What is everyone using for comskip in SageTV?

[TheraEdge]

I installed the SageTV Playback plugin to be able to utilize my old comskip files from my XP machine, but haven't been able to gleam from forum posts how everyone has the comskip program setup to run. Is it just the vanilla version of comskip? It sounded like there have been a lot of improvements to the UI tools available now.

I used to run Comskip Monitor on my old XP machine, but I see that hasn't been updated in a long time.

[trallyus]

Originally Posted by TheraEdge

I installed the SageTV Playback plugin to be able to utilize my old comskip files from my XP machine, but haven't been able to gleam from forum posts how everyone has the comskip program setup to run. Is it just the vanilla version of comskip? It sounded like there have been a lot of improvements to the UI tools available now.

I used to run Comskip Monitor on my old XP machine, but I see that hasn't been updated in a long time.

I use Commercial Detector and Comskip Playback plugins with the purchased version of Comskip and the Comskip.ini file that came with the Commercial version of comskip and my recordings are all Over The Air recordings with digital tuners but most of the time my comskip playback is spot on with all that.

I also set my comskip not to generate the edl files until after 11 pm to not slow down my recordings since most of my recordings are from 8 pm to 11 pm and use coreavc and nvidia video decoder as my video encoders

[Fuzzy]

I'd guess most use the CommercialDetector plugin to launch comskip, unless they had an older implementation that they simply have't changed because it works.

[stanger89]

I'm using Sage Job Queue launching ShowAnalyzer.

[stuckless]

+1 for Commercial Detector Plugin + Registered version of Comskip

[alfi33]

I use Dirmon2 running on a seperate box and an older free version of Comskip. Recodings are scanned shortly after the recording starts but the play nice option is used.

This has worked very well for me for many years so I haven't messed with it much. I probably should go ahead and get the paid version of CS though.

[will]

I use Dirmon2 and a combination of ShowanAlyzer and Comskip. I use Comskip for my HVR-2250 recordings (mpg files) and SA for my HD-PVR recordings (h.264 files).

CA works better than SA now a days but with an older CPU and no dedicated graphics card SA is my only real option for processing h.264 files quickly.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by will

I use Dirmon2 and a combination of ShowanAlyzer and Comskip. I use Comskip for my HVR-2250 recordings (mpg files) and SA for my HD-PVR recordings (h.264 files).

CA works better than SA now a days but with an older CPU and no dedicated graphics card SA is my only real option for processing h.264 files quickly.

Shameless plug: CommercialDetector can use comskip or ShowAnalyzer, it's configurable.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by will

I use Dirmon2 and a combination of ShowanAlyzer and Comskip. I use Comskip for my HVR-2250 recordings (mpg files) and SA for my HD-PVR recordings (h.264 files).

CA works better than SA now a days but with an older CPU and no dedicated graphics card SA is my only real option for processing h.264 files quickly.

The lastest contributor version of comskip is a lot faster with the right options. Even before that though my system does 5 tuners (4 HDHR's & 1 HD-PVR) in realtime with no problem.

A couple years ago I realized the main bottleneck when doing realtime comskip was using the onboard SATA controller. I'm now using an LSI SAS card with SATA drives. All the comskip related hiccups we were experiencing disappeared over night once I moved all the drives to the card.

[MattHelm]

I use the FF button on the remote. ;-) (you ask!)

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

The lastest contributor version of comskip is a lot faster with the right options. Even before that though my system does 5 tuners (4 HDHR's & 1 HD-PVR) in realtime with no problem.

A couple years ago I realized the main bottleneck when doing realtime comskip was using the onboard SATA controller. I'm now using an LSI SAS card with SATA drives. All the comskip related hiccups we were experiencing disappeared over night once I moved all the drives to the card.

Has anyone done a comskip vs SA comparison lately? I'm generally very happy with SA, but a few networks throw it off a bit, and there's also the fact that SA likes to fill up my hard drive with it's history files. I actually donated for the H.264 comskip way back, maybe it's time to give it a shot again.

[Taddeusz]

Not that ShowAnalyzer doesn't work but I gave up on it once development on it was clearly ceased when the Dragon Global forums shut down. Development was always sporadic since the developer is/was in the Navy and had to work around deployments. I find it disingenuous that it appears that he's still accepting purchases for licenses.

I had actually already abandoned SA because I had issues getting it to be as accurate as I eventually could get comskip. Once the contributor comskip versions began supporting H.264 at a reasonable speed I completely abandoned SA.

[stanger89]

Well I downloaded the latest donator comskip and switched SJQ over, so I'll give it a shot and see how it goes. If it works as well, then at least I don't have to worry about SA's history filling up my HDD, if it works better, then great

[Taddeusz]

My biggest problem lately with comskip has been false positives. I believe mostly caused by the networks getting a bit smart to the techniques used by commercial detectors. For a while they've been placing their logo in their own ads. It really tends to throw bit of a wrench in small sections.

[KarylFStein]

I used to use Dirmon2 + SA a long time ago, but now it's SJQ and comskip. I can't remember why I switched to comskip, but would not have kept it around if it didn't perform at least as well as SA. Using SJQ is a no-brainer--awesome plugin well worth the learning curve.

[peternm22]

I've been a Showanalyzer user for years, but I decided to try out Comskip tonight. I have a few channels that Showanalyzer struggles on, and wanted to see how Comskip does in comparison.

I ran it against an 1 hour MPEG2 standard definition recording, and with default settings it marked all of the commercials in the same positions as Showanalyzer. All good there.

Showanalyzer 0.9.7.290 (paid version) - 65 seconds to process

Comskip 0.81.088 (non-paid version) - 171 seconds to process

I donated to Comskip, and I'll run the test again once I get access to the donators version. Says it's double speed MPEG2 processing, which would still make it slower than Showanalyzer.

Question for Comskip users about the files it creates. In addition to the .edl file, Comskip also produces other files. I managed to turn off the ".log" files, but it still produces a ".txt" file and a ".logo.txt". Any idea how to turn these off? If I can't turn them off, I'm guessing it's safe to have Dirmon2 run cleanup and delete these files?

[peternm22]

To answer my previous question, setting delete_logo_file=1 and output_default=0 takes care of those additional files.

I just received the donators version, and it is faster than the regular version, but still not as fast as Showanalyzer. I have a quad core CPU, so I increased the thread count to 4. Leaving the thread count at 2 resulted in slower processing.

Comskip 0.81.088 (donators version) - 94 seconds to process

CPU usage remained about 40-50% throughout the processing. Showanalyzer stayed at 24-25% (I'm guessing it's limited to a single core). With lower CPU usage, Showanalyzer was still faster.

Any tips for getting additional speed out of Comskip? I saw a hardware decode option, but it seemed only useful if you have a fast GPU. My SageTV server is 6 years old with integrated graphics, so I don't think that would help (if it's even supported on such an old machine)

I'll test this out on some HD recordings when I get a chance.

[rochurch]

I used SA for years but like others I moved to Comskip when development ceased.

I recently switched to a faster i5 computer and if I run Comskip immediately as the show is recording it does not detect any commercials. I'm using the stock donators .ini and the latest version. If I tell commercial detector to wait until the show is over to detect commercials I get a good comskip file and the commercials are properly detected.

Well I say properly - lately it appears to skip about 1 second too soon and come back to the show about 1 second too early. The back end "padding" is good, but the front end makes you think you missed content when you really didn't. Maybe it's just the shows we watch. Anyway, this part is no big deal.

Has anyone else had to set the plugin to not start when the recording starts after upgrading to a faster computer?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by rochurch

I recently switched to a faster i5 computer and if I run Comskip immediately as the show is recording it does not detect any commercials. I'm using the stock donators .ini and the latest version. If I tell commercial detector to wait until the show is over to detect commercials I get a good comskip file and the commercials are properly detected.

I seem to be having the same issue.

[Taddeusz]

I assume that you have live_tv=1 in your ini. For me setting the standoff to 8000000 seemed to help. Set lowres=10 to increase performance.