Cutting .TS files with comskip output

[mcb7]

Hi,

Apologies if this has already been answered (I did try a few searches but nothing came up). I've seen lots of posts about comskip and .ts files but they are all about playback in NPVR. The problem I have is wanting to cut the .ts file to remove the ads before then converting it to mp4 format.

I've found various GUI tools that can be used to edit .ts files but I'm looking for a CL tool that can be added to the postprocessing.bat and that will take in one of the formats comskip will output. I thought I was there with ProjectX but unfortunately it will only do Frame Position cutting (that comskip outputs) when you are demuxing. Since my program of choice for the mp4 encoding is Handbrake, unless I add another remuxing step, I can't use it because it doesn't take demuxed input.

Any ideas? TA.

[johnsonx42]

You should probably look at the comskip site for info on that. There are comcut, comclean, a few others.

[Wakalaka]

I've been beating on tools for the past 24 hours and have yet to have any success. My goal is to put steps in postprocessing.bat so it's all automated. comclean won't even remove commercials as it tells me I have an invalid range, and does so on any recording. I have comskip 81_052 and comclean 0_0_6. I've tried ComCut with some success after I encode to mpeg2, but then I have a quality loss from my .TS recording. mencoder transcoded with a video quality loss, and no matter what -oac switch I tried, there would be no audio in the recording. ffmpeg transcoded with a video quality loss, but audio was fine.

HandbrakeCLI can be used to transcode, but it only transcodes to MP4 or MKV. comclean only works on MPG files.

I stumbled across Smart Cutter, which works on TS files and appears to work great. However, its batch file format is different from comskip. I could investigate writing a converter to go from comskip format to Smart Cutter format, invoke Smart Cutter from postprocessing.bat, then invoke HandbrakeCLI to transcode from TS to MP4. This would result in commercials being removed, and being transcoded from TS to MP4.

Does anyone have other solutions?

[ttfitz]

I've been beating on tools for the past 24 hours and have yet to have any success. My goal is to put steps in postprocessing.bat so it's all automated. comclean won't even remove commercials as it tells me I have an invalid range, and does so on any recording. I have comskip 81_052 and comclean 0_0_6. I've tried ComCut with some success after I encode to mpeg2, but then I have a quality loss from my .TS recording. mencoder transcoded with a video quality loss, and no matter what -oac switch I tried, there would be no audio in the recording. ffmpeg transcoded with a video quality loss, but audio was fine.

HandbrakeCLI can be used to transcode, but it only transcodes to MP4 or MKV. comclean only works on MPG files.

I stumbled across Smart Cutter, which works on TS files and appears to work great. However, its batch file format is different from comskip. I could investigate writing a converter to go from comskip format to Smart Cutter format, invoke Smart Cutter from postprocessing.bat, then invoke HandbrakeCLI to transcode from TS to MP4. This would result in commercials being removed, and being transcoded from TS to MP4.

Does anyone have other solutions?

I tried all the free solutions I could find, and nothing did what I wanted - encode MPEG2 with AC3 audio to H.264 AVC with AC3 audio (passthrough the original AC3 without recoding) while cutting out the commercials. I finally ended up paying for VideoReDo TV Suite, and haven't been happier. Comskip creates VideoReDo project files which work well with the program. I don't use it from the command line, but it will run from a command line, so it might work for you.

Not free, but there is a free trial available that you could check out. Pricey at almost $100, but it does what it does very well.

[Handy.Man]

I tried using Avidemux, but it sometimes screw the audio with gaps on some channel
on other channel it will work fine but when you have transmission errors in the stream Avidemux will choke, crash or not save the file.

Many others free tools ProjectX, Mpg2Cut2, etc will not make good cut and fail on some channel and errors.

In the end VideoRedo is a great tool and will handle most errors correctly. However it's not perfect and some times it will miss like 10sec glitch in the source.

100$ on VideoRedo or 100$ on a better antenna?

Next thing to test is using ffmpeg.exe on problems .ts to see if it choke like Avidemux .

[ttfitz]

I tried using Avidemux, but it sometimes screw the audio with gaps on some channel
on other channel it will work fine but when you have transmission errors in the stream Avidemux will choke, crash or not save the file.

Many others free tools ProjectX, Mpg2Cut2, etc will not make good cut and fail on some channel and errors.

In the end VideoRedo is a great tool and will handle most errors correctly. However it's not perfect and some times it will miss like 10sec glitch in the source.

100$ on VideoRedo or 100$ on a better antenna?

Next thing to test is using ffmpeg.exe on problems .ts to see if it choke like Avidemux .

Yeah, that's the sort of problems I was always running into with free tools. I've rarely had a problem with VideoRedo, but then again I wouldn't trust it to just blindly cut commercials - sometimes the comskip file can appear to be a little off (likely due to some transmission errors along the way, but being on cable I can't do much about that).

There aren't a lot of programs I end up paying for (there are too many free alternatives to most things out there that do a pretty good job), but this was one of them.

[Handy.Man]

To blindly cut commercials I guess you have to tune for each channel if not for each show. I have some channels where Comskip is very accurate. Others channels (like when the logo shift from right to left for stations promos) it's allways off by a 1 or 2 minutes.