Comskip Monitor: Announcement

[Steep]

Originally Posted by Russ

I recently installed comskip monitor and noticed that the ComSkip log shows that it is processing all 29 of my videos. I was wondering if it's processing one at a time or all of them at once.

After several hours I noticed that no commercial skip files were generated in my video directory. Also, I didn't notice a ComSkip process being active in Task Manager. My fear is that possibly ComSkip is not actually working in exporting commercial skip files. Another possible indication to this is my cpu usage is minimal.

Are there any settings I need to modify? By the way I am using ComSkip version 79_63. I modified comskip.ini output_edl to = 1.

Thanks in advance for any assistance on this!

Here's a hunch.

When you modified the comskip.ini file to read "output_edl to = 1", you might have somehow corrupted the comskip.ini file.
The Comskip Monitor setup program trys to insure a valid setup by making sure you are pointing to valid comskip exe and ini files, but it can't ensure the integrity of those files. So I think that when the monitor is looping through your video files, it's launching comskip on them, which would create an entry in the monitor's log file, but instead of Comskip working, it's generating an error and it exits. The monitor see's that comskip is done running and it just moves on to the next file not caring (since theres nothing it can do about it) whether comskip worked or not.

Try running Comskip manually to see if this is the case:
Start-Run-Cmd
cd \wherverYouInstalledIt\comskip79_63\
comskip F:\yourVideoFiles\filename.mpg.

Alternatively, just download (re-download?) Comskip Monitor which is currently packaged with 79_62 and already has the output_edl=1 flag pre-set. (and run setup.bat which always uninstalls older versions of the service before installing a new one.)

I'll try to capture comskip error output and print it out in the monitor's log file in the next release so it will be easier to know what's going on.

[wtsitmn]

The comskip monitor seems to work great. Installation was a snap. If only other free software installs worked this well, I'd be more than happy to make a donation! Comskip monitor quickly processed all my video files. Too bad comskip itself aborted on each one.

Anybody know if comskip still has trouble processing ATSC (HDTV) mpg files? I found old comments about problems (dated many months ago) but nothing recent suggesting it does or doesn't work. I guess OTA ATSC is currently the bleeding edge?

[mattdcknsn]

I havent had the time to try and update the comskip program. I am hesitant to change something when I got it working almost fully now. I am gonna try and update my comskip program this weekend. Hopefully that will fix it.

Originally Posted by wtsitmn

Anybody know if comskip still has trouble processing ATSC (HDTV) mpg files? I found old comments about problems (dated many months ago) but nothing recent suggesting it does or doesn't work. I guess OTA ATSC is currently the bleeding edge?

also, is there something special I need to do in order to use edl files over txt files? Is it a different STVi? I haven't done much research into that. Thanks again for all your work on this also.

[12three45]

John Steep. I have uninstalled comskip and restored my PC to before I installed Sage 6 and I am still having the same problem. Now this is really confusing me. I do not know if it was comskip that agrevated this problem, but it happened after I installed it.

The videos that do play correct are in the same folder. They were the Sage 5 video files that were imported.

This is going to suck if I can't figure this thing out for my MVP.

[AngelofDeth]

Its not very likely either comskip or com monitor was the reason for your skipping. Although the monitor is written in java, I don't think it interacts with sage at all. The only "installation" it seems to do is install itself as a service... You should probably post this in a more appropriate forum, along with your configuration/hardware, whether your sage server works properly with a sage pc client (might be a general sage server problem as opposed to mvp)...

[erik]

COmskip build 63 and 64 seem to have a problem on ATSC.
Use build 62 for the moment

[wtsitmn]

Originally Posted by erik

COmskip build 63 and 64 seem to have a problem on ATSC.
Use build 62 for the moment

This is fixed in version 65

[vhurst]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

2. Is there a way to lower the priority at which comskip runs? When it is running it slows my MVP GUI to a crawl. Right now I've set it to only run at night but this is not ideal for me.

Originally Posted by Steep

The 'Configure Time Exclusions' screen in the configuration program allows you to set the priority as Run Normal, Run Slow, and Don't Run.
Run Normal will run Comskip with Low priority. Run Slow, will make comskip run with the --playnice parameter added which will pause comskip processing for 10 milliseconds between each frame processed. This should help slow systems. Then of course, Don't Run is self explanatory.

I've been working on resolving slow MVP GUI response as well. I find that when Comskip.exe or Comskip.exe and wrapper.exe run on my SageTV server, each MVP remote control keypress takes about 3 seconds to respond. I haven't noticed any other impacts. Video still plays well.

Setting CSM to run slow didn't change anything. Currently I've dealt with the issue by setting CSM to not run except for the run normal during the wee hours.

Originally Posted by Steep

As far as CPU percentage is concerned, Comskip, even though it takes up 9X% of your CPU, it runs at low priority so that it only uses all of your CPU if your computer is idle. If other programs require CPU time, comskip will relinquish CPU. However, CPU time isn't the only measure of a system's responsiveness, IO bottlenecks can also occur. Which is why Comskip has a parameter that will not only cause it to run at low priority, but also make it sleep for 10 milliseconds between processed frames. The easy way to enable this feature is to run Comskip Monitor's setup.bat program and on the "Configure Time Exclusions" screen, set Comskip to "Run Slow" to enable this sleep-between-frames feature.

Steep, I'd like to know where the bottleneck is for MVP GUI responsivness. Can something be done similar to the United Devices (http://www.ud.com/) Search for a Cure project does, where their program can limit itself to 50% CPU utilization. Another thought, might I be able to start the CSM service through FireDaemon, so that I could define the priority level there?

Anyway, if an answer is found that would resolve the slow MVP GUI, while still being able to run CSM around the clock, I'd love to hear about it!

Aside from this issue, I'd like to thank Steep for an awesome job on CSM. The install was a snap! Great work!!!

[AngelofDeth]

What kind of hardware do you have? Im running comskip all the time, and I can't really tell its running even though it uses 100% CPU on pretty weak hardware. Are you sure comskip is running at "low" priority?

[vhurst]

Good news! I upgraded from Comskip build 62 to build 65, and my CPU utilization cruises at about 25% when Comskip is set to run slow, and at 100% when set to run normal. Before updating, the Task Manager showed comskip.exe priority at "normal", but now it is "low" in either "run normal" or "run slow". The MVP GUI runs smooth in all cases now as well.

I'm a happy camper now ...

[12three45]

Steep,

Just to let you know, I hardwired one of the MVPs and it runs perfect with even with COMSKIP. So the problem is in the bandwidth thoughput of the MVPs before where it caused the video to be jittery.

Does anyone know why the recorded media can't be transcoded better to play on an MVP with lowere bandwidth?

Andy

[vhurst]

I do still have an issue with MVP GUI response to remote control commands. It happens while the Conskip does it's scan for cleanup and search for new files to process. The default increment is every 10 minutes, and lasts about 10 seconds on my Sage server. I see that java.exe and wrapper.exe both use the CPU, at nearly 50% each. Their priority is "normal", and therefore compete with the SageTVService.exe (I believe). Can these processes be setup to run in a low priority, or perhaps SageTVService be set to run in "above normal"?

[vhurst]

I read the post, and although it wasn't the clean way to set priority I was looking for, it does work. Last night I installed the utility "priority.exe", available here, and made a batch file to call it, setting SageTVService.exe to "above normal", as well as ComSkip's java.exe and wrapper.exe to low priority. I secheduled the batch file to be run hourly via Scheduled Tasks, so that if the server is restarted, the services would get their priority reset to where I want them.

While this isn't the clean answer I was looking for, so far it's accomplishing what I need. My MVP menu doesn't bog down now while ComSkip is searching for recordings to process.

If anyone ever comes up with a way to simply set the SageTVService priority as part of the service startup (like FireDaemon does with other services), please let me know!

[acegolfer]

Can comskip.exe produce edl file for live ATSC TV?

[erik]

Originally Posted by acegolfer

Can comskip.exe produce edl file for live ATSC TV?

Yes

[toricred]

How do you get this to work with network drives? Also, how do you get it to use showanalyzer instead of comskip?

[hemicuda]

It's giving me a fit with the samba share I just added to my network. Says an invalid path in the csm.properties file, but only for the mapped drive. I have it set up w/ full access rights and Sage can record/delete shows to/from it as well.

[BobPhoenix]

I have my UNC share setup like this:

file.directories=\\\\SageTVSrv\\VideoSrv$\\Video

[hemicuda]

so i'd add...

\\\\<server>\\<share>\\<folder>

to my list?

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by hemicuda

so i'd add...

\\\\<server>\\<share>\\<folder>

to my list?

That's what I've got anyway and so far it is working for me.