STV Import: Comskip Playback for Default STV (v1.5.4 30/August/2008 for SageTV 5/6)

[Polypro]

Great Plug in, thanks. What do "Size of Position Indicator" and "Different Marker When Autoskip Enabled" change? I'm using it with ShowAnalyzer.

Thanks,

P

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by Polypro

What do "Size of Position Indicator"

On some displays the red timeline progress indicator is too small to see, especially when getting close to commercial blocks. This lets you have a larger OSD progress indicator

Originally Posted by Polypro

and "Different Marker When Autoskip Enabled" change?

displays different color commercial blocks when autoskip is turned off.

John

[JREkiwi]

Finally got some time to have a look at a couple of things that were irritating me, so..

New version available for download

(1.5.3)
- Added option to not autoskip on commercials smaller than the specified size. Setup in Comskip Playback Options/More Options

- Fix not disabling autoskip when left arrow skip or FF/RW into a commercial block in pre-show padding

John

[_matt_]

Hey JREkiwi,

Thanks for an awesome plugin. I use it every day. I have an issue and I have tried searching, but I haven't been able to find any reportings of this problem. It is a pretty simple to understand problem. When I queue up several shows to watch - if one of them has commercials from some point until the end of the program - playback will freeze at the end of that show. The next show will never come up it is just stuck at 29:59 or 59:58 or something like that. Sage isn't frozen I can manually click the arrow and the next show will start. It just does not automatically go to the next episode in the queue. I am currently using the newest version of your STVI and the newest release of sage, but I have always had this problem. This certainly isn't a huge deal, more of a minor annoyance but I thought I'd let you know.


Tanks again for the cool plugin.
-matt

[JREkiwi]

matt, I must admit I've never tried that. I'll see if I can reproduce it.

You might want to check that you have the property videoframe/always_call_fileplaybackfinished=false, if it's set to true it seems to give all sorts of wierd playlist playback problems.

John

[_matt_]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

You might want to check that you have the property videoframe/always_call_fileplaybackfinished=false, if it's set to true it seems to give all sorts of wierd playlist playback problems.

John

Yes, mine is already set to false.

[Polypro]

Has anyone worked up a new "CS" marker to match the current STV? I tried, but failed badly. (Copied the "HD" marker from the Theme directory and proceeded to poke it with paint.net)

P

[JREkiwi]

New version available for download

(1.5.4)
- Fix for not deleting comskip files when a video is deleted in SageTV 6.4 and changes for file extension case in ShowAnalyzerSuite
- Reduced the amount of logging done by default with an option to enable full debug logging.

John

[jbuszkie]

I'm trying to get Sage to use comskip (V144). I click on run comskip and it runs the .cmd file and comskip will run for a couple of seconds and then hangs.. (or at least stops writing the log file.) Now if I take the same file and drag it onto comskip.exe or comskipgui.exe the program works as it should.
The commands in the cmd file I've tried are
comskip.exe -n %1
comskip.exe -w %1
comskip.exe %1
All hang in the same fashion...

Here is three different runs using sage.. They all stop in about the same spot but a little differently

Pic

This is the difference in the log file between drag and drop and running through sage

Pic
I hope the links work...

How do I start to debug this? Anyone run across this? I've filed a similiar post on the comskip forum as well.. But maybe you guys have seen this before?

Jim

[bcjenkins]

In the second pic which one is which? Also, I would make sure to use the option for specifying the ini.

B

[erik]

Once Comskip gets near to the end of the recording it will stop processing for 2 to 3 minutes to give SageTV the opportunity to fill its write ahead buffer (the output file for recordings is pre-allocated to avoid disk fragmentation and then slowly filled with read recording data) .
This behavior is controlled by two parameters (forgot which two, standoff and sleep?)
So what you see could be very normal and even desirable behavior.

[jbuszkie]

Erik,

The delay is at the very beginning of the file... It before it even writes the logo out. So it's nowhere near the end...

I did the news from last night this morning..
drag and drop - 1:10 to process.. (1 minute 11 seconds)
Through Sage - 5:13 to process...
So there is a 4 minute delay for some reason.. I can see the process CPU usage start for a couple (8-9 secs) and then go to 0 for 4 minutes-ish and then start up again.
The 01.log is drag and drop and and 0.log is through sage. The logs are nearly identical except for the time and first couple of lines.
This is weird! I can live with the 4 minute delay.. but if it doesn't need to be there, the I'd rather not have it.. and why do the two behave differently?


Jim

[erik]

You are processing an .mpg file (not .dvr-ms)
The standoff is zero and the live_tv_retries=4 resulting in a waiting period of 4 seconds when the end of the recording is reached.
I have no clue what is happening.

[jbuszkie]

Is this anything worth trying to debug?

[bcjenkins]

Would you post your ini file?

[jbuszkie]

I've included the CMD file as well..

[JREkiwi]

Jim, probably not really your problem, but, is there any other disk activity happening on the drive with the recording? I believe the latter versions of comskip do disk access throttling, but I've not investigated to see if anything gets logged when that is happening. I certainly know that if I'm running comskip on a drive that has something recording on it, it does run slower.

Maybe try putting a short wait (sleep) at the start of your batch file in case it's some residual disk activity as part of kicking of the process via SageTV that's putting it in slow mode.

John

[erik]

Comskip runs on lowest CPU priority
If you do run something else that does fully occupy the CPU Comskip completely stall.

[jbuszkie]

Nothing else going on... CPU is sitting around 10-12%

Jim

[jbuszkie]

Interesting.. I've been able to duplicate this on another completly seperate system....

Does anyone else see this?