Comskip help needed

[soccerdad]

I have been working on getting comskip set up to work with the autodeletion setting that sub added in this last great release. Reboot gave me some great help on the tuning but I think I am still missing something. I recorded a show and it appears to have done the comskip analysis because I have 3 txt files and an excel file and a .wme file in the folder. An excerpt from one of the files:

---------------------
Initial Commercial List
---------------------
0) 1 10255 0: 5:42.14
1) 24428 40550 0: 8:57.94
2) 49216 52307 0: 1:43.14


---------------------
Final Commercial List
---------------------
3 - start: 49216 end: 52307 length: 0: 1:43.14

So I think it found at least one commercial. The problem is all of the commercials still show up when I play back the video. I have the autoskip commmercials checked in Config. The green status bar is all green and does not have any black in it. Is there something else that I need to do to set this up? Also, I did not get set up a "dictionary" since I have a 150mce and from what I read it may not help me. Is that correct? Finally, do I need all of the text files,wme and the excel file to make this work? The 6 meg excel file seems large. Thanks.

[ydekmekji]

dude, you gotta get SA--i have yet to find a mistake!

[reboot]

You don't need the excel file at all.
You only need comskip to output what you want.
You only need the .txt file for comskip to work with the latest gbpvr.

Post your comskip.ini, and I'll help you tune it a bit more, as well as removing the excel file (and other things you don't need).

[erik]

Set
output_framearray=0
in the comskip.ini file to remove the excel file.

Comskip/SA only detects commercials, it does NOT remove them
There are many tools to remove the commercials. Some manual, some automatic
All tools read one of the output files of comskip/SA to do the cutting
Womble MPEG-VCR is a nice manual cutter, Videoredo is better but you can not get it for free.
Comclean is automatic, fast, but crude.

[soccerdad]

Thanks for the help. The ini file is below. I already changed it so I won't get the excel file. To be clear, do I need an additional program such as Womble, etc just to play it back on GBPVR without commercials? I thought that Sub's program did this. I am not trying to edit them out and save them without the commericials to a file. I just want to watch them. Also, is Comskip different than Comskip/SA. If so, ????

detect_method=255 ;1=black frame, 2=logo, 4=scene change, 8=fuzzy logic, 16=closed captions, 32=aspect ration, 255=all
;detect_method=255 ;1=black frame, 2=logo, 4=scene change, 8=fuzzy logic, 16=closed captions, 32=aspect ration, 255=all
verbose=10 ;show extra info
fps=29.970 ;frames per second (NTSC=29.970, PAL=25)
border=10 ;border around edge of video to ignore
max_brightness=140 ;frame not black if any pixels checked are greater than this (scale 0 to 255)
test_brightness=65 ;frame not pure black if any pixels checked are greater than this, will check average brightness (scale 0 to 255)
max_avg_brightness=20 ;maximum average brightness for a dim frame to be considered black (scale 0 to 255)
max_commercialbreak=241 ;maximum length in seconds to consider a segment a commercial break
min_commercialbreak=14 ;minimum length in seconds to consider a segment a commercial break
max_commercial_size=91 ;maximum time in seconds for a single commercial or multiple commercials if no breaks in between
min_commercial_size=14 ;mimimum time in seconds for a single commercial
min_show_segment_length=181
score_percentile=0.00 ; 0.67
black_percentile=0.005 ;0.0073
logo_threshold=0.85 ;0.75 (0.05 added because of strict)
logo_present_modifier=0.01
aggressive_logo_rejection=0
brightness_jump=200
non_uniformity=20
delete_logo_file=0
min_black_frames_for_break=1;
output_framearray=0
output_videoredo=0
output_womble=1
output_mpgtx=0
output_zoomplayer_chapter=0
output_zoomplayer_cutlist=0
after_logo=0
before_logo=0

[reboot]

SA is Show Analyzer, a different program.
The version of comskip you have, is Erik's, with a few mods.
You do not need womble, so set output_womble=1 to output_womble=0
Try it again, but take out these lines:
score_percentile=0.00 ; 0.67
black_percentile=0.005 ;0.0073
logo_threshold=0.85 ;0.75 (0.05 added because of strict)
aggressive_logo_rejection=0
brightness_jump=200
non_uniformity=20

This will give you a basic comskip, which you can then test. If it's missing commercials, you can ADD stuff back in, but I've found that simpler is better.
Here's all I've been using, and it works for me:

Code:

detect_method=47    ;1=black frame, 2=logo, 4=scene change, 8=fuzzy logic, 16=closed captions, 32=aspect ratio, 255=all
verbose=10        ;show extra info
fps=29.970        ;frames per second (NTSC=29.970, PAL=25)
border=20         ;border around edge of video to ignore
two_pass_logo=1        ;run comskip a second time, once the logo is correctly identified
max_brightness=60      ;frame not black if any pixels checked are greater than this (scale 0 to 255)
test_brightness=55      ;frame not pure black if any pixels checked are greater than this, will check average brightness (scale 0 to 255)
max_avg_brightness=20    ;maximum average brightness for a dim frame to be considered black (scale 0 to 255)
max_commercialbreak=361    ;maximum length in seconds to consider a segment a commercial break
min_commercialbreak=59    ;minimum length in seconds to consider a segment a commercial break
max_commercial_size=331    ;maximum time in seconds for a single commercial or multiple commercials if no breaks in between
min_commercial_size=14  ;mimimum time in seconds for a single commercial
min_show_segment_length=61
logo_present_modifier = 0.01
logo_threshold=0.90
live_tv=0
ccCheck=0
delete_logo_file=0
output_default=1    ;output the default .txt file
min_black_frames_for_break=1;

The two pass logo is default I believe, so that line may be redundant.

[soccerdad]

Thanks for the quick reply. I rem'd out the lines you suggested. Since my outputs were all now set to 0, I added your "output_default=1 ;output the default .txt file" to the code where you had it. Is this correct? I also don't get why I have 2 "detect_method=255......" lines that are almost the same. I set them both to 47. I have a test recording going now that should be done in a few minutes. Thanks again.

***UPDATE****

With Reboot's settings it found 2 commercial blocks in a 30 minute show and GBPVR jumped right past them! Thanks for all the help. I still need to work out the timing since it seems to cut a couple of seconds early, but I am very happy and so will be the wife as soon as I roll it out for her.

[erik]

logo_threshold=0.90
seems very high.
Try to lower that to 0.80

[reboot]

You can also delete the ";detect method..." line that starts with a ";"
I had logo_threshold set that high, for my (very noisy) PVR-250. On a cleaner signal, it wouldn't have to be that high (as Erik has mentioned).
If you have a PVR250, then you should enable CC's, set detect method to 255, and set them up with the dictionary. It makes a HUGE difference. If you have a 150 or 500, don't bother, as they don't do CC's, and detect method 47 is fine.