Comskip.exe Question

[ilovejedd]

I think you have to do that via post-processing.bat. You assign specific profiles for different channels.

[reboot]

You can do it parallel or post processing, it's all in the help files provided by Erik (see his post above for a link to his comskip pages).
It only requires a comskip.ini for each channel you like.
For example, if one channel has a distinct logo that is consistent, then a tuned comskip.ini for that channel will most likely work on all other channels with a good logo.
If you have another channel with no logo, or an intermittent one, inconsistent, then you'd probably do best to have another comskip.ini for that channel.
Each comskip.ini is called from the parallel or post processing bat, and would have a unique name, such as "comskiplogo.ini" and comskipnologo.ini", defined by you in the .bat which channels use which ini.
It's much easier than you think. The hardest part is tuning the .ini's for the channels you want. I found it best to do a span of recordings throughout the day, generating the framearray=1 in the .ini, then fine tuning over 5 or 6 recordings on each channel.
Time consuming, but in the end, perfect recordings with no commercials.
WAF is very high if you take the time to do it while she's not home

Edit: Re: Erik's comment above. If you tune the logo detection first, and get it as good as possible, you can then use connect_blocks_with_logo=0
On channels that are inconsistent with their logo, it's best set to connect_blocks_with_logo=1 although I found this can cut portions of the show that have no logo, or one that moves around the screen or changes size/shape.
The two settings that make the most difference for me, on CBS, FOX, ABC and NBC are cut_on_ar_change=1, because the shows are usually letterboxed top and bottom, commercials are not. The second is the brighness settings for black frame detection. There are ALWAYS a few black frames between show, commercial, and show again. Combined with commercial length, this works better than almost all other settings.
Use the framearray to tune, and most other settings become redundant.
You could also play with intelligent_brightness=1 although I had no luck with it.
As always, YMMV.

[feilh]

Are people really using comskip? I searched multiple forums (sagetv and comskip) and I am amazed at had little discussion I see talking about the the configuration. Although I do find a few configurations files posted for North America QAM. None of them are accurate enough that one would want to consider using them e.g. large portions of the actual show are marked as a commercials.

Understanding all the parameters and trying to tune it oneself looks like it could take many hours of effort with no genuine feeling of being done...

[SLR_65]

I have to admit that I haven't given commskip much of a chance, but I did play with it and I quickly got tired of fiddling.

I personally have the ff set to 30 sec and the rw set to 10 sec and that works perfect for skipping commercials - just ff till you hit your show and hit rw once and you're usually golden at 10 sec or less of the commercial left before your show starts, very rarely do I have to hit rew twice.

This actually came from a Polaroid DRM-2100G that's a rudimentary DVR, but who's ff/rw commskip capabilities got me hooked right away!

[HtV]

Comskip works fine here, I never had too "fiddle" much. But that might be because Eric (the developer) is dutch, so the default settings work very fine for me. I don't use it to make recordings ready for archiving on dvd or whatever. I only use it for watching recordings, I don't care if sometimes a few secs of a commercial are still shown.

Hans

[ilovejedd]

I use comskip and it works well enough. I've found it to be fairly accurate for recordings from major networks (CW, FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS). However, if I want to cut commercials from a show for archiving, I still do some manual fine-tuning using VirtualDub. Usually, it's off by only a few frames.

[erik]

Are people really using comskip?

The majority is from the US.
The default ini file works for many, and I have helped hundreds of people with tuning.
You can ask for help too because it improves the general quality of Comskip.

[reboot]

Start with the recommended north american settings, and using it's built in tools, fine tune it.
When I first started using it, before Erik took the reigns, EVERYTHING was manually tuned. You had to record a show and see how the settings worked, then tune it some, and run the show all the way thru it again, and again...took forever!