Plugin Concept: ComTweak

[HydroChronic]

Hi Guys, I've already started work on this plugin (although I haven't gotten very far since its my first plugin).

My problem was this. I can't get Comskip to work successfully on all channels with one config file. So as a result some (if not all) recordings commercial marking needed to be tweaked manually. This possed a slight problem since I am trying to eliminate my keyboard and mouse. I have tried a suggested post that used the Transcode menu from the Video Library plugin as a work around, but the problem I ran into is that the form Comskip loads is not directly linked to the program itself, so closing the form does not close the program. This left a hidden comskip.exe running whenever a txt file for the recording could not be found, again requiring the keyboard and mouse.

So, I have resolved to try to make a plugin which will read in a Comskip format txt file with the same name as an mpg file. And allow the user to edit the commercial markings in the text file via GBPVR. There will be other features as well, such as running Comskip with an mpg file and creating a new txt commercial file.

Can anyone forsee any major problems that I may run into which will make it impossible to do this?

[Carlito]

You said you cannot get it to work correctly using one config file.
Have you tried using multiple configs?
You could set up your postprocessing batch file to see which channel the file was recorded on (%2 parameter) and call a different config file based on that..
(--ini=filename.ini)

[HydroChronic]

You said you cannot get it to work correctly using one config file.
Have you tried using multiple configs?
You could set up your postprocessing batch file to see which channel the file was recorded on (%2 parameter) and call a different config file based on that..
(--ini=filename.ini)

Yeah, i know i could setup various config files for each channel, but I am switching to digital cable very soon and I do not want to put forth the effort to make sure that Comskip works on all 375 channels. And even on my basic cable setup it would be somewhere around 78 channels and almost every one of them needing their own config file. Its going to be way too much effort and testing.

Then there are also the cases where the config file is setup just fine, but a commercial or two slips through, or a portion of the show is cut off. For these situations I can not think of a better way to fix the commercial markers other than manually as I described before.

Could be good for adults who want to edit out scenes from shows/movies for their kids too. Not to mention all those people who don't want to take the time out to properly tune Comskip, but still want to be able to skip commercials.

[HydroChronic]

Hey Guys,
I'm getting errors on my first build (what a surprise). I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong as my code looks nearly identical to the example plugin and other source code.

The error I'm getting comes up when I start the Config dialog. The exact error I'm getting is this:
"Error loading plugin list: System.NullReferenceException: Object Reference not set to an instance of an object.
at ComTweak.ComTweakConfig.LoadInitialSettings()
at ComTweak.ComTweakConfig..ctor(XmlDocument document)
at ComTweak.ComTweakPlugin.GetConfigFormInstance(XmlDocument document)
at Config." and then a bunch of letters and numbers.

Hope someone can help. I'm sure its something stupid and I'm just missing it.

[HydroChronic]

bump.

I'm still having problems with this. I am not sure, but it seems to me that GB-PVR is trying to get the name of the Plugin for the Plugin List, but instead of referencing the .getName it is trying to use .GetConfigFormInstance and is passing a null reference as document, so when the LoadInitialSettings() gets called I have no document to reference to read my settings from.

[sub]

My guess is you're using the PluginHelper from the plugin when called in the config app? The PluginHelperFactory.getPluginHelper() will return null in the config app.

[erik]

I ran into is that the form Comskip loads is not directly linked to the program itself, so closing the form does not close the program. This left a hidden comskip.exe running whenever a txt file for the recording could not be found, again requiring the keyboard and mouse.

Sending an ESC to the GUI Comskip window while in review mode will kill both the GUI window and the hidden program window.
How did you try to close the GUI window?

[tipstir]

Hi Guys, I've already started work on this plugin (although I haven't gotten very far since its my first plugin).

My problem was this. I can't get Comskip to work successfully on all channels with one config file. So as a result some (if not all) recordings commercial marking needed to be tweaked manually. This possed a slight problem since I am trying to eliminate my keyboard and mouse. I have tried a suggested post that used the Transcode menu from the Video Library plugin as a work around, but the problem I ran into is that the form Comskip loads is not directly linked to the program itself, so closing the form does not close the program. This left a hidden comskip.exe running whenever a txt file for the recording could not be found, again requiring the keyboard and mouse.

So, I have resolved to try to make a plugin which will read in a Comskip format txt file with the same name as an mpg file. And allow the user to edit the commercial markings in the text file via GBPVR. There will be other features as well, such as running Comskip with an mpg file and creating a new txt commercial file.

Can anyone forsee any major problems that I may run into which will make it impossible to do this?

Great someone else having the same problems like me! Hope you can figure this one out with your plugin creation.. I'll keep on eye on this..

[HydroChronic]

Sending an ESC to the GUI Comskip window while in review mode will kill both the GUI window and the hidden program window.
How did you try to close the GUI window?

I was using ALT+F4 to close the GUI window, hadn't thought to use ESC. I'll still continue work on the plugin, since I've spent so much time on it already (and I dont have many projects going on). It has also been a nice introduction to C#, which I have never used before.

Anywho, I am wondering. Do I need to build my skin.xml file by hand? Or at best copy entries from other plugin's skin.xml? Or is there a program I can use to generate them automatically?

[HydroChronic]

Disregard my last question about skin.xml. I hadn't had the chance to search the wiki and I found what I was looking for.