ComSkip help

[lowfront]

Can get comskip to work....Any suggestions....

It is sopposed to auto take out commercials right?...Or just Tell you when there are commercials....

Regardless nothigns working...


Is the download section of site down?..want to get some plugins but can't get in there....

[bluesxman]

Have you searched the forums? There are a couple of in-depth guides to getting comskip working - you'll need to do some tweaking, it's not just a case of run it and it will magically work (unless you're really really lucky)

[elite]

Comskip generates a text file marking where it thinks commercials are...

I never could get it to work well all the time (although I beleive some people have). I had a much better time with SA (show analyzer) - almost 100% success...

[stefan]

Is the download section of site down?..want to get some plugins but can't get in there....

Seems so.

[erik]

Inside the distribution zip file you can download (see below) there is a manual.rtf describing general use and a tuning.rtf that helps you tune comskip to your specific conditions and preferences. An example postprocessing.bat demonstrates the use of Comskip to generate the skip information for GBPVR and also demonstrates the use of Comskip in combination with Comclean to effectively remove the commercials when needed.
If you do not wish to spend time to get it right and you have the broadcast conditions SA was designed for you may be better of with SA.

[elite]

Sorry Erik - didn't mean to knock your project - seems it has come some way since I last tried it (a manual and everything!) - I just found there were too many variables to fine tune, but with the manual this shouldn't be too much of a problem.

[Pilot]

The only problems I had with Comskip was that since I was recording as many as 3 shows at the same time, it was really bogging down my computer for it to detect commercials on the fly, and even post processing was causing any active recording to have some "stuttering". I also had very interesting problems with post processing switching the filenames for shows that were recorded at the same time. For example, E-Ring and Martha Stewart Apprentice (both on Wednesdays) would be saved under the other's file name and folder after Comskip post processing was run on them. That threw me for a loop the first time I encountered it, but since everything was still recorded (just under switched file names), the WAF (wife acceptance factor) was still okay.

But the commercial detection and basic function worked well "right out of the box". I'm sure the rest of my problems were something specific to me, because no one responded with a "me too" when I posted them here. I now just use a more finely tuned/configured skip function and tolerate the 10 seconds of commercials that I do see, as I can't run the risk of missing a recording, having the stutter, etc., or it will significantly reduce the WAF!

Great plug-in though! I'm very impressed with what it does, and expected it to be a lot less effective at figuring out what's a commercial and what isn't. If I was just recording these shows for me, I'd experiment around with it more.

[stefan]

Try a search for comskip and nice. There is some sort of setting (or at least, there used to be) that would make comskip run nicer, only taking up unused cpu cycles. I think that's what you need.

[erik]

Comskip always runs on idle priority so the CPU is fully loaded but all other program's will have higher priority.
Play_nice tell Comskip to Sleep(10L) every frame it inspects.
GBPVR serializes the running of Comskip, there is never more then one Comskip running at the same time. (that's at least what I understood from one of the posts from sub)

[Pilot]

What was happening with me is that when recording three shows at one time, Comskip was running three different instances since I had to set to run during the recording rather than after. Sub told me to set it in the config to run Comskip after instead of during, which he said would result in it running serialized. Whether I had it set to run during or after, it was really bogging down my system to the point that I definitely couldn't run anything else. It definitely takes advantage of whatever CPU cycles it can get. If you're planning on running something while Comskip is doing its thing (email, word processing, even just web browsing), you'll want to make sure you have it open prior to the recording starting, or you could be waiting for 20 minutes before, for example, a browser window opens. As you can see from my signature, my PC isn't the fastest thing going, but it's not exactly a slouch of a configuration either. Again, I suspect that my problem is that I have three tuners (a PVR500 and a PVR150), and I'm frequently recording three shows at a time. I'm sure most people do not encounter the same problems that I did. With the number of shows that I record for my family of six, just about any type of post processing just isn't going to happen or my PC would have to be running 48 hours per day.