Auto-removing commercials

[MalibuDave42]

I am using the latest Sage and SageMC. After looking through every setting, I believe I have the removal of commercials turned on. But it does not remove them. When watching the recording, I still need to manually FF past the commercials.

As I understand this feature, it scans the recorded program, flags the commercials, then re-writes the file without the commercials. Is this correct?

Is there another way to reliably automatically remove commericals, thereby reducing the file size and hassle to FF past them?

Thanks

[matt91]

Brent has a writeup that covers setting up the additional piece that you need - the program that is actually doing the detecting (comskip or showanalyzer).

http://www.geektonic.com/2008/02/ski...of-button.html

Most of us leave in the commercials, but have Sage autoskip them while we're watching. you never know when the detection might miss the last few seconds of a show, and if they're just being autoskipped, you can rewind to see it. If you've actually cut the commercials (which take much more work to setup), you have no option to see something that was missed.

[MalibuDave42]

Thanks for the link AND the tip.. disk space is cheap.. missing the end of the show is not.

Thanks

[matt91]

Sure. I should note that I do actually "snip" commercials from some shows: children's shows and a couple shows that I watch while commuting to work (hard to reliably skip 120 seconds on the blackberry media player). But on most shows, I just have comskip detect them and create an .edl file which SageMC knows what to do with.

[MalibuDave42]

Followed the directions to a T. The system has spend 24 hours processing the existing files. I record only HD programming so that must take longer, but comskip seems to a system pig. The CPU utilization jumps from 0-1 to 30% holds for 10-15 seconds then drops back to 0, a few seconds later it jumps to 30%, up and down...

Is this behavior normal? When other applications run with this load I can still use my PC. For 24 hours I have not been able to watch any TV.

My system is a 2.7ghz quad core, 4gb ram with 2 1tb drives (64k blocks) and 1 400gb drive for boot up and programs. It's dedicated to SageTV.

If compskips renders the system unwatchable while processing a program... back to the skip button for me.fr
Any thoughts on this?
Thanks

[matt91]

no, i'd say that's not normal behavior. However, what are your recording sources? HD-PVR files to take *a lot* more resources than other files.

[MalibuDave42]

The recordings are captured using an HDHR - HDHR tuning Comcast clear QAM

After looking in the recordings directory, it looks like it processed all recordings (there are "companion" files for each). Trying to play one of the recordings all I get is a black screen.

Humph

[matt91]

what's in the companion file? Are they edl?

[MalibuDave42]

For each program.mpg there is a program.edl, program.log, program.logo.txt, program.my and program.txt

Just ran the comskip monitor uninstall.bat. Turned off Comskip in Sage. System is still not responding correctly.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by MalibuDave42

For each program.mpg there is a program.edl, program.log, program.logo.txt, program.my and program.txt

Just ran the comskip monitor uninstall.bat. Turned off Comskip in Sage. System is still not responding correctly.

comskip.exe is still probably running. Look in Task Manager and kill the process.

Gerry