Plugin: CommercialDetector

[mguebert]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

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

Done, sorry I meant to add it as an enhancement, but it came up as a defect

[osx-addict]

Ok.. So I initially tried the other comskip plugin but had issues with CSM not liking my paths.. So, I was reading further about this plugin that it did not require CSM and thought I'd give it a try..

So, I uninstalled the other plugin, removed the files related to it including the comskip exe and related files. I then installed this one verified that the files exist but see no customize menu available which I assume indicates some sort of installation failure?

Are there any things I can look at to verify (or not) that the plugin got installed properly? Thanks!

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by osx-addict

Are there any things I can look at to verify (or not) that the plugin got installed properly? Thanks!

Go to Setup -> Plugins -> Installed Plugins and then look for CommercialDetector under the "General" tab. From there you can select the config options.

[osx-addict]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Go to Setup -> Plugins -> Installed Plugins and then look for CommercialDetector under the "General" tab. From there you can select the config options.

Is this an alternative to what is mentioned at the start of this thread (e.g. looking at Setup->Detailed Setup->Customize and look for "Comskip Playback Options" at the end of the list)? I'll check when I get home this evening.. Thanks!

[Fuzzy]

the 'Comskip Playback Options' are not a part of the CommercialDetector plugin. They are a part of the Comskip Playback plugin. They also don't have anything to do with the launching of comskip - just the interpreting of the .edl files generated by comskip. That said, the Comskip Playback plugin should be installed if you install the CommercialDetector UI plugin (in the UI Mods section). It sounds like you only have the CommercialDetector plugin (non-ui), which is the back-end part, without the UI elements.

[osx-addict]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

the 'Comskip Playback Options' are not a part of the CommercialDetector plugin. They are a part of the Comskip Playback plugin. They also don't have anything to do with the launching of comskip - just the interpreting of the .edl files generated by comskip. That said, the Comskip Playback plugin should be installed if you install the CommercialDetector UI plugin (in the UI Mods section). It sounds like you only have the CommercialDetector plugin (non-ui), which is the back-end part, without the UI elements.

You may be correct.. Should I see both listed in the installed plugins afterwards? If so, I don't see it and will try to manually re-install this evening. I see what you're saying and didn't notice that comment when I read the first message in this thread initially.. Thanks for the clarification! I originally had comskipping kinda-sorta-working for a little while and it was pretty cool! Way better than what my family does with the Tivo's for now (using the forward button to skip manually)..

[JmanGTA]

I installed commercial detector UI and comskip playback. It said install was successful, the 3 plugins said enabled. Options work.

But, I enabled scan during playback and it doesn't do anything. I tried qeueing up all my old recordings (700) and it didn't scan them. So I pressed qeue again and now it says 1400 qeued.

The only time comskip ever worked was when I manually told it to scan a single recording. Then it did it, the marked areas showed and it skipped the ads.

But the 1400 sit in the qeue after 2 days and nothing newly recorded is being done. There is no clear qeue button either.

What now?

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by osx-addict

You may be correct.. Should I see both listed in the installed plugins afterwards?

If you install the CommercialDetector UI Mod Plugin it will automatically install everything that you need (which includes the CommercialDetector Standard Plugin, the comskip playback UI Mod Plugin and other things that are needed "under the covers".)

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by JmanGTA

I installed commercial detector UI and comskip playback. It said install was successful, the 3 plugins said enabled. Options work.

But, I enabled scan during playback and it doesn't do anything. I tried qeueing up all my old recordings (700) and it didn't scan them. So I pressed qeue again and now it says 1400 qeued.

The only time comskip ever worked was when I manually told it to scan a single recording. Then it did it, the marked areas showed and it skipped the ads.

But the 1400 sit in the qeue after 2 days and nothing newly recorded is being done. There is no clear qeue button either.

What now?

1. Enable debug logging in Sage. (That's in the detailed setup section.)
2. Go to the CommercialDetector options and set the loglevel to Trace.
3. Stop Sage.
4. Look for the commercialdetector.DB file which is located in the commercialdetector directory under your sage install directory. (I'm going from memory on that, so check.) Delete that .DB file. (The DB file keeps track of recordings that are in the queue to process.)
5. Restart Sage.
6. Wait until a program starts recording and let it go for about 5 minutes.
7. Zip and attach the logfile to a post so I can take a look at it.

Tom

[osx-addict]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

If you install the CommercialDetector UI Mod Plugin it will automatically install everything that you need (which includes the CommercialDetector Standard Plugin, the comskip playback UI Mod Plugin and other things that are needed "under the covers".)

For whatever reason it did not install the comskip plugin -- I checked last night
and it was missing.. I installed it manually and now everything is working.. I had a scheduled recording last night for Leno and this morning it had the commercials snipped.. Cool! Thanks!

[tmiranda]

Glad you got it working. If you have any further problems follow the steps above and post a logfile.

[dealsdyker]

I am having trouble. My setup: SageServer on WHS. I record everything to the E:\ drive. I have set up a share to E:\ location at \\servername\sagerecs . The way I did this is by right mouse clicking on the drive in this server and saying "Share". I gave full rights to "Everyone". This E drive is NOT in the storage pool.

On my server I have installed the "UI Mod" and on my WHS server itself if I play a show I see all the commercial break markers and commercials skip just fine.

On my client (sage client) I also installed CommercialDetector under "UI Mod" and selected "Client Install". I left all the defaults (as I did on the server). However, on the client I see no commercial break markers. When I go to TV/Recordings on the client I now get the spinning circle about 5-7 seconds and I think it is trying to scan \\server\sagerecs for the skip files. But I never see the break markers.

What I've found is on the client PC I can bring up the directory \\server\sagerecs . I get a directory list of all the ELD, Incommercial, movie, and txt tiles just fine. However, on the client PC I cannot OPEN any files there. For example, if I try to open one of the text files I get "access denied". So obviously Sage Client is trying to open the files to that share and cannot.

On WHS how can I correctlyt "share" this drive so my client machines can not only scan the directory, but open the files to work with commercial skip? What is the *right* way to do this, becuase obviously I've not set up the share correctly to give my client PC access be able to open files in \\server\sagerecs.

[tmiranda]

I've never used WHS so I can't really help with the permissions issue. There are plenty of people who do use WHS so hopefully one of them will chime in.

One thing to check. Go to the detailed information screen for one of the recordings on the share. Look under "Files:", it should say "\\YOURSERVER\YourShare". If it says "E:\...." CommercialDetector will not be able to see the files from a SageClient.

[dealsdyker]

Thanks, I found a setting in Administrative tools in control panel with a different "rights" tab and was able to set the rights in there. It seems to work now but I get the spinning sage circle quite a bit now after installing this extension... especially while scrolling through the list of recorded shows. I'm wondering if it is because the recorder markers show in the thumbnail picture of the shows before you select them, and if the spinning circle is to be expected.

[tmiranda]

The spinning circle is not normal so something is still not quite right. Try uninstalling the CommercialDetector UI Mod (leave the General Plugin) and let me know if you still get the spinning circle.

The only things that should change when you remove the UI mod are:

1. There will be no "CS" icon in the header to tell you CommercialDetector is active.
2. The "CS" icon will not change color for shows that are being processed.
3. The "Run comskip" option in the dialog that pops up when you select a show or group of shows will not work.

Tom

[dealsdyker]

I don't think I did get the WHS share right. I can see the files fine now outside WHS. So in Sage I set my recording directory to \\servername\tvrecs and it seemed to work... but I keep losing visibility to that directory from my server now. I'll get a playback error saying the directory was lost, or I'll get errors recording on my HDHomerun saying it lost the tuner... weird stuff like that. But if I change the server back to just storing recordings at E:\tvrecs\ all seems happy again.

[tmiranda]

I'm not sure how to help, I've never used WHS. Setting your recording directory to //servername/sharename is the right thing to do so I'm wondering if you have the wrong permissions for the share?

[nwboater]

While looking through my plugins in Setup on the Client I noticed some strangeness with Comskip.

On the Client:
1. Commercial Detector V 0.80 Beta Failed
2. Commercial Detector UI V 1.31 Disabled

On the WHS:
1. Commercial Detector .80 Beta Enabled
2. Commercial Detector UI V 1.31 Disabled
3. Comskip Playback V 2.0.5.1 Enabled and Update Available

When I tried to do the update on Comskip Playback I got this message: " Plugin update progress: Done - Failed - STV relative items need to be installed, but no STV context exists. Try installing this plugin from a local UI, Extender or Placeshifter instead.

Any idea what may be going on and what I should do to straighten this out? It's all been working fine for the last month or two.

For reference we don't watch anything on the Server - only with the Client and the Extenders.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Rod

[tmiranda]

Rod,

Enable the CommercialDetector UI Mod on the WHS server. If you don't watch anything on the server then you need to go to an extender and tell me what is and isn't installed there.

On the Client I'm not sure how you managed to get the CommercialDetector UI Mod Plugin installed without the ComskipPlayback Plugin so something is very wrong there. I'd recommend uninstalling the CommercialDector UI Mod Plugin and then reinstalling it. That should automatically install the ComskipPlayback Plugin.

[nwboater]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Rod,

Enable the CommercialDetector UI Mod on the WHS server. If you don't watch anything on the server then you need to go to an extender and tell me what is and isn't installed there.

On the Client I'm not sure how you managed to get the CommercialDetector UI Mod Plugin installed without the ComskipPlayback Plugin so something is very wrong there. I'd recommend uninstalling the CommercialDector UI Mod Plugin and then reinstalling it. That should automatically install the ComskipPlayback Plugin.

Hi Tom,

Everything is okay now. I uninstalled and reinstalled the Commercial Detector UI Plugin. And I goofed when I said that Playback was not installed. I thought it should be with the others, but alphabetically it was further down the list and off the bottom of my screen. Sorry for the bad report! I've been able to do the update on the Server Playback and everything now seems fine.

In retrospect I guess when things go weird I should just do an uninstall/reinstall before posting here. With Sage 7 it really is easy now.

Thanks for getting back to me right away and for the good support. Next time I'll try to do more on my own.

Rod