Comskip gets out of sync with long videos

[wmarler]

Hey folks,

I set up comskip to run in parallel. I'll start playback 45-60 mins into a recording, and NextPVR will read from the EDL, and skip commercials, just like it's supposed to. Over time, NextPVR will gradually start the commercial skips earlier and earlier in time -- by the time I'm at the 2 hour (ish) mark, commercials are being skipped 5-10 seconds early, cutting off that much of the program (and playing that much of the commercial at the end of the skip period). If I stop playback and re-start from my saved position, commercials start getting skipped at the right time again. If I let the program finish and then start playback, the skip locations are correct from start to finish.

Any idea what's going on, and how I can fix?

I'm using Kodi with the NextPVR PVR Client addon. I've tested most on a Vero V OSMC device. My client is set to "Timeshift" Live TV Method, with a Pre-buffer time of 3 seconds, Live TV chunk size of 64, and Recording chunk size of 32 (I don't know what these options mean, btw, so if they're suboptimal, lmk). My device is on a local hardwired LAN with plenty of bandwidth between server & client. 

The NextPVR server is running in the custom container published by @Ranbato , but I've been experiencing this behavior for years while I was running NextPVR on bare metal -- never brought it up before b/c it was just me using the frontend. Now family is getting involved ...

[mvallevand]

The only thing I can think of that might be NextPVR related is if the duration reported for the recording doesn't match the true recording duration. Maybe check your recording list http://IP:8866/service?method=recording.list&filter=all and check duration_seconds (clock time) and see if that matches the mediainfo reported time.

Martin

[wmarler]

Yea, that makes sense. And when a show is being recorded, the duration of the video on disk will obviously be increasing over time, and the issue is only present with longer recordings that are being played back as they're being recorded and commercials are actively being skipped.

If I get a moment today I'll check duration_seconds via the web interface and see how that aligns with what mediainfo reports, the biggest culprits are football games (American football that is ... 3-hours min, that I schedule to run an extra hour in case there's OT)

[mvallevand]

OK if your issue is with in-progress that is no doubt going to be the cause. Skipping in-progress with NextPVR is not exact since seeks are approximations also based on clock time and average bit rate so if you are only 10 seconds off that is pretty good. You might want to experiment with pathsubstitution in Kodi advancedsettings.xml to map the http to the filesytem or even smb or nfs where you might have better luck.

That reminds me for you question on drive speed, I use shares for Live TV and recordings and the extra latency doesn't impact anything.

Martin

[wmarler]

You might want to experiment with pathsubstitution in Kodi advancedsettings.xml to map the http to the filesytem

Tell me more about this -- what path would I be substituting, and to what? I use pathsubstitution for my sources.xml:

Code:

  <pathsubstitution>
    <substitute>
      <from>special://profile/sources.xml</from>
      <to>smb://10.10.1.99/userdata/sources.xml</to>
    </substitute>

But what would I be substituting for and to for the NextPVR plugin?

[mvallevand]

From the source as NextPVR sees it to the destination that Kodi sees as maybe shown here

https://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.ph...#pid486679

Martin