Comskip Question

[richt]

Greetings. I am trying out NPVR because sooner or later my SageTV setup will need to be replaced. Not in a hurry, but I like having lots of time to try out other options. I installed NPVR and am already recording TV shows. I tried adding Comskip with Dirmon and am not getting the results I expected. Comskip runs and generates .txt files for each recording. First problem is that NPVR doesn't seem to pick up this file as it plays the commercials anyway. Pressing Play to skip has no effect. 2nd problem is that the Comskip.ini is being ignored as several setting changes I made are not being picked up. The only fix I found for this was to place the INI file in the directory along with the recordings, but that seems a little lame.
OS - Windows 7 64 bit
NPVR Installation - C:\Program Files (x86)\NPVR
Comskip install - Started out in c:\programs\comskip, but moved EXE and INI to NPVR folder.

I also haven't found any good instructions for using Comskip with NPVR. Can someone point them out to me if they exist?

I have another question un-related to comskip. In SageTV I got very used to the library approach to cataloging my existing collection of movie and TV show files. With NPVR I can add metadata for file descriptions and backgrounds, but I don't see a way to progress past the "folder structure" view of the files. Is there a way to do this? If not is anyone working on it either through native functions or plugins?

I appreciate any help or advice you can give. Thanks.

[Reddwarf]

Welcome!
The usual approach is to place both Comskip.exe (+runtime files) and comskip.ini in the Scripts subdir of npvr's data directory and let PostProcessing,bat call it. Next you must direct comskip to generate .edl files for the skipping to work with npvr. I'm not very familiar with the wiki, but you may want to look here: http://www.nextpvr.com/nwiki/pmwiki.php

[mvallevand]

johnsonx42 has also posted quite a few tips. Here was his PostProcessing.bat file.

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...post387833

No one has written any advanced video plugins yet.

Martin

[dgeezer]

Richt, I am doing the same as you except I used GBpvr for several years before SageTV. Look at this wiki page on batch files.

You don't need dirmon, one of the ways npvr is much better than SageTV is how you can script things like comskip using the post processing batch files. It is much simpler and more straight forward.

[wtg]

Personally, I'm a fan of the ParallelProcessing.bat file. This way comskip runs while the file is recording and therefore available for use sooner.

[mulletback]

Personally, I'm a fan of the ParallelProcessing.bat file. This way comskip runs while the file is recording and therefore available for use sooner.

I second that. If you run an HDPVR or Colossus, or anything else that does H.264 encoding, ParallelProcessing.bat cuts the processing time by a huge amount.

[imilne]

No one has written any advanced video plugins yet.

I'm working on one, but it'll just be folder based as well. To begin with anyway... it may end up with DB/library functionality one day.

Iain

[pcostanza]

Where does comskip have to reside in order for the postprocessing file to run?

[richt]

Thanks to all. I got comskip working correctly with the PostProcessing bat file. That covers one essential item and it seems to work well. I wasn't sure if it was Windows 7 64 bit or the differences in NPVR.

I'm not a developer, so I can't help out much, but I will encourage the building a "library" approach to video file management. The library along with an interface to support it, is something you get used quickly and don't want to be without once you've been using it.

For now I'll keep a copy of NPVR running on a 2nd PC, just to see how it works. All the basic recording functions seem to be there, and usability is OK, just different than I'm used to.

I'm sure I'll have more questions as time passes. It's great to see the community step up like this. Thanks for the help.

[richt]

Where does comskip have to reside in order for the postprocessing file to run?

The bat file refers to it in c:\comskip, but I put it in C:\Users\Public\NPVR\Scripts as someone earlier in the thread mentioned. It ran fine from there.