Live Commercial Skip

[wags119]

I am new to STV and am currently in the process of building my PVR but I have been doing some reading in my free time to make sure I am ready to go when it is completed. I am not sure if this is where I should be posting this but I was reading all kinds of info on SA, Compskip and Dirmon over the past few days. I think I am totally confused as to how this all works with STV now. I am not sure which process is better to use but what I want to do is be able to watch a timeshifted tv show and have it skip the commercials. So if I watch a show delayed a few minutes and it comes up on a commercial I want it to know to skip ahead. If someone could shed some light on how to make sure this will happen that would be great.

I also had a question on after a show has been recorded and the commercials detected does the show still show up where it would normally be in STV or do I have to view it from a different menu.

Hopefully that all makes sense and thanks in advance.

wags119

[mightyt]

I imported the Comskip STVi in to Sage and installed both SA and Dirmon software ... and "never" looked back ...

Here's a simple summary of how it works ... After your shows finish recording basically SA and Dirmon (software running outside of Sage in your system tray) scan the files and identify where the commercials are. It then creates a separate text file for each show with the commercial info (starts and stops) in it. With the Comskip import installed in Sage, when you playback the shows you recorded, you will see the commercials blocked on the timeline progress bar. As you watch, when you get to a commercial Sage then delightfully skips over the blocked area. The commercials are really still there, but just skipped over. You can rewind through them or easily turn Comskip off and on at any time. Not always 100% correct, you may have to FF through a commercial now ant then, but definitely one of the coolest imports around.

Good luck on your build and enjoy Comskip ... I also recommend, Dynamic Custom Menus and Weather Report Suite, but there are also a boat load of other great Custom STV Import Modules here ...

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ead.php?t=7953

T.

[wags119]

Thanks for the reply mightyt that definitely helps for already recorded shows but I am still wondering about shows that I am currently watching(technically STV is always recording when watching live tv) so is there a way to have Comskip or SA process commercials in realtime(or as close to it)?

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by wags119

so is there a way to have Comskip or SA process commercials in realtime(or as close to it)?

Yes, you can process in realtime. I don't do any commercial skipping so I don't have the exact info, but I do know that people here do realtime scan for commercials. If they start watching a show that has been recording for 10-20 minutes, they will catch up to "live" just about the time the 1 hour show is finished by commercial skipping.

[wags119]

Thats great that it can be done.

If anyone has any info on what I need to do to set it up that would be very helpful.

Thanks

[davidk21770]

You can process in real time, but the programs that identify commercials need to see ahead of where you are to identify commercials (I'm more familiar with ShowAnalyzer, but I'd expect comskip to be the same). So what I do is to let the process start for about 15-20 minutes, then start watching the program (longer if it's a movie -- about 30% of shows here in the US is commercials; some put most of this time at the end, others divide it evenly).

[wags119]

david if I get what you are saying I should (even though not the best) be able to start watching a program and SA should pick it up from the start and then say i pause the show to grab some food and a commercial was found while it was paused and then I get back and start watching from where I left off and when it gets to the commercial it would skip either the whole commercial or to were it is live again. Hopefully that makes sense.

If that is the case (and I am looking at using SA and Dirmon) is there anything special I need to set so that it basically always tries to find commercials in anything "live".

Thanks

[davidk21770]

No, that's the way it works (using dirmon or a similar program to start ShowAnalyzer).

You need to configure ShowAnalyzer to start outputting the commercial skip file in real time. Depending on which comskip sti you are using, this will be for txt (sageTV) or edl files (mplayer). Set "When to create" to "When beginning Processing" (you'll need to drop down the item by clicking on the +).

I'm not sure whether this is possible with the non-registered version of SA?

[wags119]

david that info really helped. I should have my pvr built by the weekend and I am going to get a trial key for SA and plan on purchasing it if everything goes well.

[davidk21770]

PS...
The edl version of the sti is more accurate, but sometimes stops skipping if you show the time bar overlay about when it's supposed to skip (may not do this in v6 of sage).

The txt version of the sti is sometimes off by a few seconds which can leave you wondering whether you missed some show...

I prefer the edl version.

When you get a little more facile with Sage, program your remote and keyboard for custom4 and custom5. Custom4 will skip you back to the beginning of the last commercial and custom5 will skip to to the end of the next commercial. I put these on F3 and F4 and (Hauppauge Remote) the yellow and blue buttons.
(The "custom" commands are set aside to be assigned by the sti add-ins; comskip uses these 2).

I read some place that someone was working on a way to overload the left and right arrow buttons to do this -- one interpretation during playback, another when in the menus. I'm not sure of the status of this.

[blade]

I have mine setup to detect commercials for "live TV"; however, it is more accurate to detect commercials once the show has completely finished recording. Comskip solves this by outputting the commercial breaks as it records then quickly double checks everything once the show is finished. This only takes a few extra seconds. I don't know if ShowAnalyzer does this check or not. The last time I tried it I saw a big difference in accuracy between live TV detection and pre-recorded detection. There was no difference at all with comskip.

Either way for me comskip is a lot more accurate than showanalyzer and it is free.

[Steep]

Originally Posted by blade

Either way for me comskip is a lot more accurate than showanalyzer and it is free.

wags119, I happen to agree with blade. Should you want to try Comskip as an alternative to Dirmon+SA. Try installing Comskip Monitor. It comes packaged with Comskip, is easy to setup, and has all the options you are wanting.

Good luck with your new Sage PVR.

[MrApollinax]

With the two programs the one thing that really differentiates the two is the ability to output multiple filetypes for different types of programs. Comskip AFAIK only outputs txt or edl. That is good for playback using Sage or MPlayer. SA however allows for output for different types of programs like VideoRedo or DVR-MS stuff. I personally use SA to output a VideoRedo cutlist that allows me to process the MPEG wiith VideoRedo if I want to save that show for later. SA and DirMon are not targeted specifically at SageTV whereas, to me at least, Comskip is targeted at SageTV and GBPVR.

[blade]

Originally Posted by MrApollinax

With the two programs the one thing that really differentiates the two is the ability to output multiple filetypes for different types of programs. Comskip AFAIK only outputs txt or edl. That is good for playback using Sage or MPlayer. SA however allows for output for different types of programs like VideoRedo or DVR-MS stuff. I personally use SA to output a VideoRedo cutlist that allows me to process the MPEG wiith VideoRedo if I want to save that show for later. SA and DirMon are not targeted specifically at SageTV whereas, to me at least, Comskip is targeted at SageTV and GBPVR.

Comskip can output different filetypes as well. I believe it can output files for videoredo, btv, zoomplayer and quite a few other programs. I don't know if there is anything SA can output that comskip can't. I don't want it to sound like I dislike SA. I paid for and used it for awhile, but with later versions the accuracy got worse and SA would hang up a lot. I switched to comskip and haven't had any problems since. SA was ok for pre-recorded shows, but processing live TV was pretty bad the last time I tried it. After seeing how comskip handles live processing there just isn't any excuse for there to be a difference in accuracy of live vs pre-recorded shows after it has finished recording.

I don't know if I explained it clearly before, but when a show is processed as it records you have a limited amount of information to compare the scenes to. So live detection isn't going to be as accurate as it would if the show was complete. Comskip outputs the breaks as it finds them for live TV. Once the show has finished it goes back and checks it against the completed recording and then outputs the corrected breaks. This way you get live detection and for shows you watch later you still get the best detection possible because it has been compared against the completed shows. I ran tests as shows recorded and then re-ran comskip on them once they were completed and the breaks were at the exact same frame. When I tried this same test with SA I would get very different results comparing the "live" detection vs pre-recorded. I don't know if SA doesn't do the check once the show is complete or what was going on, but there was a big difference in accuracy. This has been awhile back though so things may have changed with SA since then.

[MrApollinax]

Like I said AFAIK. It kinda makes sense that it does that though. Wasn't Jere the original creator of comskip? For me the SA/DirMon combo has been working easily. It was much less work for me to use SA/DirMon than Comskip. Either way you get a product that meets your needs.

[davidk21770]

I'm pretty sure that SA does a cleanup every time that it refines it's estimates of the factors that it compares to (average sound level, station icon, etc.). I've seen it go back and refine the commercials -- usually catching a piece that it missed.

The last couple of SA versions have not worked as well for me as earlier versions. I've been considering giving comskip a try. Has anyone taken the time to do a comparison -- including any fine tuning needed for local variations in comerical characteristics?

[blade]

Originally Posted by davidk21770

I've been considering giving comskip a try. Has anyone taken the time to do a comparison -- including any fine tuning needed for local variations in comerical characteristics?

I compared them once, but it was a long time ago so things are probably different now. I had setup custom settings in SA for several problem shows , but for me comskip with no tweaking gave better results on almost every show I tested. As for speed the two programs were almost identical back then.

The one feature I liked most about SA was how easy it was to customize for different shows. Fortunately comskip has been accurate enough that it isn't an issue for me.

If you do any testing, you should process some shows live and save the result file and then re-run it on the completed recording. SA may in fact re-check its findings, but back when I tested it the commercial breaks were always different for some reason. If it re-checks its findings they should be the same once the show is finished recording and being processed.

I wouldn't hesitate to use either program and if I start having problems with comskip I'd switch back to SA. When I first started commercial skipping I tried comskip and it was very slow so I switched to SA. It was faster and just as accurate, but later versions became less accurate and comskip got faster so I switched back.

[MrApollinax]

Jere just released a new beta 8.3 which has School House. I've had problems in the past with episodes of LOST but now I seem to be catching just about everything. I haven't gotten to play with School House, SA's fine tunning tool, more since it's been readded but it has a nice graphical interface and lets you quickly create profiles for different shows. So far the beta version has been pretty solid for me.

[erik]

Originally Posted by MrApollinax

With the two programs the one thing that really differentiates the two is the ability to output multiple filetypes for different types of programs. Comskip AFAIK only outputs txt or edl. That is good for playback using Sage or MPlayer

Comskip can output the following formats
.TXT
.edl also for MPlayer and Mencoder
Videoredo (including scene cut markers for DVD creation)
Womble MPEG VCR
MPEG Video Wizzard
Cuttermaran
MPEG2Schnitt (Comskip can do the demuxing so no separate demuxer is needed)
mpgtx
DVRCut
Zoomplayer
Future TVersity commercial skipping format
VCF
BeyondTV
ProjectX