Comclean cuts cause video to freeze

[nellanayrb]

I've just recently started using comclean along with comskip to edit out the commercials, and for the first several shows I recorded comclean seemed to do an excellent job. But now I have noticed on the last several recordings, that when I try to play back the mpg file it runs into problems where the cuts were made. The picture freezes and the audio from after the cut continues for a few seconds, then everything stops altogether. If I manually advance beyond this point, everything is fine, so long as I skip ahead before it gets a chance to freeze.
By the way, I'm playing them back in windows media player, not sure if that makes a difference...

[-stattik-]

Certain MPEG decoders have difficulties with comclean'd files because of the way the timestamps are read. I believe that Comclean doesn't rewrite the timestamps so they skip which causes the decoders to choke.

[nellanayrb]

Why would so many of the other shows that I recorded and used comclean not have the same problem then? Seems odd that comclean would not rewrite the timestamps, rendering all processed files unviewable in such common players as windows media player. If this is true, are there any commercial cutterse out there that don't have this problem? I'd much rather be able to watch my shows through a player with more functinality than the one in gbpvr.

[-stattik-]

Have you recently changed comclean versions or decoders?

[erik]

Actually the cutting problem by comclean can be very random so bad luck could have cought you.

There is a long thread discussing this.
Search for comclean2 or retime
Both are solutions.

[fb_de]

I've got the same issue, and it really hurts when it happens. I was watching a comcleaned movie yesterday evening, and my HTPC chrashed twice.
This has brought the WAF down significantly. I am back to the point where she's looking at me funny thinking what a stupid nerd I am :mad:

What I do not understand is what "bad luck" has got to do with it? Maybe it's just me, but I don't get it....

cheers,
Frank

[erik]

I you use GBPVR to watch the movie you better not use comclean but let GBPVR read the generated .txt file to support you in skipping over the commercials.
You also can use a mpeg player like zoomplayer that can read one of the skiplist formats Comskip can generate so zoomplayer will also automatically skip over the commercials.

The "bad luck" is cause by comclean cutting on GOP boundaries. This causes a non continous PTS timeline which sometimes causes players to crash.
If you can choose a different demux and mpeg decoder (ffdshow?) it could help solvind the crash.

Otherwise there are solutions like comclean2 that uses cuttermaran to do the actual cutting or you can use retime (from retime.zip on my server, see info below) to solve the PTS problem.

[nightwalker]

I you use GBPVR to watch the movie you better not use comclean but let GBPVR read the generated .txt file to support you in skipping over the commercials.

Erik:
Oh, no! I've just got comclean running well. I do watch videos from within GBpvr, on the MVP, so far all has been well. If i read this correctly i'm about to have problems with it? The reason i moved to comclean was GBpvr was not skipping consistantly, if at all.

[erik]

Some mpeg players can handle these not continous timelines.
YOu will find out if your is robust.
If not, run retime after comclean or use comclean2.

[nightwalker]

Thanks Erik, I'll keep an eye on it. When i lose one of my wife's soap operas WAF goes way way down.