Newbie quick questions - Australian TV guide/recording formats/Comskip

[Banex]

Hi all,

I've just purchased an HDHomerun digital tuner, and I've been trying to get this sweet-looking program to run with it. There's been plenty of issues along the way which I'll no doubt have to post about tonight when I'm home from work (mainly about the fact that I have two PCs set up exactly the same, yet one of them picks up the channels in GB-PVR, and the other one can't find any!) and can get the log files etc, but I just had a couple of quick questions first

For the PC where the channels are working, i've followed instructions from sub and selected DVB as the guide and clicked Map digital channels in the config. This worked on one PC at least (except for ABC and SBS, which come through in the HDHomerun setup but not GB-PVR, but that's another problem...) and displays a guide in TV Guide. However, if I schedule a recording, they often seem to muck up somehow. For example, I recorded one show on one channel from 10:30-11:30, which also recording two other shows on another channel from 10:30-11:40 and 11:40-12:40. The show on the first channel recorded fine, but for the other two on the same channel, one of them seemed to record, but won't actually playback, and the other one plays back, but is only 35 mins long (for an hour long show). So my question here, is the fancy new Aussie TV guide actually useable, or are the times/shows mucked up somehow? A manual recording I tried to do last night seemed to work fine (except for resolution and ad issues as below)

Second question, how do I change the recording format? It seems to be recording everything in 720x576, regardless of source input, and I want widescreen. Admittedly I don't know much about this though... I'm also curious why (at least) one recording displays all vertically stretched thru GB-PVR, but plays properly in WinAmp. I've set it up currently to automatically convert recordings to DivX, if that's relevant...

Third question, is it possible to automatically remove ads from recordings (once I've got them working!)? I've seen alot on this site about plugins that create some kind of text file that tells you where the ads are, but doesn't seem to actually remove them.

Thanks for your help, and sorry about these "quick questions" turning into a looong post =)

[sub]

Second question, how do I change the recording format? It seems to be recording everything in 720x576, regardless of source input, and I want widescreen. Admittedly I don't know much about this though...

When it comes to recording from digital devices like the HDHomeRun, GB-PVR recordings the original broadcast stream without changing it in any way, so you'll get whatever resolution and bitrate your broadcaster is using.

I'm also curious why (at least) one recording displays all vertically stretched thru GB-PVR, but plays properly in WinAmp. I've set it up currently to automatically convert recordings to DivX, if that's relevant...

It's probably the ffmpeg conversion that GB-PVR uses getting it wrong. As a first step, I'd try not converting it.

....ah, thats probably also why youre ending up with 720x576. Personally, I'd just turn off this conversion and stick with the original recording files.

Third question, is it possible to automatically remove ads from recordings (once I've got them working!)? I've seen alot on this site about plugins that create some kind of text file that tells you where the ads are, but doesn't seem to actually remove them.

Comskip doesnt remove the ads, but instead just makes a text file identifying where the ads are. GB-PVR then skips those parts of the files automtically during playback.

Comskip is good, but definitely not perfect, and if it really tried to remove the ads you'd often end up loosing the wrong bits of your shows. With GB-PVRs scheme you get the best of both worlds - you'll never see the ads during playback if comskip got it right, but you can still skip back and watch any bits that get incorrectly marked as ads.

[dennit]

Comskip is good, but definitely not perfect, and if it really tried to remove the ads you'd often end up loosing the wrong bits of your shows. With GB-PVRs scheme you get the best of both worlds - you'll never see the ads during playback if comskip got it right, but you can still skip back and watch any bits that get incorrectly marked as ads.

Sub is definitely right on this. You don't want to remove ads, until you've got comskip perfectly tuned for each channel. The way GBPVR does it, with the text file, you can tweak the comskip settings until they are perfect. Once you've lived with it for long enough to be sure comskip isn't making any mistakes, you can actually cut the commercials out if you want to (use comclean), but my guess is that you'll give up on tweaking long before you reach perfection. Tweaking is great fun, but it's moderately hard work to learn to use it effectively.

[Banex]

Hey guys, thanks alot for your help!

First, just wanted to say that I resolved the other issue I briefly mentioned about one PC not picking up any channels. I FINALLY came across a thread where sub had advised someone to run ReRegisterFilters.bat because they had some kind of GB-PVR parser error in their config.exe log, and it WORKED! I was about to tear my hair out on that one =) So just thought I'd mention it here so it might help someone else with the same problem

OK, so it looks like I need to rethink exactly how I'll be using this program. Now that you've explaned it to me, comskip sounds like an ingenious solution to the problem of unwanted ads in recordings played through GBPVR, and it will work fine for watching my own recordings on my own system. However, GBPVR isn't the only program I want to play my recordings through...in particular, I need to convert them to DivX AVIs (or something similar) to share them with friends who don't use GBPVR. I was stoked to see that GBPVR could convert recordings to DivX automatically, but it looks like this feature is going to need a bit of tweaking first! Any advice would be appreciated =)

On sub's advice, I have scheduled a few recordings today...I have left the conversion option on, but unchecked the "Update database to point to converted file" option, so I presume I will be able to watch the TS recording in GBPVR, and check the AVI file separately, and I can compare the two and see what's going on (These recordings will also help me figure out if my failed recordings the other day had anything to do with the Aussie TV guide). I do still need to convert these files though, so hopefully I can have a poke around in the DivX settings and get these converted files to come out the way I want them.

Unfortunately though, I've got another problem...although it doesn't seem to affect recordings, when watching Live TV, it keeps cutting out after a few minutes with the message "No signal, check antenna" etc. Changing the channel to something else and back again usually fixes it, but that's hardly a good solution. I'm at work again so don't have my log files, but any suggestions as to what might cause that?

And a few other quick questions for now (thanks! ) -

-Is there any native support for a remote control using a USB-UIRT IR device?

-In the Library sections, is there a way to queue up several files on the fly to play (ie. create a "Now Playing"-style playlist, click a file to Play, then click another file to queue up and play after the first one etc)

-Do you have to do anything to set up the Record button on the GUI? Whenever I press it, it just goes to a black screen (ie turns off the channel), and doesn't seem to be recording anything. Same with the Pause button. Also, what does the "..." button do next to the recording button on the GUI?

-With the Comclean that dennit mentioned, are you able to define the ads using a comskip text file, and then run comclean to remove the defined time periods from the recording? Coz that would be perfect!

Again, thanks alot for the help

[dennit]

OK, so it looks like I need to rethink exactly how I'll be using this program. Now that you've explaned it to me, comskip sounds like an ingenious solution to the problem of unwanted ads in recordings played through GBPVR, and it will work fine for watching my own recordings on my own system. However, GBPVR isn't the only program I want to play my recordings through...in particular, I need to convert them to DivX AVIs (or something similar) to share them with friends who don't use GBPVR. I was stoked to see that GBPVR could convert recordings to DivX automatically, but it looks like this feature is going to need a bit of tweaking first! Any advice would be appreciated =)
....
-With the Comclean that dennit mentioned, are you able to define the ads using a comskip text file, and then run comclean to remove the defined time periods from the recording? Coz that would be perfect!

Comclean cuts out the ads directly at the spots located by comskip. If you watch in GBPVR and it skips the ads correctly, you can just run comclean on it. Spend some time figuring out how comskip works. Comskip will analyze your video and you can edit the results from inside comskip when it makes mistakes.

If you want to give your friends copies of your files in divx format, with commercials removed, then I'd suggest that you set up a batch file to run on your command after you watch the show yourself and verify that comskip hasn't made any mistakes (or if it has, you have fixed them by editing with comskip). The batch file can run comclean, strip ads and then convert to divx. There are tricks to getting a batch file to run on a recording on your command from inside GBPVR, but I'd start with manual processing.

Good Luck.