Plugin: CommercialDetector

[nyplayer]

Tom,

I am looking to move away from DIRMON2 and use your plugin instead. I have a few Questions. I notice that you look for existence of EDL and TXT to determine whether to run comskip... Is it possible to have it look for VPRJ also.

I say this because EDL and TXT are created even if comskip fails. I have comskip setup to only create VPRJ upon successful completion. Better yet is it possible to add our own checks. There are some mpg that I have cut commercials off and created a file with the extension donecut. So i do not want Comskip to run on any files that have a file with donecut.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

I am looking to move away from DIRMON2 and use your plugin instead. I have a few Questions. I notice that you look for existence of EDL and TXT to determine whether to run comskip... Is it possible to have it look for VPRJ also.

This is only partially true. If you use the option to scan for files with no comskip info it does look for .txt or .edl. The only time you really need to use that option however is if you have a bunch of recordings that for one reason or another have not been processed.

Under normal conditions comskip is triggered as soon as the recording finishes or optionally as soon as the recording starts. This is fundamentally different from DirMon which monitors a directory looking for new files to appear.

So what you would do is edit the comskip.ini to tell comskip to produce .VPRJ files. After comskip executes you can change filenames to anything you like.

Did that answer your question?

If you want to get fancy and do things conditionally (like run VideoReDo if comskip succeeds and do something else if it fails) you will need to use SJQ.

[nyplayer]

Yep that answers my questions I can work with that. Thanks

[nyplayer]

Tom,

Is there a way In future release to add not to run on certain categories.... For example sports. I usually watch sports on Sage because I can pause.... but I do not care to run comskip on them as I watch them. Plus sometimes sports tickers play havoc with comskip marking.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

Tom,

Is there a way In future release to add not to run on certain categories.... For example sports. I usually watch sports on Sage because I can pause.... but I do not care to run comskip on them as I watch them. Plus sometimes sports tickers play havoc with comskip marking.

That's possible. Add the issue here so I don't forget to look at it: http://code.google.com/p/tmiranda/issues/list

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

Tom,

Is there a way In future release to add not to run on certain categories.... For example sports. I usually watch sports on Sage because I can pause.... but I do not care to run comskip on them as I watch them. Plus sometimes sports tickers play havoc with comskip marking.

That's funny, because Football is one of the few shows where I intentionally watch it a little behind live, to allow comskip to do it's work.

[tmiranda]

This is not fully tested, but since people volunteered to help test I figured I'd post it here in the forums.

Partial change log:

- Added ability to skip recordings based on a channel range.
- Added ability to skip recordings based on category/subcategory.
- Fixed a bug that prevented artifacts from being deleted if MediaFileDeleted event was received but the Sage core had not yet physically removed the file.
- Fixed a deceptive message that indicated there was an error after a job was cancelled when there was really no error.
- Possibly fixed a bug that would create a String Out of Bounds exception when scanning for recordings without comskip files.
- Improved Intelligent Scheduling to search for pending jobs that can be processed before the next recording rather than just looking at the first job in the queue.
- Cleaned up code.
- Improved logging.


To skip channels based on range the "skip channel" dialog now accepts channel ranges separated by the "-" character. So "10,SHO,100-199,12" will not process recordings from channels 10, 12, 100 through 199 and ShowTime.

You'll see a new option in the plugin config to skip based on category/subcategory.

To skip based on category enter the category or subcategory separated by a comma. It will look at the Category and Subcategory. So if you enter "tech,football" it will skip anything that has tech or football in the category or subcategory fields. It is case insensitive but it only matches entire words.

Installation of this must be done manually:
- Stop Sage
- Rename CommercialDetector.jar to something else.
- Overwrite CommercialDetector.jar with the attached.

If you have problems stop Sage and restore the original CommercialDetector.jar.

Tom

[nyplayer]

Looking good Tom the Categories work great... haven't had a chance to setup my channels yet.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

Looking good Tom the Categories work great... haven't had a chance to setup my channels yet.

Good to know, and thanks for the suggestion. I never would have thought about adding that.

I will test for a while before releasing it to make sure it's as solid as possible.

[wrems]

Is there any way to limit the plugin to just a recordings directory or directory(s) of my choosing?

I had to do some maintenance some time ago on my server and finally got around to re-installing this plugin. One thing that hit me was that when I fired off a manual scan is that it analyzed every file on my server. It took forever. It would be nice to provide the specific paths where comskip is allowed to run.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by wrems

Is there any way to limit the plugin to just a recordings directory or directory(s) of my choosing?

I had to do some maintenance some time ago on my server and finally got around to re-installing this plugin. One thing that hit me was that when I fired off a manual scan is that it analyzed every file on my server. It took forever. It would be nice to provide the specific paths where comskip is allowed to run.

Probably possible. Please add it to the issue list so I don't forget about it.

[tmiranda]

Version 1.00 is available in the plugin repository. Changes:

- Added ability to skip recordings based on a channel range.
- Added ability to skip recordings based on category.
- Fixed a bug that prevented artifacts from being deleted if MediaFileDeleted event was received but the Sage core had not yet physically removed the file.
- Fixed a deceptive message that indicated there was an error after a job was cancelled when there was really no error.
- Possibly fixed a bug that would create a String Out of Bounds exception when scanning for recordings without comskip information.
- Improved Intelligent Scheduling to search the queue for pending jobs that can be processed before the next recording instead of just looking at the first job in the queue.
- Separated comskip into its own Plugin so it will be possible to update comskip versions independently of CommercialDetector.
- Updated comskip to version 80.042.
- Cleaned up code.
- Improved logging.
- Removed plugin from beta status.

[ptzink]

You've been working hard! Thanks for the update - looks like a lot of good stuff here. Can't wait to try it out.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by ptzink

You've been working hard! Thanks for the update - looks like a lot of good stuff here. Can't wait to try it out.

I made the changes in "bits and pieces" over the last several months so it was really just a matter of packaging it up.

[gabrielcab]

I have the Haupaugge Colosus ready to be installed and I have donated to Erick, now what? any step by step of how to install the donator version of commskip and make SageTV to detect commercials on HD programs?

[NoodleNT]

Originally Posted by gabrielcab

I have the Haupaugge Colosus ready to be installed and I have donated to Erick, now what? any step by step of how to install the donator version of commskip and make SageTV to detect commercials on HD programs?

Ahhh! That might be why my latest recordings are not detecting commercials. Is there a newer donate version?

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by gabrielcab

I have the Haupaugge Colosus ready to be installed and I have donated to Erick, now what? any step by step of how to install the donator version of commskip and make SageTV to detect commercials on HD programs?

It's real easy.

A day or two after donating Erik will send you a link to the donators version. When it arrives download it and unzip it to your Sage server any place you like, but do NOT overwrite the comskip files that come with CommercialDetector.

Go to the CommercialDetector config options and look for the option where you can select the comskip.exe location. Change that to point to your donators version and you are done.

If you want to change the comskip.ini parameters (which I recommend you do not do until you get comfortable with how it all works) edit the comskip.ini file that comes with the donator's version and then go back to the CommercialDetector config options and look for the option where you select the comskip.ini. Point it at your edited comskip.ini.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by NoodleNT

Ahhh! That might be why my latest recordings are not detecting commercials. Is there a newer donate version?

Erik usually releases the donator's version and free version at the same time. Are you currently using the donator's version or are you using the free version (which is what comes with CommercialDetector)?

[farfromuman]

Since version 1.0 Commercial Detector no longer ignores my PBS channels, I have them entered like this: 15-1,15-2,15-3.......and it worked fine before.

Has something changed?

Thanks

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by farfromuman

Since version 1.0 Commercial Detector no longer ignores my PBS channels, I have them entered like this: 15-1,15-2,15-3.......and it worked fine before.

Has something changed?

Thanks

Yes, I added support for a channel range specified by using the "-" character. So I'm thinking that CommercialDetector thinks you are trying to not process channels 1-15. (If is sees the second number is lower than the first it will flip them.)

Se the loglevel to trace, let it run for a while, preferably when you make a recording on one of those PBS channels, and then attach a logfile for me to look at.

I have an idea for a fix if what I suspect is happening really is.

Tom