... I'm a database flunky so I leave that stuff to the smarter kids.

jlindborg,
I received a report that build 33 delivers worse results compared to build 30.
Which build do you use?
Can you test with
volume_slip=20
in the ini file?
Can you mail me a .csv file generated with
output_framearray=1
in the ini file?

[jlindborg]

I'm using build 33 and have been since it came out - haven't had any significant problems with it on any content thus far.

[blade]

Now that I've straightened out my .ini problems comskip seems to be doing quite well; however, it doesn't appear that it's outputting the commercials to the .txt file as it finds them.

Is there a way to make it output the commercials as they are found or do I have to wait until the show is fully processed?

[erik]

set
live_tv=1
in the ini file
But the results if this form of processing is not as good as when the full bag of tricks is applied as can only be done after the whole file is processed

[jlindborg]

Hey Erik - follow up to this.

I notice it kicks off processing even if the file is being recorded to anyway on my box - I don't have this parameter configured... is it supposed to check to see if the file is being written to still and bail out right away or something? I'm guessing without the SA style web server interface the only thing you can do is watch the file for a few seconds and see if it's getting bigger or not. Perhaps with file caching it's not waiting long enough and taking off on it anyway? Just guessing...

[erik]

Comskip is designed to detect the file is still being recorded and wait for a while and then retry and process the part that was recorded.
However if you do not set
live_tv=1
no output will be written to the .txt file while processing you don't see its making progress.

[jlindborg]

so is there a way it can just stop entirely and return if the file is being written to instead of trying again on its own? short story is I don't want it touching files that are being written to at all - I'm using DirMon to drive the process and if it fails and returns, DirMon will kick it off again in a while (say 10 minutes) - I only want it to process shows that are finished recording if possible.

[blade]

Originally Posted by erik

set
live_tv=1
in the ini file
But the results if this form of processing is not as good as when the full bag of tricks is applied as can only be done after the whole file is processed

That was going to be my next question.

Guess I'll have to decide if having the commercials output in "real time" is more important than accuracy.

[blade]

Originally Posted by jlindborg

so is there a way it can just stop entirely and return if the file is being written to instead of trying again on its own? short story is I don't want it touching files that are being written to at all - I'm using DirMon to drive the process and if it fails and returns, DirMon will kick it off again in a while (say 10 minutes) - I only want it to process shows that are finished recording if possible.

Why not simply check the box in dirmon that tells it not to launch the process if the file is still being written to?

[lovingHDTV]

Hm, I just downloaded and ran on about 30 shows. A combination of HDTV and SDTV sources, all files are program streams.

It did not flag a single commercial properly. Typically the first 3rd of the show is marked as a commercial, then a couple other sections in the file are flagged.

I tried using defaults settings, and setting the detect to 255. Same poor results.

Ideas on how to tune?

thanks,

[erik]

Assuming you are in the USA the default ini file should have worked better then you describe so I assume something else is wrong.

Can you set
output_framearray=1
and
verbose=10
in the comskip.ini file and mail me the log file and the .csv file that is created with the same name as the recording?

[lovingHDTV]

Erik,
I did some testing and have a couple questions.

If I do not specify the ini file where does it default to? The directory where the executable is located or the directory where the executable was call from?

I think this maybe the issue. When I run comskip in the directory where I call it from with the ini file there, things seem to work well. Otherwise I get poor results as it is not seeing the comskip.ini file.

thanks,

[DFA]

jlindborg:

As Blade mentioned, Dirmon2 has checkbox to wait until file is finished before processing. Can't recall about original Dirmon if this feature is there.

If upgrading to Dirmon2, original Dirmon has to be uninstalled. However, there is a "gotcha' (bug) in the uninstall of original Dirmon: it wipes out the entire [HKLM\SOFTWARE\Dragon Global] registery key rather than just the Dirmon sub-key which wipes out the SA license and some config params as well. Recommend export "Dragon Global" key first before uninstall of Dirmon and then import after uninstall of old Dirmon. Then hand delete old Dirmon subkey under "Dragon Global". SA subkey will then be preserved. Just a heads up.

EDIT: I suppose you can just export the SA subkey under "Dragon Global" and save the step of deleting the old Dirmon subkey after re-importing.

DFA

[jlindborg]

yeah, I tried DirMon2 last night and couldn't get it to fly but I hadn't fully uninstalled DirMon (good thing I didn't based on your note). Thanks for the heads up - I'll snag the registry branch and save it off first and give it another try.

[blade]

Originally Posted by erik

Comskip is designed to detect the file is still being recorded and wait for a while and then retry and process the part that was recorded.
However if you do not set
live_tv=1
no output will be written to the .txt file while processing you don't see its making progress.

I thought I understood all of this, but let me double check.

1. Comskip can process the file as it's recorded and output the commercials when found, but the results aren't as accurate.

2. Comskip can process the file as it's recorded but waits to output the findings until the entire file is processed? Is this more accurate than the first way listed? I thought maybe by waiting to output the findings it was able to use more of it's tricks.

3. Wait until the entire recording is finished before doing any processing. Is this more accurate than #2?

I ask because I ran comskip using the #2 & #3 ways and the frames listed in the .txt were identical. I'm just trying to find the quickest way to get my shows processed while maintaining accuracy.

[dshields]

Originally Posted by erik

Comskip can find always the ini file if you put the ini file in the same directory as where the recodings are.

I suspect this is worth investigating further. I was ready to switch to SA because comskip was not detecting well for me. It was only detecting a bit at the very beginning and very ending of shows. As I said in another post, I suspected the problem was related to comskip not finding the .ini file when run under DirMon2 (because others had suggested that).

I tested this out today by moving comskip.ini to System32 and indeed, that solved the problem of bad detection. So, at least on my computer, I have proven that Comskip could not find the .ini file when it was located in the same folder as the .exe, if run under DirMon2.

[lovingHDTV]

dshields,
I have proven that on my computer also. I uninstalled Dirmon2 and re-installed Dirmon. The command line options in Dirman work correctly with comskip.

I even tried creating a shortcut for the comskip.ini file and put that in the recordings directory, but that did not work either for some reason.

[jlindborg]

My guess, since I've done this exact same thing in apps I've written, is that DirMon changes the currently active directory to where the application that it's launching is installed - all is well. DirMon2 is likely not - if ComSkip is checking the current directory when it runs, it would not get the directory it's installed in, but the current directory DirMon2 had active - as such it wouldn't find the .INI file in that directory. one of the many goofy bugs I had to run down in various services I've writen in the past.

This is easier when you're running as a desktop app instead of as a service - I wonder if the "hidden" derivative of DirMon2 works properly or not.

Either way you should be able to pass a hard coded path to the INI file in question on the comskip command line to get around it.

[lovingHDTV]

I tried putting it on the command line and Dirmon2 would not take it and command line options get put at the end of the command so comskip wont accept that. Hence I'm back with Dirmon. But hey it works and I have HDTV source marked properly