tune comskip break points?

[johnsonx42]

I'm running comskip 80_025, recording using DVR-MS. I find comskip works remarkably well, to the point where I have auto-comskip enabled all the time.

However I do find that the skips are often a bit abrupt, cutting off the last second or two of the show before the commercial break. I'd rather have it err to the side of showing a few frames of black or even a snippet of commercial before skipping. To a lesser extent, it sometimes comes back a little late so if someone was talking immediately as the show comes back I miss the first word or two.

I don't think either program is doing anything wrong, I think it comes down more to the slightly unpredicatable nature of skipping in mpeg-2 video streams (and it may be somewhat codec dependant as well, but I'm not venturing into codec hell again). It's also probably a matter of user preference.

Does anyone know if there's a way to slightly offset the skips, either by a change to comskip itself, or by a change to GB-PVR to cause it to delay skipping a little bit?

I looked in the config for both programs and didn't find anything.

What would really be great is parameters in GB-PVR config.xml such as:

<ComskipEnterBreakOffset>2</ComskipEnterBreakOffset>
<ComskipReturnOffset>-1</ComskipReturnOffset>

This would tell GB-PVR to add 2 seconds to the skip point specified in the comskip file, and then subtract 1 second from the resume point. This would allow users to tune the behaviour to their preferences and according to the vagaries of their system. If it has to be specified in frames instead of time, that's fine too (even better perhaps).

[Jaggy]

I was fairly sure I had seen this feature in Comskip when I was setting it up years ago, so I just had a quick look at the "comskip.txt & I think this may be what you are looking for

[Global Removes]
padding=0 (0-MAXINT)
;Amount of seconds each commercial will be reduced both as start and end.
;;When you always want to see the start and end of the commercial break this can be used.

[johnsonx42]

ah, yes, that would appear to be what I want. I'll start at 2 seconds and see what I get. Thanks Jaggy.

edit: it figures, that was one of the paramaters in the comskip.ini that isn't commented, so I had no idea it was what I was looking for. I didn't think to look at comskip.txt.

[johnsonx42]

sub,

While I think the padding parameter in comskip.ini will achieve my end, I think being able to tune the padding at playback time as I described would be a useful feature. As your interest and time permits, of course...