"bounce" back after end of video / comskip

[toomanyhandles]

I have noticed that with NextPVR, some recordings when NPVR reaches the end of a recording, it smoothly "bounces" back and replays a portion of the recording. It may be going back to the last comskip marker.

I haven't played with it enough yet to notice is it does this when there is a comskip'd segment at the end of the recording, but it may be the case that there always is.

(relatively new NPVR install for me, just the patched Aug? build/ Nov patches and now the January release tested).

Does this sound familiar to anyone? I did a quick search of the forum but didn't see comments about this.

Thanks!

[johnsonx42]

I've been meaning to post about this for months, but never got around to it. The times when I've felt like posting about it I couldn't remember which show had done it, and didn't feel like going to look for it, then reproducing the problem and posting the NPVR log, comskip .edl file and Timing.Info for good measure. Curse my insistence on making complete support posts with all detail....

It does only happen on a comskipped recording, and only when there's a tiny snippet of 'show' at the very end of the recording (ie, a little sliver of green at the end of the timeline bar). If the entire end of the recording is marked as commercial, then NPVR doesn't skip at all, just plays normally to the end. Likewise, if the recording ends with a larger portion of 'show' at the end (say 30 seconds or more), then it doesn't do it then either.

I thought MAYBE it might have to do with one the ComskipOffset parameters being set larger than the ending show snippet, but I never got around to experimenting with it. I think it also has something to do with the larger problem of all Timing.Info-based skips in NPVR being off by several seconds, but that's a whole other complaint I'm loathe to bring up without doing all the supporting work (i.e. logs of bad skips, timing.info, sample file uploaded somewhere, etc.). My guess is that NPVR attempts to skip to a point beyond the end of the file, which of course it can't do and the result of the error is to skip back to the beginning of the prior show segment.

[mvallevand]

I saw this happening in some NMT logs because it gets into a loop where the seek was too close to EOF and NextPVR's logic to play "a little bit" of video after a seek came into play. I just stop on the NMT when the seek is seconds away from the end.

Martin

[johnsonx42]

ok, here's one...

last night's modern family. the last comskip jump looped back to the beginning of the prior show segment.

npvr log, comskip .edl and timing.info attached.

my wife started watching modern family at 21:35.

Code:

---first commercial break---
2012-01-25 21:41:53.979    [DEBUG][1]    In commerical, and about to skip to 571.719970703125. Duration is 1856.34411621094. Position is402.671997070313
2012-01-25 21:41:53.979    [DEBUG][1]    Using timing.info, jumping to time 571.719971 (offset 714049568)
   ---second commercial break---
2012-01-25 21:48:36.147    [DEBUG][1]    In commerical, and about to skip to 1203.65002441406. Duration is 1856.34411621094. Position is975.953002929688
2012-01-25 21:48:36.148    [DEBUG][1]    Using timing.info, jumping to time 1203.650024 (offset 1509515544)
   ---third commercial break---
2012-01-25 21:55:45.995    [DEBUG][1]    In commerical, and about to skip to 1856.21997070313. Duration is 1856.34411621094. Position is1634.75
  (notice: no line about actually doing the skip... at this point playback resumed at the end of the second commercial break)
  (the next thing she did was start skipping back to the end of the show - this is the first skip which confirms position ~1200 seconds in)
2012-01-25 21:55:56.131    [DEBUG][1]    OnKeyDown() called: {CTRL}ControlKey, Control
2012-01-25 21:55:56.153    [DEBUG][1]    OnKeyDown() called: {CTRL}Right, Control
2012-01-25 21:55:56.153    [DEBUG][1]    SSPlus Notify: EVENT: Type = 'PLAYBACK_KEYDOWN' Text = 'System.Windows.Forms.KeyEventArgs'
2012-01-25 21:55:56.153    [DEBUG][1]    SSPlus Notify: finished...
2012-01-25 21:55:56.154    [DEBUG][1]    User is trying to skip.
2012-01-25 21:55:56.154    [DEBUG][1]    Current position is: 1214.57800292969
2012-01-25 21:55:56.154    [DEBUG][1]    Asking for position: 1274.57800292969
2012-01-25 21:55:56.154    [DEBUG][1]    Using timing.info, jumping to time 1274.578003 (offset 1610720080)
2012-01-25 21:55:56.178    [DEBUG][1]    After skipping position reports as: 1275.46899414063

In a case like this I'd prefer it to just not skip at all, just like it does if the entire end of a show is marked as commercial. Usually there's final 30 seconds or so of a show just before the credits that comskip never catches anyway.

Also, with the data here can you see why the skips are all about 3 or 4 seconds off? 10 second forward skips are 13 seconds, while 10 second backwards skips are about 6 seconds. I have my ComskipStartOffset set to 3 seconds, which works ok with this recording but on others STILL isn't enough.

[pBS]

Seems comskipping [and skipping] hasn't been working well since the move to .ts recordings, Pvrx2 on .mpg was perfect. [but not on .ts hdpvr recs even back then]
seems to me it gets progressively worse as the length of show increases..usually meaning math isn't right somewhere..

so to get things perfect on a show i have to muplitply each comskip value by a tiny amount to get it to sync things up thru to the end..
comskips 'seems' to be perfect in the start of a show..but progressively gets worse..
at least that's what i've seen consistently...

[mvallevand]

Seems comskipping [and skipping] hasn't been working well since the move to .ts recordings, Pvrx2 on .mpg was perfect. [but not on .ts hdpvr recs even back then]

I'm surprised since skipping on my PC and especially the NMT with HDPVR .ts files that have Timing.Info is superb. Watching in-progress recordings without Timing.Info can be flawed however HDPVR files have zero-based timelines encoded properly with the capture and they don't have the odd reset that you might find in a digital source so the logic is pretty code.

Martin

[johnsonx42]

I've now avoided the bounceback issue by adding "always_keep_last_seconds=120" to my comskip.ini. This way it always marks the last 2 minutes of each recording as "show". I wouldn't call this a fix so much as a workaround.

[OTAjunkie]

I too get the "bounce" but not always.
I wonder though if johnson's work around might get me my "Moment of Zen" (the last 37 or so secs of the daily show). My present fix for this is to pad Colbert Report 1 min. CTV often omits a logo for this breif segment.
Can anyone offer instrustions to a specific comskip run for "The Daily Show"?. I know you can do this for channels but can you for a specific program?


thanks