Plugin: CommercialDetector

[robogeek]

Originally Posted by nettech_gt

THANX!! I didn't know I needed to install the "comskip playback plugin". I have now installed it and I now see where the comercials are.


I have a couple more questions; is there a way to fine tune the edl file that gets generated? On each of the "dark green sections" (where the commercials are) it plays 1 -5 seconds of comercials before it resumes playing the show. Also my Sage sever is running on a P4 2.4 Ghz with 1 GB RAM. A 30 min show took over 4 hours to process. (not using the "play nice" setting) is this normal? Seems knida of long to me... THANX!

Keep in mind that commercial detection is not an exact science and you will find that it works great on many shows or many channels, but there will be some shows and some channels that it just won't work well at all. Some advertisers are using non-standard commercial lengths and now the networks are popping up their network logo during commercials and removing the logo during some of the show segments which can screw up commercial detection, so don't expect it to be exactly right on for each block of commercials. You will find times where there will be anywhere from a couple of seconds to possibly a whole commercial or two that is missed. Having said that, to get more accurate start and stop points, you may need to find the following property in the sage.properties file on your SageTV server and set it to true instead of the default false:

videoframe/disable_timescaling_on_seek=true

Be sure to stop SageTV (or SageTVService if running the service) before opening and changing the sage.properties file. If you change that timescaling option and still find that all of your commercial segments stop a few seconds short, you can pad the start and stop points of the commercial using the ComSkip Playback settings in the SageTV Detailed Setup menu here:

Setup->Detailed Setup->Customize->Comskip Playback Options->Operation Options

But, if you pad the commercials using those options, all commercials will be padded. So only use those options if all commercials need padding. Otherwise you'll end up in the reverse situation where instead of getting a few seconds of commercials, you will miss a few seconds of the recorded show. I think it's better to see a few seconds of commercial than to have to constantly skip back to be sure I didn't miss anything.

As for 4hrs processing time...yeah, that seems a bit long. I'm not sure what to suggest for that.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by nettech_gt

THANX!! I didn't know I needed to install the "comskip playback plugin". I have now installed it and I now see where the comercials are.

The easiset thing to do is to install the "CommercialDetector UI Mod" Plugin. That will automatically install everything you need (which is the CommercialDetector General Plugin and the comskip Playback UI Mod Plugin.)

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by nettech_gt

I installed this plugin on my HD100.... <snip>

4 hours is a very long time, I'm not sure if that's normal or not given the 2.4 GHz P4. I looked at the .edl file and it did not even find that many commercials. My best advice would be to read up on the comskip forums to see how long it "normally" takes to process with P4 class CPU and how to best tune the .ini file.

I would recommend changing the following:

verbose=0              ; You don't need all that debug info, especially after it's tuned.
output_default=0     ; You don't need the .txt file
live_tv=1                ; Just in case you want to detect as a recording is being made.
delete_logo_file=1    ; It's not needed after comskip is done.

[bigbill]

I am trying to change the place where the beginning of the commercial is seen, just by a few seconds. Currently it starts the commercial a few seconds too soon, so the WFA keeps making me delete the comskip files so she can see what was missed, usually one or two seconds of the show just before the commercial was actually started. I found a setting called "padding=0" I have change it to 3 to see if that is the correct parameter. Anyone else know how to do this if I am going down the wrong path? -Bill

[Fuzzy]

As mentioned, you'll want to change that "videoframe/disable_timescaling_on_seek=true" in the sage.properties. this may very well be enough to bring the accuracy in line. Also, I've found my family is much happier with automatic skipping disabled. It will still mark the breaks on the timeline, and you can still skip to the cut points with the left and right arrows, but it will play through the file as normal. Commercial breaks tend to be set at times that are opportunistic in the story, so they make natural breaks to get up and use the bathroom and stuff. Leaving auto skip off lets us have the options of the breaks, not miss things, but if we are ready to continue, simply click 'Right' and be back at the show.

[nettech_gt]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

4 hours is a very long time, I'm not sure if that's normal or not given the 2.4 GHz P4. I looked at the .edl file and it did not even find that many commercials. My best advice would be to read up on the comskip forums to see how long it "normally" takes to process with P4 class CPU and how to best tune the .ini file.

I would recommend changing the following:

verbose=0              ; You don't need all that debug info, especially after it's tuned.
output_default=0     ; You don't need the .txt file
live_tv=1                ; Just in case you want to detect as a recording is being made.
delete_logo_file=1    ; It's not needed after comskip is done.

THANX!

[nettech_gt]

Is there a way to add the ability to only have comskip run on certain days? So instead of just being able to restrict the hours you don't want comskip to run but also the day. THANX!!!

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by nettech_gt

Is there a way to add the ability to only have comskip run on certain days? So instead of just being able to restrict the hours you don't want comskip to run but also the day. THANX!!!

I'm not sure there would be a big demand for that. If more users express interest I'll take a look at it.

[stuckless]

I've been using comskip for a few weeks now, and it's been running fairly well. But, from the ui, it appears that I've found a glitch, and I can't seem to find a way around it.

A couple of times the commercials have been off slightly, and if I use the 10second skip back button, and I have automatically skip commercials to true, then I can't skip back to a spot before the skip. When I hit skip back, it will skip back within the commercial skip block, but when it reaches the start of the segment it jumps to the end of the commercial segment. The end result is that I can never skip back to a point before the commerical skip segment using the skip back button.

I guess the work around might be to disable the automatically skip commericals??

[jorton]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I guess the work around might be to disable the automatically skip commericals??

I have had the same issue (or similar), if I notice that I might have missed something I quickly bring up the OSD options and toggle automatic skipping then close them and skip back a bit. I think the issuse is more with the "comskip" plugin that is a dependency of the "commercial detector" plugin as I saw this behavior before I ever installed "commercial detector". My commercial marking has been pretty accurate lately and I haven't had to use this method a lot, so not sure how big of a problem it is.

I have often thought that if you skip back (rw) that it would be nice to have an option that would automatically turn off autoskip but then enable itself again when you hit the next marker naturally during playback... Or something similar. But like I said it isn't something I have to do a lot so I live with it.

J

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by jorton

I have often thought that if you skip back (rw) that it would be nice to have an option that would automatically turn off autoskip but then enable itself again when you hit the next marker naturally during playback... Or something similar. But like I said it isn't something I have to do a lot so I live with it.

J

Mine does this, but I can't recall if I set it up to do that manually or not. If I did, it must have been an option someplace. What happens is that the commercial gaps turn blue and then it won't skip over them until the next break (or return, I think) is found. I think it turns it back on when you hit PLAY, as well.

[Fuzzy]

For starters, this is a function of the Comskip Playback plugin, not CommercialDetector. That said, I believe the current behavior of the Comskip Playback plugin is that on a backwards commercial skip (using the left arrow) it will disable the autoskipping for 12 seconds (the time appears to be hardcoded, and it looks like it isn't disbaled on REW and REW2 events).

Of course, if you are having your breaks be off by a few seconds consistently throughout the show (actually, getting further off the later in the show you are) it is most likely sage's 'Timeline Scaling'. This can be disabled in Detailed Setup -> Customize -> Comskip Playback Options -> Operation Options -> Scale Timeline (set to No).

[Skirge01]

I probably caused the confusion here, since I mentioned that "mine does this" in the wrong thread. Sorry for causing a bit of a raucous.

[tmiranda]

Yes, those behaviors are all governed by the comskip playback Plugin. Having said that I am not against having my UI Mod Plugin modify the comskip playback Plugin as it does this already to make searching for .txt and .edl files more efficient.

I'm super busy at the moment (good for the checking account, bad for Sage) so I will not have any time to look at this. Somebody can always open a ticket on my google code page to remind me.

http://code.google.com/p/tmiranda/issues/list

[JREkiwi]

I've posted a new version of Comskip Playback that disables Autoskip when manually skipping and has a customizable value for the Autoskip disable time under Operation Options.

John

[jorton]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

I've posted a new version of Comskip Playback that disables Autoskip when manually skipping and has a customizable value for the Autoskip disable time under Operation Options.

John

Thanks! Works great.

Jeremy

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

I've posted a new version of Comskip Playback that disables Autoskip when manually skipping and has a customizable value for the Autoskip disable time under Operation Options.

John

That works perfectly Thanks.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

I've posted a new version of Comskip Playback that disables Autoskip when manually skipping and has a customizable value for the Autoskip disable time under Operation Options.

John

Thanks John!

[JREkiwi]

Just to add to the recent discussion seeing as all things comskip seem to end up in here.

In the Comskip Playback Plugin:

As Fuzzy mentioned
For more accurate skipping, Disable 'Timeline Scaling' in Detailed Setup -> Customize -> Comskip Playback Options -> Operation Options -> Scale Timeline (set to No).

'Left' will temporarily disable autoskip and take you back to the last skip point.
'Right' will take you to the end of the next skip point.

There are settings under Detailed Setup -> Customize -> Comskip Playback Options -> Operation Options ->Commercial Start Delay & Commercial Stop Delay
Start Delay adjusts how soon after after a commercial block starts it will autoskip
Stop Delay adjusts and how soon before a commercial block ends it will resume playing. These apply to all commercial blocks.

John

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

Just to add to the recent discussion seeing as all things comskip seem to end up in here.

In the Comskip Playback Plugin:

As Fuzzy mentioned
For more accurate skipping, Disable 'Timeline Scaling' in Detailed Setup -> Customize -> Comskip Playback Options -> Operation Options -> Scale Timeline (set to No).

'Left' will temporarily disable autoskip and take you back to the last skip point.
'Right' will take you to the end of the next skip point.

There are settings under Detailed Setup -> Customize -> Comskip Playback Options -> Operation Options ->Commercial Start Delay & Commercial Stop Delay
Start Delay adjusts how soon after after a commercial block starts it will autoskip
Stop Delay adjusts and how soon before a commercial block ends it will resume playing. These apply to all commercial blocks.

John

Well, since you started a discussion Could you explain a what "Timeline Scaling" is? I currently have it enabled, because it is enabled by default (i think). I have no idea what it means.