ComSkip and HD Shows

[djseto]

I am using the latest comSkip and I find that it is just about never accurate with HD shows, but nearly always accurate with SD shows. Does anyone else have this issue? Is there a setting somewhere that can change the way it detects commercials. Since most of the stuff I watch is HD, I would really like the commercial skip flags to be right.

thanks

[erik]

Please follow this procedure

http://www.kaashoek.com/comskip/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=34

Are the SD recordings also digital broad?

[Fluffdaddy]

I see the same. I stopped using ComSkip with HD Shows a long time ago.
Because of HD ComSkip unreliability.

[gibsonpa]

I downloaded comskip and comskip monitor a few days ago and had it process my recordings (ota hd). I have only watched 2 shows so far that were processed...but they seemed to be pretty good. There were sometimes where the break was a little off..but not too bad. I adjusted the "padding" parm in the comskip.ini per the tuning instructions (have not done all the tuning stuff yet) and that seemed to at least prevent the show from being cut off.

Strange thing is that for some reasons the SAME commercial break in the SAME show seems to skip slightly different each time you watch it...not sure why that is.

All of this was with version 114 of comskip.

[swats]

I have noticed the same thing, and it is one of the few remaining annoyances I have with my setup. I think that the problem is made worse by the fact that I have an HDHomerun, which has a known problem with the way it writes timestamps (at least with Sage). Often I notice that when the program returns from a comskip it will be well in to that segment, but if I 10 second skip back the comskip seems like it is right on, but it started playing at the wrong frame... so I am not entirely sure where the problem lies.

[erik]

Could one of you set
output_timing=1
and run comskip on such a HD recording and
zip and mail me the generated filename.tmining.csv file?
Do also include your comskip.ini
There is some timeline repair buildin in comskip but it has to be adapted to the specific errors in your recording and the way playback is done.

[gibsonpa]

Erik,

I will do this for you no problem.

I am very impressed with your program...being a computer programmer myself. You have done an incredible job!! Is this something you had experience with prior to coding...or just started with a concept and did a lot of trial and error?

I will email you the requested files and such this morning.

Paul

[gibsonpa]

Erik...debug logs have been sent...thanks.

[erik]

Thanks for the log files
There timeline does not show any relevant problems.
Did someone try to verify the comskip output for an HD recording with the internal previewer of comskip (drag and drop the generated .txt file on comskipgui.exe, does not work for dvr-ms recordings) or with another editor (Videoredo)

[gibsonpa]

I did not try that Erik...but will shortly. Thanks.

[scoful]

It is important to note that if you are watching HD recordings that came from FireWire there seems to be an inherent problem with the way Sage handles the timeline.
If you manually skip forward or back it seems to go to some kind of keyframe instead of the specific time increment.

On a non-comskipped file, try skipping forward and backward. Sometimes it can actually go backward instead of forward. This seems to have improved somewhat in recent releases of Sage, but still is a little flakey.

I suspect the problem where comskip playback over-shoots or under-shoots may actually be Sage's playback.

[erik]

That is why I asked to test with another player.
Examples of free players that can use comskip output are zoomplayer and mplayer
mplayer can read the .edl file so its very easy to test
I am not sure if mplayer uses PTS to seek but when playing from the start it should be OK because many people use mencoder (which shares the decoders with mplayer) to cut and convert HD to other formats.

[swats]

Originally Posted by erik

Could one of you set
output_timing=1
and run comskip on such a HD recording and
zip and mail me the generated filename.tmining.csv file?
Do also include your comskip.ini
There is some timeline repair buildin in comskip but it has to be adapted to the specific errors in your recording and the way playback is done.

I will send you one of mine from an HDHomeRun recording today.

[swats]

Well the only HD recording I had sitting on my box was a hockey game that comskip seemed to do an excellent job on. I will email you something from tomorrow's shows. Thanks again.

[erik]

I am using the latest comSkip and I find that it is just about never accurate with HD shows, but nearly always accurate with SD shows.

One more question
Could you define "about never accurate"?
Is that: always a couple of seconds off?
or: over the show the errors increase and at the end it can be a complete commercial of?
or: The commercials are at completely the wrong position, only the first may be at the right position but its much too short?

In case its the last, could one of you verify if, for a show where the commercials are completely of, it helps to multiply the frame numbers in the .txt file with a factor 2?

[gibsonpa]

Erik, I did as you suggested and reviewed the .txt in the comskipgui tool...and it looks perfect. The commercial breaks are right on the money....guess maybe like others said...it is a Sage playback issue. When viewing in Sage, it is off a few seconds.

[erik]

Did you enable the two sage specific bug workarounds
sage_framenumber_bug=1
sage_minute_bug=1

[djseto]

Originally Posted by erik

One more question
Could you define "about never accurate"?
Is that: always a couple of seconds off?
or: over the show the errors increase and at the end it can be a complete commercial of?
or: The commercials are at completely the wrong position, only the first may be at the right position but its much too short?

In case its the last, could one of you verify if, for a show where the commercials are completely of, it helps to multiply the frame numbers in the .txt file with a factor 2?

With HD shows, it often has commercial breaks in the wrong places or doesnt find breaks at all.

[djseto]

Originally Posted by erik

Did you enable the two sage specific bug workarounds
sage_framenumber_bug=1
sage_minute_bug=1

I'm a fairly new Sage User. Where do I find these flags to change and what do they do/fix?

thanks

[swats]

Originally Posted by erik

Did you enable the two sage specific bug workarounds
sage_framenumber_bug=1
sage_minute_bug=1

I didn't know about this either. I will see how this works before I waste your time with logs. Thanks.