Comskip Questions

[Mountainbreeze]

Hope I'm in the right place for this question. If not, just slap me (gently - I'm new to STV) and tell me the right place to ask...

I have installed the latest V9 of STV along with the Comskip Commercial Detector UI. I scheduled 2 back-to-back 30 minute recordings on the same channel. Here is what SEEMS to have happened (I was not home when it happened so I am not sure): At the appropriate time, the computer woke up, recorded the 2 shows and went back to sleep before comskip had a chance to finish running on the second program. I think this is what happened because, when I got home, the computer was sleeping and when I went to watch the shows, only the first one had commercials identified (in the timeline bar). By the time I finished watching the first show, the second show then had its commercials identified (again, in the timeline bar).

So my question is: Is there a setting I am missing that will keep the computer awake so that comskip can finish all scheduled runs?

A second question unrelated to the above: If I configure comskip to not run during the hours of 5pm to 11pm (via the check boxes in the setup) and I record a show from 8pm to 9pm (and the computer then goes to sleep), will the computer wake up in order to perform the comskip task?

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by Mountainbreeze

Hope I'm in the right place for this question. If not, just slap me (gently - I'm new to STV) and tell me the right place to ask...

I have installed the latest V9 of STV along with the Comskip Commercial Detector UI. I scheduled 2 back-to-back 30 minute recordings on the same channel. Here is what SEEMS to have happened (I was not home when it happened so I am not sure): At the appropriate time, the computer woke up, recorded the 2 shows and went back to sleep before comskip had a chance to finish running on the second program. I think this is what happened because, when I got home, the computer was sleeping and when I went to watch the shows, only the first one had commercials identified (in the timeline bar). By the time I finished watching the first show, the second show then had its commercials identified (again, in the timeline bar).

So my question is: Is there a setting I am missing that will keep the computer awake so that comskip can finish all scheduled runs?

A second question unrelated to the above: If I configure comskip to not run during the hours of 5pm to 11pm (via the check boxes in the setup) and I record a show from 8pm to 9pm (and the computer then goes to sleep), will the computer wake up in order to perform the comskip task?

There is no setting within CommercialDetector to keep the machine awake while it is running OR to wake it up to run the task.

I never thought of adding an option for this by the way. I think you are the first to request it.

Isn't there a setting in Windows to not go to sleep if the CPU is busy?

[Mountainbreeze]

OK, just so I can use it as intended, give me some pointers...

I will use STV primarily in a record-watch-delete environment. Generally, I watch shows a day later so that comskip has had a chance to do its thing. While watching shows from the previous day (I usually watch during primetime), shows for the current day are recording. It seems like a good idea to not be running comskip while I am watching and recording (I am doing everything on a single computer). In BeyondTV (where I am coming from) I was able to configure comskip to run between (for example) 1am and 5am. The computer would wake, run the comskip jobs and go back to sleep. This worked well and kept the load off of the computer while watching and recording.

So, having said all of that, what are the recommendations for getting all of my shows comskipped? I prefer not to have the computer on 24/7 as I only use it 4 or 5 hours per day. I am not aware of any settings that keep the computer awake on high cpu utilization.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

There is no setting within CommercialDetector to keep the machine awake while it is running OR to wake it up to run the task.

I never thought of adding an option for this by the way. I think you are the first to request it.

Isn't there a setting in Windows to not go to sleep if the CPU is busy?

I was thinking about the possibility of adding some power management api calls to sage. Currently, there isn't much in there that isn't hard-coded to specific things sage does (watching, recording, and just as of v9 converting). A couple API calls to request a wake time, and to set and release a power hold would be advantageous. I've honestly not have my sage server sleep in at least 6 years, so its not something I've given a ton of though about, but it did occur to me back when i was making the changes to allow conversions to hold the system awake that other tasks might like this as well.

alternatively, and shorter term fix, is if comskip can be launched via a script instead of directly, that script cold use powercfg.exe to disable sleep while it's running, and reenable it when done.

[Mountainbreeze]

Thanks for the response.

First, many thanks to tmiranda for an excellent plugin with so many great features.

In case someone is entertaining suggestions for future features for the Comskip Commercial Detector UI, here are a few that I think many would useful:

1. Have the system stay awake if Comskip is active. When Comskip completes, allow the system to sleep as usual. This is useful for when someone wants to run Comskip immediately after the recording completes or if Comskip is configured to run while the recording is in progress.

2. Keep track of whether or not there are any recordings that are to be Comskipped and wake the system at a specified time (or during the next non-restricted time) to perform the task. A subtle detail is that if a recording was made that is to be Comskipped and that recording was deleted prior to Comskip running, and no other recordings are scheduled to be Comskipped, then the system would not wake.

3. Many have found that tweaking the Comskip.ini file on a per-channel basis improves the accuracy of the Comskip output. To allow for this, provide the ability to specify the name of the .ini file to be used based on the channel the recording was made from. (Comskip provides the ability to specify the .ini file with the --ini=<file> parameter.) It looks like this one MAY be easily (yeah, I know - easy for ME to say) implemented via the "Show All Channels" configuration where which method of commercial skipping is set. Maybe add an additional setting there to allow the specification of the .ini file name.

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by Mountainbreeze

3. Many have found that tweaking the Comskip.ini file on a per-channel basis improves the accuracy of the Comskip output. To allow for this, provide the ability to specify the name of the .ini file to be used based on the channel the recording was made from. (Comskip provides the ability to specify the .ini file with the --ini=<file> parameter.) It looks like this one MAY be easily (yeah, I know - easy for ME to say) implemented via the "Show All Channels" configuration where which method of commercial skipping is set. Maybe add an additional setting there to allow the specification of the .ini file name.

This is already in there. See https://code.google.com/archive/p/tm...lDetector.wiki.

[Mountainbreeze]

Good to know. Thanks for the feedback.