External Comskip Applications

[mlbdude]

Question before I start reading a bunch of threads. Are there any programs out there that I can schedule with the Windows scheduler that will handle the launching and processing of recordings?

I would basically want it to run every night from midnight to 6:00 am. It should also handle any necessary cleanup of older comskip files.

Anything?

Thanks!

[Cayars]

The first part could be accomplished with a simple VBS script.

I'm not sure what you're asking about cleanup. Do you mean remove comskip generated files if the main movie was deleted?

[insomniac]

dammit cayers, I was just about to point him to your cool idea in your thread

EDIT:

BTW, are you still thinking about doing it? I would love to put my other machines to work. scripts work fine, but an intelligent process sounds so much more appealing!

I was thinking of creating a service which would trigger a simple logic script which would query realtime(at the moment) process/memory/cpu idle, and then tally up the compskips and trigger them on the remote machine via: RCMD to the least busy. The problem with something like that is I wouldnt be very intelligent, and I wouldnt be sure how to retrieve realtime progress from the client machines, etc..

I know you have to have something much better than that!

I.

[mlbdude]

Originally Posted by Cayars

The first part could be accomplished with a simple VBS script.

I'm not sure what you're asking about cleanup. Do you mean remove comskip generated files if the main movie was deleted?

I do mean the deletion of the comskip files when the movie no longer exists. I could easily write an application to handle both but just wanted to see if it existed already.

[briands]

Originally Posted by mlbdude

Question before I start reading a bunch of threads. Are there any programs out there that I can schedule with the Windows scheduler that will handle the launching and processing of recordings?

I would basically want it to run every night from midnight to 6:00 am. It should also handle any necessary cleanup of older comskip files.

Anything?

Thanks!

Does that mean you are warming up to comskip???

[insomniac]

I would guess that means that he is warming up to not incorporating it into his STV :P

Originally Posted by briands

Does that mean you are warming up to comskip???

[insomniac]

snipped from Carlos thread:

I'd like to get some feedback from you guys. I realize many of you have more elaborate systems then the typical PVR user. At least I'm guessing this based on the fact that you guys like all the "bells & whistles" in my STV.

Some of the new things we can add to the system as a whole can really suck up some CPU processing power slowing down the system as a whole. At present the main culprit is ComSkip. Soon it could be DVD Burning, Transcoding, Compression and Commercial Cutting.

What I've envisioned from day one is having the ability to offload these processes to other machines on your network. It could be one other machine or 10 or more depending on your environment.

This would be similar in nature to having a Sage Recorder machine (for those that understand this). What I envision is having a QUEUE setup to manage different type of "jobs". A watchdog service/tray icon program would be installed on each "workstation". It could be configurable to only process jobs at certain times of the day and you'd be able to set the CPU priority of these jobs on the workstation.

This would be ideal for installing on the "house-hold" computer and letting it go full bore from midnight to 7am for example or from 9am to 5pm while you're at works for example. You could of course also have one or more dedicated computer doing nothing but processing jobs.

Besides being able to offload work from the SageTV machine, I'd also be able to do some things that aren't practical right now. For example if we wanted to add commercial cutting (using comskip data) using VideoReDo or DivX conversion using Dr. DivX (arguably the best) I could do this pretty easily on another computer. Both of these programs for example have windows that like to open which is bad for PVR machine interface but not that bad on a machine that no one is using (or dedicated).

With a few hacks/scripts a lot of programs could be added into the mix that wouldn't work on the SageTV machine because of CPU or Interface issues.

So the question I'll throw out to you guys. Does this sound appealing? Do you guys have multiple computers in the house that you could/would use to do this with? Do you like the idea of being able to really do REAL TIME commercial processing? Do you guys want a distributed PVR solution?

BTW, this could still be run on your main PVR machine. Nothing would stop you from doing this, so even single computer users would not loose functionality.

Carlo

[mlbdude]

That is similar to what I am thinking. He sees the same problem I guess . I want to "tame" comskip. Basically the only change to the STV would be to the OSD. I would not give users the ability to choose shows or types of shows to apply comskip to.

What I do want to do is create an application that has a 10-foot interface that is easy to use and is self managing (self scheduling) and self cleaning. The side benefit of it is that you could run it on any computer not just the Sage PC.

My main goal is ease of use. Seems moving this to an external application would protect new users from shooting themselves in the foot while giving experienced users a new feature.

[briands]

Originally Posted by insomniac

I would guess that means that he is warming up to not incorporating it into his STV :P

As I have said before, all I need him to include is the functionality that allows playback. I can run his STV on the machine I watch and use one of the others to actually generate the .txt files.

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by insomniac

dammit cayers, I was just about to point him to your cool idea in your thread

EDIT:

BTW, are you still thinking about doing it? I would love to put my other machines to work. scripts work fine, but an intelligent process sounds so much more appealing!

I was thinking of creating a service which would trigger a simple logic script which would query realtime(at the moment) process/memory/cpu idle, and then tally up the compskips and trigger them on the remote machine via: RCMD to the least busy. The problem with something like that is I wouldnt be very intelligent, and I wouldnt be sure how to retrieve realtime progress from the client machines, etc..

I know you have to have something much better than that!

I.

Yep & Yep

[Jere_Jones]

Originally Posted by Cayars

Yep & Yep

Does that mean you already have something like that? The reason I ask is that it seems like an interesting project that I wouldn't mind trying.

Of course, that is, as soon as I get my computer back! Toshiba said that the parts wouldn't be shipped until next Tuesday from overseas! AAAGGGHHH!!!

Jere

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by mlbdude

That is similar to what I am thinking. He sees the same problem I guess . I want to "tame" comskip. Basically the only change to the STV would be to the OSD. I would not give users the ability to choose shows or types of shows to apply comskip to.

What I do want to do is create an application that has a 10-foot interface that is easy to use and is self managing (self scheduling) and self cleaning. The side benefit of it is that you could run it on any computer not just the Sage PC.

My main goal is ease of use. Seems moving this to an external application would protect new users from shooting themselves in the foot while giving experienced users a new feature.

Yep, I see the same problem. Even if you run ComSkip at a low process that is only low CPU activity but there is still a lot of I/O activity which seems to bother the STV as much or more then the CPU load. Running it outside of the SageTV process seems to work better especially if done on another computer.

With a little change here or there I think this is exactly what you're looking for or more MlbDude. So start adding the OSD comskip code.

ComSkip Automation

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by Jere_Jones

Does that mean you already have something like that? The reason I ask is that it seems like an interesting project that I wouldn't mind trying.

Of course, that is, as soon as I get my computer back! Toshiba said that the parts wouldn't be shipped until next Tuesday from overseas! AAAGGGHHH!!!

Jere

Not yet. I'm putting finishing touches on the DVDBurner app and making some fixes/changes to my next STV version. Then I think I'm adding basic security stuff with multiple menu systems for different family members to the STV. After this I'm planning on tackling the Queue manager.

I have many little parts of it done already. For example I can do ComSkip processing outside of SageTV. I can cut commercial, do Transcoding using Dr.DivX, etc, but I haven't wrapped these up yet into anything useful (unless you like using lots of scripts)

I want it to be an easy install for the users so I don't have a lot of support to do on it. <-- wishful thinking probably!

[Cayars]

Oh BTW, Jere you're not allowed to have it. You're restricted to ComSkip/ComDetect work. No playing for you!

Hey, wanna wager if I might have it released BEFORE you get your parts?

[krutaw]

Originally Posted by mlbdude

Question before I start reading a bunch of threads. Are there any programs out there that I can schedule with the Windows scheduler that will handle the launching and processing of recordings?

I would basically want it to run every night from midnight to 6:00 am. It should also handle any necessary cleanup of older comskip files.

Anything?

Thanks!

Yeah, I wrote a vbscript for processing of videos so that I could control when it runs. Here's a link to the post with the script:

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...&postcount=494

Basically I setup a scheduled task that I based on my personal knowledge of the time of day when my sagetv is not busy. The first day it runs through the videos it can be a little longer than normal, however, it does quieten down after that. My script runs for about an hour a day on average.