ComCut - Automatically clean recordings of commercials

[Arganbright]

Hmmm.... just downloaded and installed version 1.1 tonight. For the most part is seems to be working really well, but I am having one intermittant issue.

I have comcut set to delete the original file and replace the new cleaned file for the old. Sometimes I am finding that the old file is not getting deleted and I find both the original file and also the comskip.mpg file in the directory.

I found this in the error.log file, and wondered if we might need a little bit of a time delay between the delete and rename steps in the program:

ReplaceOriginalFile - Access to the path is denied.

[NiteShdw]

Could it be that another application is using the video file, such as Windows Explorer? I run ComCut on every recorded video, and I've never seen that error come up.

[SniperDude]

NiteShdw...

I have been having similar problems... some video's cut without any problem in batch mode, but others just abort out... with same errors bout a error code 1 from mpgtplx ... and then a file must already exist... which isn't the case...

I try running same video thru comcut without batch mode and it crashes out, same error....

I even 'retimed' the video, demuxed, and re-muxed.... tried it.. fails... its not your fault.... its a problem with mpgtplx I think we need to figure out what is causing that program to fail on the files.. even comclean (which uses same one will fail...) ... I have not figured out how to correct this... but it occurs on probably 25% of my video recordings... for instance.. I recorded "The Lost Room" (good series btw), and just prior to it.. I recorded NCIS, ... NCIS had no trouble... but Lost Room would not cut... yet the following week NCIS failed... but a show that followed it.. worked fine.. there don't seem to be a rhyme or reason to this... If its my card drivers, (PVR 150) why is it so mixed up when it does it..

but my point is... its not your fault... but I would like to see a little better batch management... perhaps, an ability to retry, or see a list of the failed... because with cleanup, it kind of makes it a little difficult to see what files made the cuts and which are ignored..

[NiteShdw]

As far as batch mode is concerned, it's only the first implementation. I do suggest that you set the Comskip Log options to the leave placeholder option. That will save a .txt file with the word 'Placeholder', which indicates that it's already been processed. ComCut will ignore all recordings that have a placeholder txt file.

The problem, it seems, is that the time lines of those recordings don't match up with the comskip frames.... Though I just had another thought. I don't currently have an option to specify PAL or NTSC framerate.

For those of you that are having problems, are you all using recordings that are made at 25fps rather than 30fps?

Update: 1.2 Build 80 I've added the ability to choose the framerate. [Download .EXE only]

[erik]

The first line of the comskip generated .txt file contains the framerate*100

[Arganbright]

NTSC, so 30fps for me. It's possible another program could have had the file at the time since I was dragging files onto comcut to process them. I have a few shows recording today, and comcut is in the postprocessing file now, so I'll check later to see what transpires with today's recordings.

[NiteShdw]

The first line of the comskip generated .txt file contains the framerate*100

I don't know why I never paid attention to that...

[NiteShdw]

NTSC, so 30fps for me. It's possible another program could have had the file at the time since I was dragging files onto comcut to process them. I have a few shows recording today, and comcut is in the postprocessing file now, so I'll check later to see what transpires with today's recordings.

If you had Windows Explorer open, it often reads video files to try to get a thumbnail image. Instead of using that method, you could try the batch mode option in the newest build.

[erik]

When making calculations, don't use 30fps but 29.97fps.
The difference at the end of a 2 hour show is huge!

[Withbothfeet]

Great utility NiteShdw! I just stumbled upon this thread and am trying it as I type.