Comskip Monitor: Announcement

[Steep]

Comskip Monitor is an application that runs as a Windows Service that monitors file directories and automatically runs the Comskip program on video files.

The author attempted using other directory monitoring utilities to automate running ComSkip, but found them to be unreliable.

Objectives:
1) Ease of installation.
Comskip Monitor comes prepackaged with the latest version of ComSkip. Installation consists of 3 easy steps. A) Unzip ComskipMonitor.zip B) Run the setup.bat program. C) Complete configuration wizard.

2) Reliability
ComskipMonitor has been designed specifically with ComSkip in mind. It is very reliable and does not hang when using ComSkip.

3) Self maintaining.
Comskip Monitor will cleanup after itself.

Features:
Comskip Monitor was designed to be simple. Therefore it has limited configuration options.
1) Time Management: Configure the Monitor to run Comskip at only certain times of the day, or to run Comskip in low priority at certain times of the day.
2) Polling time: Comskip will check your video directories at a user-defined interval.
3) Live processing option.
4) Run Comskip with command-line arguments
5) Ability to specify Comskip installation and configuration files.
6) Specify the types of files to execute Comskip on.
7) Specify the types of files to clean-up.
8) Ability to run any command line utility on file types in selected directories.

Comskip Monitor utilizes the following great technology:
Comskip http://mk.kaashoek.com/comskip
Java Service Wrapper http://wrapper.tanukisoftware.org
Jetty Embeddable Web Server http://jetty.mortbay.org/

Notes:
*Comskip Monitor is a Java program and requires JRE 1.4.x or higher. Since SageTV requires Java, this should not be an issue for most users.
*Comskip Monitor is open source. The source code is packaged inside of the \data\csm.jar file.

Please see the README.txt file for more information.

Comskip Monitor can be downloaded here.

Please respond with any feedback if there is someway that I can make Comskip Monitor easier to install or more reliable. Thanks.

[ToxMox]

Originally Posted by Steep

The author attempted using other directory monitoring utilities to automate running ComSkip, but found them to be unreliable.

Was one of these other utilities you tried DirMon?

[Steep]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

Was one of these other utilities you tried DirMon?

Yes. I'm inspired by that author's efforts and am sure the program works great with ShowAnalyzer, but I found that when using it with Comskip, I had to restart the service on a daily basis.

[blade]

Originally Posted by Steep

Yes. I'm very supportive that author's efforts and am sure the program works great with ShowAnalyzer, but I found that when using it with Comskip, I had to restart the service on a daily basis.

I use Dirmon2 with comskip regularly processing 4 shows at once and never have any problems. Some of the newer versions give problems, but 0.5.5 has been rock solid for me.

I'd like to give your program a try, but don't want to mess with what works. When I get a chance I might try it out on another machine.

[Steep]

Originally Posted by blade

I use Dirmon2 with comskip regularly processing 4 shows at once and never have any problems. Some of the newer versions give problems, but 0.5.5 has been rock solid for me.

I'd like to give your program a try, but don't want to mess with what works. When I get a chance I might try it out on another machine.

Excellent. I have no intention to pit CSM against other tools. I'm all for what works. That being said, I tried to make the Comskip Monitor installation process as easy as possible, so that perhaps new SageTV users can get it running faster. Since it is less general purpose than DirMon2, there are less things to configure. Which is good or bad depending on your perspective.

Also... I've included the Java source code which is easily extendible, should other developers want to add features or enhancements.

[ID10Tbox]

3) Self maintaining.
Comskip Monitor will cleanup after itself.

Does this mean it was supposed to delete all of my .avi files too?

I used to have Dirmon set up to run comskip, clean and encode the files to AVI but at present I am only using it for comskip so I thought I would give your program a try. I had about 20+ GB of AVI files in my video folder and I was wondering where they went all of the sudden. I actually just opened up my video folder to see if Comskip Monitor had created a .edl file for a certain MPG and what I found is that I had only a few MPGs and some edl/txt files left in the folder. As for the AVI files I spent so much time encoding, I am quite sure that I did not delete them, the only thing I did is install the Comskip Monitor service.

So I won't fret too much about losing all the AVIs, should have burned them probably to save space and if I really wanted to keep them. However, I am wondering if this is supposed to happen and if so wouldn't it be advisable to warn the user of this? Oh yes I just remembered I had my batch files comskip comclean compress and comcleanavi as well as the mencoder.exe in my video folder, v:\sagetv and those are all gone now as well.

Anyway I'd really like to see this work, it seems like a good project.

Thanks.

[LJSSageUser]

Originally Posted by Steep

Please respond with any feedback if there is someway that I can make Comskip Monitor easier to install or more reliable. Thanks.

This is a super effort. The complexity of Dirmon2 and ShowAnalyzer is too much for my taste.

Question: Is the service automatically restarted after a reboot? Do I have to put the install.bat in the startup to restart the service?

[Steep]

Originally Posted by ID10Tbox

Does this mean it was supposed to delete all of my .avi files too?

Yes. I'm very sorry about that. The program treats files with the ".mpg" extension as video files and everything else as "other files" that should be cleaned-up as part of its maintenance.

The good news however (a little late for you, again, sorry), is that I put in some time today to finish version 2 of Comskip Monitor.

Version 2 lets the users specify the file extensions of their video files, and it also allows the user to specify files that are to be "cleaned up." By default, this new version comes configured to run Comskip on only .mpg files and will only delete files of type .txt and .log.

I also completed a configuration wizard that is launched when Comskip Monitor is installed, so that editing the csm.properties file is no longer necessary. I attached a screenshot of the wizard and updated the program description in the downloads section.

[Steep]

Originally Posted by LJSSageUser

This is a super effort. The complexity of Dirmon2 and ShowAnalyzer is too much for my taste.

Question: Is the service automatically restarted after a reboot? Do I have to put the install.bat in the startup to restart the service?

Comskip Monitor is installed as a service and will run when your computer boots up. It does not need to be placed in a startup folder.

1) Unzip 2) setup.bat 3) Complete Config wizard.

[sennbj]

I have a little question. I would like to use this as described but I try to not run anything extra on my server so I am trying to run this on a workstation on my network. When I try to use UNC I get an error to check the files.directory entry, then I mapped a drive and tried but get the same thing. Is there something I need to do differently to get a workstation to run this as a service?

[Steep]

Originally Posted by sennbj

I have a little question. I would like to use this as described but I try to not run anything extra on my server so I am trying to run this on a workstation on my network. When I try to use UNC I get an error to check the files.directory entry, then I mapped a drive and tried but get the same thing. Is there something I need to do differently to get a workstation to run this as a service?

Hey sennbj.

To have Comskip Monitor watch a directory on a remote computer do 2 things,

1) try entering the non-drive-mapped network address of that directory. (Which I think you already tried)

For example...
\\MyServer\C-drive mapped to R:\

Instead of entering R:\myvideos
try: \\MyServer\C-drive\myvideos

2) In the ComskipMonitor\data directory, modify wrapper.conf by adding the following 2 lines.
wrapper.ntservice.account=YourLoginName
wrapper.ntservice.password=YourLoginPassword

Alternatively, you can access Start-->Control Panel-->Administrative Tools-->Services
Right Click Comskip Monitor, access 'Log On' tab. Change Local System Account to "This Account" and type in your username and password.

Then restart the service.

I hope that doing 1 or both of these suggestions gets you running. I'd warn that such a configuration requires plenty of spare network bandwith. With your setup, you will be transfering the entire contents of video files from the server to the client in order for Comskip to process those files.

Good luck!

[Naylia]

Nice, I've always been too lazy to check out the multiple combinations of cleanups and analyzers. I'll have to give this a shot. Thanks!

[ID10Tbox]

Thanks, Steep. No longer deleting my AVI files now which is good. One thing I noticed however in the initial setup is that it asks what file types you want to run Comskip on and it lists MPG and AVI as examples. As far as I know you can't run Comskip on an AVI. I believe it currently has support for MPG, MS-DVR and TS.

I want Comskip Monitor to delete orphaned .txt, .log and .edl files when there is no matching video file but it seems like it is currently just checking to see if an MPG with the same name exists. So in a situation where I have an MPG freshly recorded from Sage, Comskip Monitor fires up Comskip and generates the .edl file. Fine. Then I convert the recording to AVI to save space. Comskip Monitor sees the .edl or .txt and no longer sees a MPG with a name that matches so it subsequently deletes them. This is frustrating because I have just lost my commercial info and because the file is in AVI format now I can no longer go back and run Comskip on it. I guess you would not just have to check for MPG and AVI but also other vid file types that a recording might get converted to.

So basically in the case of AVI files, you should not be able to set Comskip Monitor up to process them (I don't know what will happen if you do, I am not at home to try it). Same goes for any type other than MPG, DVR-MS, or TS since those are the only file types Comskip can accept as input.
Now maybe in the interests of flexibility and the chance that a future version of Comskip will support filetype X you should still allow the user to specify any file type and hope that they have some idea what they are doing. That is fine so long as they are not led to believe that they can run comskip on AVI or other non-Comskip-supported filetype.

The only other thing that came to mind is that I did not notice if there is a way to allow Comskip to process files as they are being recorded. I know you can do this with Dirmon by unchecking "wait until target file is finished..." Would there be a way to configure it with Comskip Monitor?

Thanks a lot, otherwise it is working great and without any hassle!

[Steep]

Originally Posted by ID10Tbox

Thanks, Steep. No longer deleting my AVI files now which is good. One thing I noticed however in the initial setup is that it asks what file types you want to run Comskip on and it lists MPG and AVI as examples. As far as I know you can't run Comskip on an AVI. I believe it currently has support for MPG, MS-DVR and TS.

I want Comskip Monitor to delete orphaned .txt, .log and .edl files when there is no matching video file but it seems like it is currently just checking to see if an MPG with the same name exists. So in a situation where I have an MPG freshly recorded from Sage, Comskip Monitor fires up Comskip and generates the .edl file. Fine. Then I convert the recording to AVI to save space. Comskip Monitor sees the .edl or .txt and no longer sees a MPG with a name that matches so it subsequently deletes them. This is frustrating because I have just lost my commercial info and because the file is in AVI format now I can no longer go back and run Comskip on it. I guess you would not just have to check for MPG and AVI but also other vid file types that a recording might get converted to.

So basically in the case of AVI files, you should not be able to set Comskip Monitor up to process them (I don't know what will happen if you do, I am not at home to try it). Same goes for any type other than MPG, DVR-MS, or TS since those are the only file types Comskip can accept as input.
Now maybe in the interests of flexibility and the chance that a future version of Comskip will support filetype X you should still allow the user to specify any file type and hope that they have some idea what they are doing. That is fine so long as they are not led to believe that they can run comskip on AVI or other non-Comskip-supported filetype.

The only other thing that came to mind is that I did not notice if there is a way to allow Comskip to process files as they are being recorded. I know you can do this with Dirmon by unchecking "wait until target file is finished..." Would there be a way to configure it with Comskip Monitor?

Thanks a lot, otherwise it is working great and without any hassle!

Thanks for your suggestions.

I've updated Comskip Monitor to version 2.1 and have added the ability to add "related" file extensions. Comskip Monitor will not "Cleanup" the logs if a related file type exists, but it won't run the Comskip program on these files.

I also added a checkbox on the Check Time configuration page that will allow Comskip to be run on video files even if they are still being recorded.

Both of these configuration options are available in the setup.bat configuration wizard.

I've endeavored to add these features while still keeping the install as basic as possible for users who don't require much sophistication. I don't want to stray from the goal of making Comskip Monitor easy to setup.

Thanks again. I value your feedback.

[ID10Tbox]

I've updated Comskip Monitor to version 2.1 and have added the ability to add "related" file extensions.

I also added a checkbox on the Check Time configuration page that will allow Comskip to be run on video files even if they are still being recorded.

Both of these configuration options are available in the setup.bat configuration wizard.

I downloaded the latest. I ran the uninstall.bat first to make sure the service had been stopped and all that good stuff, then extracted the files on top of my existing setup. I ran the setup.bat and I do not see the changes you listed above. I double checked the file name to make sure I had not just installed the old version by mistake. Sure enough, it is steep-comskip-monitor-v21-16oct2006.zip

I decided to remove my existing installation and start fresh but I didn't see any changes with that either. Just in case, I installed Comskip Monitor on my <cough> work computer <ahem!> just now and I did not see any difference.

Another thing I noticed is that the "modified" date/time on the csm.jar file I have is 10/14/2006 3:11PM and in fact the only file which has a time stamp after 10/14 is my csm.properties file which was altered today when I set up CSM on this machine.

I think it is great that you are trying to make a simple, reliable commercial detection solution. So far it is coming along great! Sorry I am so picky! LOL

[Steep]

Originally Posted by ID10Tbox

I ran the setup.bat and I do not see the changes you listed above.

It looks like my upload didn't take. I should have verified. I re-uploaded the latest version and have verified that it was successful.

The system is rather problematic because every time I attempt to upload a file, the browser times out with an error message.



Thanks for letting me know. Sorry for the delay.

[Naylia]

Setup was nice easy and straightforward. I like that you had it configured with all the default values. Since I'm not sure what kind of resources Comskip processing requires I set it to only run between 1am and 6am. Now i just need to enable Comskip somewhere in Sage (i am guessing, but i think i have to tell Sage to look for the compskip results files). I'll let you know how it worked out on my existing shows tommorrow.

What order does it process in? Date/Time, Filename, something else????

[Steep]

If you have video files queued up, Comskip Monitor will run Comskip on them in filename order (alphabetical).

To have SageTV use the Comskip files, you need a STVi plugin. Here 2 that I have tried that work.
Comskip Playback Plugin w/ EDL support by sundansx

Comskip Playback support for SageTV v4 by nielm/malore/laurenglenn

Both of those pages/downloads have fine instructions on how to import them into your SageTV setup.

Thanks for trying out Comskip Monitor.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by Naylia

Setup was nice easy and straightforward. I like that you had it configured with all the default values. Since I'm not sure what kind of resources Comskip processing requires I set it to only run between 1am and 6am. Now i just need to enable Comskip somewhere in Sage (i am guessing, but i think i have to tell Sage to look for the compskip results files). I'll let you know how it worked out on my existing shows tommorrow.

What order does it process in? Date/Time, Filename, something else????

So what's the time format? Military? 0700-2400? 07:00-24:00?

Gerry

[Steep]

Originally Posted by gplasky

So what's the time format? Military? 0700-2400? 07:00-24:00?
Gerry

Individually selected hours during the day.



Which creates a comma-delimetted list in the csm.properties file based on a zero-indexed hour. 0-23.

If the 'current time' is in the list of excluded hours, Comskip Monitor will not initiate any processing. However, if processing was begun at 5:59 PM and 6:00 - 7:00 PM was excluded, Comskip would finish processing the current file if one was detected.