Commercial Detection

[bryan]

Thanks.

I don't know if I want to reinstall Sage on any of my computers.

We need a little test program to play the resulting video.

Do you know if the comskip output is documented anywhere?

[colin]

There is a link in this thread someone to the sage community site. The simplest way to test it is to download virtualdub_mod (the one with the mpeg extensions) and check the results of comskip in it.

As jorm pointed out the part of interest in the txt file produced by comskip are at the end after "-------". These indicate the start and end of the detected commercial break.

As for the meaning of the .ini file, it is basically self explanatory but ask questions for clarification.

This is how i have been checking the results and so far its pretty good,

Colin.

[jorm]

I wonder how much work it would be for sub to add support for it.

I finished the second proposed tool.

You give it an config file

<config>
<mpeg file="C:\gbpvr\comskip\Debug\Scrubs.mpg"/>
<ini file="C:\gbpvr\comskip\calcsettings\calcsettings1\bin\Debug\comskip.ini"/>
<ini file="C:\gbpvr\comskip\calcsettings\calcsettings1\bin\Debug\comskip2.ini"/>
</config>


and it will run the comskip (the one I built, not as good as the one I downloaded) on each of the mpg generating. If he does not reply I will modify the tools to flip the ini's around to get it to work with the exe (I had modified it to take a config file param).

I have sent an email to the author of the exe asking where is the source for it.

When the application is finished it will generate a report.xml in the directory where you ran it in the following form.
<report>
<mpeg filename="C:\gbpvr\comskip\Debug\Scrubs.mpg">
<config file="C:\gbpvr\comskip\calcsettings\calcsettings1\bin\Debug\comskip.ini">
<commercial start="7783" end="13091"/>
<commercial start="27724" end="33334"/>
</config>
<config file="C:\gbpvr\comskip\calcsettings\calcsettings1\bin\Debug\comskip2.ini">
<commercial start="7783" end="13091"/>
<commercial start="27724" end="33334"/>
</config>
</mpeg>
</report>

[colin]

Does anyone have a problem with comskip when opening mpg's with spaces in the file names?

Colin.

[jorm]

I will try it this evening. Remember that the filename in the case of one with spaces, will require quotes around the name.

Jorm

[colin]

Yeah, but i think its on the second pass it has problems opening the file.

Colin.

[jorm]

I emailed the author of comskip. Actually I emailed the guy whom has added the second pass, the logo detection algorthim.

His post.

http://forums.sage.tv/forums....newpost


He said he will take a look at what is checked in and see if it is the latest.

He seems pretty interested in enhancing comskip so I think we are in pretty good shape.

[Guest]

To make the comskip program more efficient, the source needs to be modified so it can run simultaneously as the program is recording.

As it can check at around 100fps it will easily be able to keep up with the video stream, and when it hits the current end of file, it should wait until more has been recorded.

That way the second the recording has finished, the commercial points are ready to be used. This works well because with digital TV, no CPU is used to save the mpeg file to the hdd.

I have written my own commercial detection program before, but this one has many more ways of checking other than just black frame detection, so it seems to give better results. And it is very fast

- James

[jorm]

I am waiting for the author to check in his code. If you want to make the modifcations to the code I will let you know when he checks it in.

[jorm]

The author of comskip has just made his latest version available if anyone wants to help test it. If it looks like it works fairly well sub might add support for it.


http://forums.sage.tv/forums....3&pp=20

the links are on the page.

Changelist to Ver 0.30
An XXX.log file will be created for any verbose setting (to aid in troubleshooting)
Added scene change detection
Added fuzzy logic - MAJOR ADDITION (recommend running with verbose=1 to understand) (I think this is the key to perfect detection!
Console window now shows the timecode of frame being analyzed (easier to understand than frame numbers)
MPEG path and filename can contain spaces. (ATTN: ellweber)
Started support for "special cases" (e.g. Home Improvement always has a 2-4 second "sponsored by" segment followed by a 10 second commercial followed by 30-60 seconds of credits/outtakes - Mark the outtakes as show)
Various internal cleaning and optimization
I'm attaching two zip files. Everyone will need comskipexe.zip. Just replace the files in the SageTV directory and you should be good to go. The comskipsrc.exe is for anyone who wants the changes I made to the source files.

If comskip doesn't work 100% for you, I would appreciate it if you would follow this procedure:
Change the comskip.ini verbose to "verbose=10".
Run comskip on the trouble mpg.
Email the resultant .log file along with an explanation of the problem (i.e. It didn't mark a commercial from 4:56 to 5:34) to jere@sage-community.org
Wait for feedback and/or updated comskip.
If even a few people do that with a wide enough variety of shows, I think we can have comskip up to 99.9% effectiveness.