Comskip Playback for v7

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

When you DO get the donator's version of comskip, I'd recommend NOT simply replacing the one that comes with commercial detector, but instead, extract it somewhere else and point commercial detector to that location. (otherwise, you may risk having the donator's version overwritten with the free one if you reinstall or update the plugin).

(AFAIK, the comskip binary isn't bundled with this plug-in.)

[ThePaladinTech]

Yes the free version is bundled with it. I had the very problem fuzzy described when I first upgraded and have since pointed the app at my donator version in another directory.

Which leads me to a question- I can point to comskip.ini in the plugin folder (the default place) or I can point to the comskip.ini in my donator version. Which one should I be pointing to??? (or doesn't it matter?)

[Fuzzy]

Doesn't matter, just point it to the one you've got the right settings in.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Doesn't matter, just point it to the one you've got the right settings in.

Correct. Just be aware that CommercialDetector needs a few special settings in the .ini. IMHO it's easier to point it at the .ini that comes with CommercialDetector.

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

When you DO get the donator's version of comskip, I'd recommend NOT simply replacing the one that comes with commercial detector, but instead, extract it somewhere else and point commercial detector to that location. (otherwise, you may risk having the donator's version overwritten with the free one if you reinstall or update the plugin).

thanks.
donation made, will let you know how it works and if i run into any cockpit
problems...........by the way, this plugin has way-BIG DAF (daughter approval factor)

[cat6man]

got my donator's version to install today.

while i do that, i have one other question i haven't found yet in the thread.

i assume i am running only one comskip at a time, by default.

if i am recording more than one show simultaneously, what determines which current recording is comskipped first?

assuming all recordings are favorites with the same amount of default padding,
does it follow the order of priorities in the favorites listing? is it tuner dependent? what if there is a manual recording at the same time as a favorite?

thanks

[Fuzzy]

It will be added to the queue in the order sage fires off the recording started event. This most likely will be done by priority, but who knows. ideally, you should probably have as many jobs going as tuners, and you should always be caught up (comskip churns through most of my recordings faster than they record, so it ends up waiting for data).

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by cat6man

got my donator's version to install today.

while i do that, i have one other question i haven't found yet in the thread.

i assume i am running only one comskip at a time, by default.

if i am recording more than one show simultaneously, what determines which current recording is comskipped first?

assuming all recordings are favorites with the same amount of default padding,
does it follow the order of priorities in the favorites listing? is it tuner dependent? what if there is a manual recording at the same time as a favorite?

thanks

I'm assuming you are running CommercialDetector, if not ignore this post

By default it will only run one instance of comskip at a time. This can be changed in the options.

By default it will add the recording to the queue in the order that sage reports that the recording has completed. There is a small caveat here, and it probably will never make much difference but if the recording is split into multiple parts (because of a tuner error, or you stop and start the recording) then there is a chance that a recording will get partially processed and another recording will "sneak in" between the parts.

If you change the options so that comskip starts immediately, then it will add the recording to the queue in the order that sage reports the recordings were started.

[cat6man]

is the processor load of having more than 1 running at a time an issue?
they would all be HD, two at most on hdpvr, two more on hdhr
so 4 HD at a time would be max recording capability

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by cat6man

is the processor load of having more than 1 running at a time an issue?
they would all be HD, two at most on hdpvr, two more on hdhr
so 4 HD at a time would be max recording capability

CPU load is usually not an issue. Disk IO is probably more of a worry. If you start having problems look for the setting that says "run more slowly", this will pause comskip for 10ms between frames and that usually solves the problem.

Tom

[cat6man]

how many simultaneous comskip are people here typically running?

just installed donator version and testing 1 at a time on some of my favorite channels
to see that basic functionality is working

edit: another question, do folks here typically start/kick-off comskip at start or end of recordings?

[PiX64]

On my quad core I run 3 processes at the same time and run comskip on live tv..

[Fuzzy]

I've only got a middle of the road dual core (Phenom II x2), but I run 5 at a time (because I have 5 tuners). They are started when the recording starts, and they are able to keep up with the recording in most cases. Keep in mind, of my 5 tuners, 3 are MPEG-2 OTA, and two are a mix or MPEG-2 SD or H.264 HD from dish network. I'm betting the 5Mbps H.264 i get from dish i going to be quite a bit faster through comskip than the 12Mbps you'd get from the HD-PVR.

[PiX64]

Do u guys have issues ever with comskip randomly causing a windows error, and then comskip.exe has to close and restart?

I would say this happens for me once every few days. I'm wondering if maybe I need to update hr comskip.exe file being used..

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by cat6man

how many simultaneous comskip are people here typically running?

just installed donator version and testing 1 at a time on some of my favorite channels
to see that basic functionality is working

edit: another question, do folks here typically start/kick-off comskip at start or end of recordings?

I run 4 at a time (4 tuners, 2 HD and 2 SD), on an older Q6600 quad-core. I use SJQ to kick them off within 5 minutes of a recording starting because for sports I like to start watching maybe 30mins into the game and already have commercials marked. I haven't had any performance issues even with all 4 tuners recording and comskip processes running at once except maybe three seconds of the spinning "wait" thingy when the skip is made. But I rarely have everything going at once.

[cat6man]

things are working nicely so far........can't believe i just discovered comskip

i modified settings for 2 simultaneous comskip and set trigger
to comskip on start of recordings and all went well.
i will increase to 3 simultaneous comskip today, as that seems to be
the max i can anticipate needing (after setting pbs channel 513 to not
comskip at all since pbs commercials aren't an issue).

2 HD hdpvr files at a time seems to go ok on my dual core machine...

a 3.5 hour hdvpr baseball game
set to comskip after completion of the game took 52 minutes (non HD game).

thanks for all the help/advice

[jorton]

Not sure if this is the right place for this, but does anyone else experience video pauses (audio still continues...) when comskipping (auto or manual)???

I am recording from 4 HDPVR's (ts files that may be the culprit...) and seem to get these video pauses occassionally when jumping to the next section of comskip, I then have to skip back (Alt+a) and then forward (Alt+F) to get into sync again.

I've tried quite a few video decoders to see if any of them were to blame but still get the same results. FFDSHOW, ATI, Arcsoft, Corecodec, MS...

I am using an ATI 5850 video card with HDMI on an AMD Phenom 2 x4 client PC.

Any ideas? Any settings that I could tweak in the properties files???

Thanks,

Jeremy

[ThePaladinTech]

no ideas but yes get the same thing

[cat6man]

i'm seeing that comskip, with the default settings, seems to have problems
with ESPN channels............basically part of 1 or none found in an entire show.

any suggestions?

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by cat6man

i'm seeing that comskip, with the default settings, seems to have problems
with ESPN channels............basically part of 1 or none found in an entire show.

any suggestions?

Is it every show on that channel or just certain shows? Are you getting a clear picture or is it "snowy"? Is there some kind of "ticker" running along the bottom?

Comskip looks for various things to find commercials including:

- black frames
- a logo in one of the corners
- aspect ratio changes