Comskip vs ShowAnalyzer?

[CadErik]

I'd like to setup commercial skipping on my sageTV setup and there seem to be two solid alternatives: comskip and ShowAnalyzer... I downloaded both, both seem to do a good job... What is the general opinion on both of these software?

[k9k9]

I had kind of the same question yesterday:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17395

Maybe some of those explinations will help a little. I use ShowAnalyzer with Dirmon2 and after a few different configuration tweaks it has been working very well... Try them both out and let us know .. I'm curious too.

[jlindborg]

I've been using both - I prefer SA because it's got a much nicer interface and the "School house" app has potential, although it doesn't work very well for training purposes - at least for me. But the clincher is that SA does not handle HD output yet. JEre is working on it from what I understand but we haven't heard anything for a bit so I'm not sure where he's at.

Short story is comskip is a bit tougher to use because you have to fiddle with the INI file to adjust it but I find it detects more reliably than SA and it works fine on HD output so for now it's in the driver seat. Comskip does run a bit slower than SA, but not by much. I'm pretty confident Jere will bring SA up to speed and I'll probably revert back to it but for now in my opinion Comskip.exe is superior.

[jlindborg]

Just a couple other details on the differences - I've been rerunning all my shows back through Comskip.exe and comparing the results of the old SA output (I have to reprocess to pick up all my HD shows). The Comskip "out of the box" settings produce far superior results - even on "tricky" shows like Lost (all those goofy flashbacks and black frames). Sometimes Comskip will miss the last commercial in a "set" but SA often leaves "chunks" out of the middle of a commercial and I've never been able to get it to leave the end of the show alone (the "don't detect commercials in last X seconds does not work for me).

SA, however, has some very nice features such as the ability to use Nielm's web server to skip processing shows on particular channels such as HBO and PBS - this is real nice since I'm burning a lot of CPU cycles with Comskip processing HBO shows that don't need to be - not a big deal since I'm using a seperate server for commercial processing and it's running all day regardless.

Comskip's tuning is more difficult with the INI file stuff but honestly the ability to just drop the .TXT file with the commercial "tag" values in it onto the comskip.exe and have it show you the shows/bars and adjust on the fly is very, very cool. You can even adjust the comerical tags and save it while you're there. Nifty. SA has its school house which looks cool and seems to offer the same type of functionality but I've never been able to get it to work properly.

But after reviewing the output of about 20 shows today from all over the spectrum, comskip.exe clearly did a better job with base settings. And the fact that it handles HD output is all the more reason to take a closer look at using it. Switch back and forth between SA and comskip using DirMon is simple...

[malbec]

jlindborg-

I hate trouble you to do this work for me, but if it is not too much trouble and you are up to it (and would like me to tell you how great and helpful you are), I am very curious to know if I can talk you into seeing how your SA results compare to your comskip results if you change the "Depth of Analysis" setting in SA to its lowest setting (i.e. 10) and re-run it.

[jlindborg]

I haven't messed with the SA settings other than to try and fiddle with the School House app - I can try cranking the DOA value down and rerunning it on a few shows that had "holes" in the commercial chunk and such next weekend.

[Humanzee]

Point of reference. I use SA, I have depth of analysis cranked down to the slowest/most accurate detection and it works pretty well. That being said, I havn't used comskip in over a year. I thought its development was dead but I guess I was wrong.

FYI, SA does work on some HDTV content. Im useing a Fusion 5 USB to record Program Streams as MPG. Its really hit and miss though. One night letterman will be detected perfectly and the next night it will create a 0kb file. I wonder if it has to do with varying signal qualities through out the program.

Anyway, I'm sure Jere will figure it out eventually. Though, both could use some improved documentation, I havent looked back after switching to SA.

[jlindborg]

yeah, Comskip has been updated - quite often of late actually.

SA crashes out on me on nearly all HD (OTA using AverMedia capture card) programs and when it doesn't, the commercial detection is not good. It also crashes out on the occasional "regular" program as well but not often. Since I switched over to using Comskip a few weeks ago it's all be spot-on. I'm still keeping an eye on the SA stuff (I paid for it, after all) since it has some nice features comskip doesn't.

I'll try cranking down the SA DOA value and seeing if it makes a difference or not. but I doubt it'll help much with HD and that's pretty important to me right now since about 1/5 of my recordings are on the 7 channels I get OTA with HD...

[k9k9]

Can you post a link to installing comskip instructions? I want to test both now

Is it really that much more difficult than using SA ?

[DFA]

Thanks jlindborg for your objective observations. They are quite helpful to all.

DFA

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by k9k9

Can you post a link to installing comskip instructions? I want to test both now

Is it really that much more difficult than using SA ?

If it is like it was, there is no installation. YOu just have to point Dirmon2 to it as a processor. or drag an drop an mpg onto the executable. When I was using it there was a comskip.ini file that you could tweak settings inside of.

[jlindborg]

Sure - here's the home page for Erik's ComSkip:

http://mk.kaashoek.com/comskip/

You just unzip it and drop it in a directory somewhere - just the EXE and INI file are necessary - I didn't tweek the INI file other than to turn logging off (set "verbose" to 0) and have it kick out VideoRedo files in addition to the .txt file output and tell it to delete the logo files when it's done - I didn't mess with any of the tweeking stuff at all.

Just point DirMon to the ComSkip.exe after you've configured it to process the .MPG files in the folder(s) you store them in and you're good to go.

Totally agree about the documentation for all apps involved though - took me a while to figure out DirMon and I've never really felt confident in the information I have at my disposal about the effect of fiddling with the various tuning related settings for either SA or Comskip. Both docs spend time explaining what a value is (sometimes) but not what it does in real world terms (i.e. for those of us who may not know what in the heck they're talking about right off hand).

...and if you use it and like it, be cool and drop the project a couple bucks... these guys put a bunch of work into this stuff.

[blade]

Originally Posted by jlindborg

Comskip does run a bit slower than SA, but not by much.

Has the speed of comskip been improved? The last time I used it there was a huge difference in speed. Of course I was running a Celeron 366.

On the 366 a 1 hr show took just over 1 hr to process and the same show would take around 30 minutes with SA. I got pretty much the same thing when running it on my XP-1400. SA would finish in 1/2 to 1/5 the time it would take comskip.

Can you launch multiple instances of comskip using Dirmon2? If comskip can process 4 shows in real time on my XP-1400 and is more accurate I might have to give it another try.

[jlindborg]

Dude... I _so_ hope you've updated your rig since then! Lots of stuff has improved in comskip - it's been updated a ton in the last several months... go check out it's version history off the site.

I ran a few tests on my setup here at home today. I run my commerical processing (as well as DivX compression and some other things) off an AMD Athlon 3500+ with 1 gig of ram - it's working over a hard wired gigabit network processing mpg files via shares. Running a quick test here on a 30 minute show (Design on a Dime - my wife loves this show). 1.2 gig file - recorded off a 250 running DVD quality.

Comskip took 118 seconds
SA took 102 seconds.

both did a good job detecting commercials, however comskip accurately noted that the "lead in" adds at the begining of the show are commercials, SA did not. Both are "out of the box" configurations with no modifications other than output options.

Running SA with the depth of analysis cranked down to 10 (forcing "deeper" thinking here I guess) took 178 seconds. Commercial output was exactly the same, which shouldn't come as a suprise since it nailed them all other than the logic for "lead in" checks is not the same as comskip's.

I'll run some more tests against a few shows SA had trouble with again with the DoA value cranked down to see if it does a better job but since Comskip's basic settings did a nice job on all my shows (it left a commercial at the end of a block here and there but very rarely) and runs faster than the "cranked down" SA configuration by a fairly wide margin, it's no contest for me at this point.

[malbec]

jlindborg-

Thanks a ton for your extra work! FWIW, you convinced me. I am switching to comskip now...

Thanks again for the extra time you put in, it is much appreciated.

I hope I can return the favor someday!

[dbfresh23]

After seeing this thread I decided to give comskip a shot (Haven't used it in a LONG time). Now I remember why I like ShowAnalyzer so much! Comskip did a horrible job on all 3 shows I ran it against. It skipped over the first 2-3 minutes and the last 2-3 minutes and nothing in between on all 3 recordings. I switched back to SA and while it wasn't perfect it was much closer then comskip. I used the default settings for both apps through DirMon2.

[jlindborg]

Really? That's pretty bizzare... I've processed over 100 shows now with comskip and have had zero trouble that you describe. What's your recording source like? What shows? I'm assuming you were using 0.79.33?

[blade]

Originally Posted by jlindborg

Really? That's pretty bizzare... I've processed over 100 shows now with comskip and have had zero trouble that you describe. What's your recording source like? What shows? I'm assuming you were using 0.79.33?

Not that odd to me. People tend to have very different results when running SA so I'd think the same would be true for comskip. For example quite a few people have complained about SA totally missing with certain shows many of which are almost always 100% accurate for me.

It can vary from station to station and the calibration of the capture cards can make a huge difference in detection. If I use the default settings for my PVR-500 SA is a lot more accurate; however, the picture is too dark. I had to choose between an accurate capture or more accurate commercial detection.

[blade]

I just tried the newest version of comskip on a couple of shows and got the same results as dbfresh23.

Only the 2 minute padding at the beginning and end of the show was marked for "Digging for the Truth" which was recorded off the history channel. No other commercials were detected.

I also ran it on "Futurama" which was recorded off Cartoon network. The first 4 minutes and the last 7 minutes of the show were marked as commercial and nothing else was detected. Some of what was marked as commercial was actually part of the show.

Both shows were captured from Analog Cable on a PVR-500. I chose those two shows because both were marked fairly accurate by SA, but weren't 100%. Both had 2 commercial breaks that were off by around 10-15 seconds.

The newer version of comskip is definetly far less accurate for me than the ancient version I used before.

[dbfresh23]

Originally Posted by jlindborg

Really? That's pretty bizzare... I've processed over 100 shows now with comskip and have had zero trouble that you describe. What's your recording source like? What shows? I'm assuming you were using 0.79.33?

I'm using DirecTV D10 receivers with a PVR500 and an ATI 550 all connected via S-Video. The shows I tried it on were Conviction, King of Queens and Smallville. Yes I was using the latest comskip that was there which was the .33.