Plugin: CommercialDetector

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by stuckless

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.

It is a 'feature' in sage that will scale the percieved timeline to match the airing length. It's there for aesthetics mostly, but since this scaling is done before the time data gets to the UI, and since the comskip playback is done in the UI, it throws off the times.

What it is there for, is say your tuner takes 15 seconds to tune to a station and start recording. This will result in your 30 minute show's recorded file being 29:45 long. Users would complain to sage if they saw the number at the end of the timeline as 29:45 for a 30 minute show, so they 'fudge' the numbers to make it LOOK like the show is playing for 30 minutes. However, comskip and showanalyser don't know about these fudged numbers, and just mark the show based on the 29:45 video file.

The ability to disable the timeline scaling was added in v7 just because of the effect on comskip, though to match previous behavior, it is left on by default.

This scaling is actually done after a recording in completed - since it needs to use the airing length, and the completed recording length, to figure it out. This causes strange occurances, like perfectly accurate comskip points of livetv, until after the show is done recording - and THEN the points are thrown off.

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by stuckless

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.

Short answer is, disable Timeline Scaling and your Comskip Playback accuracy is better.

Longer answer is:
Timeline Scaling is a bit of behind the scenes SageTV magic that scales the playback timeline of a recording so the actual recording length matches the scheduled recording length. The difference between the two varies depending on the source of the recording. The HDPVR particularly takes some time to tune so the difference is greater than some other tuners.

As Comskip uses the actual recording length to create the .edl file, when SageTV does it's timescaling it means the commercial block can be varying in accuracy depending on the recording source.

One of the side effects of having Timeline Scaling disabled is that recordings can finished playback before the SageTV OSD timeline reaches the end due to the difference between the OSD timeline length and the real recording length.

There's probably a longer and more accurate answer, but that's the gist of it.

John

[stuckless]

Thanks Guys! I never knew about timescaling, but I'll turn it off

[Steep]

Way to go Tom (tmiranda). I couldn't help but laugh out loud at the deluge of requests and feedback you received. I finally got tired of ducking for cover and skipped town, so to speak.

I didn't even know there was a V7 of SageTV out yet. I stumbled across your post doing a google search for iPhone SageTV client.

Anyhow, great job.

Cheers,
Hayden Steep

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by Steep

Way to go Tom (tmiranda). I couldn't help but laugh out loud at the deluge of requests and feedback you received. I finally got tired of ducking for cover and skipped town, so to speak.

I didn't even know there was a V7 of SageTV out yet. I stumbled across your post doing a google search for iPhone SageTV client.

Anyhow, great job.

Cheers,
Hayden Steep

Welcome back Hayden. I hope you return to "active duty" on the Sage forums!

I really liked the simplicity and ease of use of ComskipMonitor and it was the inspiration for CommercialDetector. Thank you.

Tom

[nwboater]

We've had Comskip running for awhile now and have good/bad news.

The good: it seems to mark the start of all series of commercials. Seems like magic to us!.

The bad: On many recorded movies (that's mostly what we watch) it marks the first 2 or 3 commercials in a row, but sometimes there are several more in a row. So we have to manually skip through those.

All recordings are on our WHS and we watch on the Client.

Any ideas what could be going wrong and what we might do to get it to mark all the commercials?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Rod

[tmiranda]

Rod,

I don't have any magic cure for you. If it's detecting some commercials, but not enough, you probably need to tune your comskip.ini or create a custom comskip.ini for the channels that carry the movies you record.

Look here (under documention) for how to tune comskip: http://www.kaashoek.com/comskip/

The CommercialDetector Wiki contains info on how to use custom comskip.ini files on a per show or per channel basis.

Tom

[phelme]

Anyone ever had the Commercial Detector stop working? Had been great for a quite a while and then it started a process on Grey's Anatomy last night and simply stopped (or crashed). No further shows were scanned after that until I restarted the service. There were log and txt files for the mpg but 0K in size.

[tmiranda]

Set the loglevel to Trace and if it happens again post the log. I've never seen that.

[SoFresh]

Is there a sagetv comskip guide anywhere- I read the GBPVR one but that is all command line-y. Specifically my comskip stopped autoprocessing files on 1/1/11 at midnight and I cannot remember where I configured it. It is set to "auto" in the setup but I also remember setting up the hours that it ran somewhere, now that it stopped working and I can't kick it off manually I want to change those hours in hopes that will let me kick it off manually and troubleshoot.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by SoFresh

Is there a sagetv comskip guide anywhere- I read the GBPVR one but that is all command line-y. Specifically my comskip stopped autoprocessing files on 1/1/11 at midnight and I cannot remember where I configured it.

If you are using CommercialDetector to launch comskip (which I am assuming since you posted in this forum), the instructions are here: http://code.google.com/p/tmiranda/wi...ercialDetector

It is set to "auto" in the setup but I also remember setting up the hours that it ran somewhere, now that it stopped working and I can't kick it off manually I want to change those hours in hopes that will let me kick it off manually and troubleshoot.

As far as I can recall, there is no "auto" in the setup. There is a setting that restricts comskip from running during specific hours.

[SoFresh]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

If you are using CommercialDetector to launch comskip (which I am assuming since you posted in this forum), the instructions are here: http://code.google.com/p/tmiranda/wi...ercialDetector



As far as I can recall, there is no "auto" in the setup. There is a setting that restricts comskip from running during specific hours.

Thanks for the link, when I went to my list of installed plugins Commercial detector says "failed" in yellow. So I uninstalled and reinstalled and it still says failed. Is there a manual way to install?

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by SoFresh

Thanks for the link, when I went to my list of installed plugins Commercial detector says "failed" in yellow. So I uninstalled and reinstalled and it still says failed. Is there a manual way to install?

There is no manual way to install the Plugin. I don't know why it is failing to install and would like to help you figure that one out because that should never happen.

Are there any other failed Plugins?
After installing are you prompted to reboot/reload?
Are you installing on a SageClient, extender or placeshifter?
Are the read/write permissions on the sage install directory OK?
What other Plugins do you have installed? When CommercialDetector is the only Plugin does it still fail to install?
Anything "unusual" about your system?

After installation:
- Is there a CommercialDetector directory in the sage install directory? What's in it?
- Is there a comskip directory in the sage install directory? What's in it?

Thanks for any info you can provide in helping to diagnose the problem.

Tom

[SoFresh]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

There is no manual way to install the Plugin. I don't know why it is failing to install and would like to help you figure that one out because that should never happen.

Are there any other failed Plugins?
After installing are you prompted to reboot/reload?
Are you installing on a SageClient, extender or placeshifter?
Are the read/write permissions on the sage install directory OK?
What other Plugins do you have installed? When CommercialDetector is the only Plugin does it still fail to install?
Anything "unusual" about your system?

After installation:
- Is there a CommercialDetector directory in the sage install directory? What's in it?
- Is there a comskip directory in the sage install directory? What's in it?

Thanks for any info you can provide in helping to diagnose the problem.

Tom

Thanks so much for your time, I just blew it all away and reinstalled. Rather than uninstalling a ton of plugins to get down to brass tacks. It is at least showing up and allowing me to configure it now. We'll see tomorrow if it runs comskip on my queue tonight.

I have no idea what made it all go wrong however. Absolutely nothing changed, it just stopped working. Weird.

[mephista]

I had an issue with commercial detector (not launching comskip). It may be the install process of sage plugins though. I tried to uninstall it so I could try installing it again, it wouldn't - an error some text file was missing. The reason it wasn't working for me the commercial detector java file was non existent. I downloaded that file and places it there manually, now works great..

[mephista]

Ok, sage hasn't crashed until comskip was running via commercial detector it did before with dirmon running too, any ideas?

[BigSwifty]

First a huge shout-out to you and other members who code these plug-ins. I am having no luck with this on a new install. Worked fine before on XP. I attach the generated error. Any thoughts?

http://s235.photobucket.com/albums/e...nt=CSerror.jpg

Sorry for the link; my attached pic is too wide.


Quote:from tmiranda:
Can you reproduce that bug? If so, how?
Occurs When I Click "queue files"

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by BigSwifty

First a huge shout-out to you and other members who code these plug-ins. I am having no luck with this on a new install. Worked fine before on XP. I attach the generated error. Any thoughts?

I added this bug to the issues list. Hopefully I'll have time to investigate it in the next few weeks.

[mguebert]

Quick question, is there a way to block a range of channels?

For instance would

500-599,605,610 work?

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by mguebert

Quick question, is there a way to block a range of channels?

For instance would

500-599,605,610 work?

No, sorry. You can open a ticket here to remind me to look at it in the future: http://code.google.com/p/tmiranda/issues/list