Moving from SA to Comskip?

[adam1991]

Any war stories? Things to look out for?

Most importantly, how easy is it to turn SA off and turn Comskip on?

[STC]

No issues for me. I changed DTB to use Comskip instead of SA. I never did use SA's file watcher to begin with. I still have SA installed, just dormant.

[barnabas1969]

I currently use SA with DVRMSToolbox. It works pretty well for me. All the shows that I'm scanning come from ClearQAM tuners.

I would say that out of 10 commercial breaks, it catches 8 or 9 of them. However, it occasionally skips part of a show... nowhere near a commercial break. This is annoying, but I can rewind or skip-back and watch the part it skipped.

I never really figured out how to "teach" SA how to detect commercials. I see lots of people talking about Comskip lately. It looks like it has LOTS of settings to "teach" it how to detect them.

I'm just wondering how well Comskip works vs SA. Specifically, how often does it skip part of an episode that it should NOT skip?

Also, are there any good guides to setting it up? It looks simple enough from the command line (except all those INI settings), and I suppose I could just use DVRMSToolbox to fire it off.

Does Comskip have a 7MC plug-in that makes it skip commercials automatically while watching a show in Media Center like SA does?

[adam1991]

well, I can say that SA--the pay version--has some good tools for tweaking the settings.

And while Comskip's settings are universal, SA can have different profiles for whatever circumstance you want.

I've been successful with SA getting CBS tweaked, as well as Me-TV and H2 with their gawdawful long commercials (quite literally, five minute informercials). I set up profiles using the channel name in the filename.

My guess is that SA is better and more flexible, not to mention reportedly it's much faster. But I haven't tried Comskip yet. Word is, "don't use it for production"--and I'm not about to mess with the family setup yet.

Since you have SA, try tweaking the main profile and/or setting up different profiles for different circumstances.

[barnabas1969]

Hmmm... tonight, I'm editing a show on my desktop PC to remove commercials before I make a copy for some Florida State Legislators. I started out trying to use Comskip and Comclean (this app is supposed to edit the resulting file to actually REMOVE the commercials) to remove the commercials.

My first impression of Comskip was... wow, it's fast! It took less than 15 minutes to scan a 1-hour episode. I haven't watched SA do its thing for a while, so maybe I'm just remembering wrong... but it seems like SA takes longer than that. Or... maybe I just gave Comskip a higher priority on the desktop, because I'm not trying to use the desktop for other stuff (watching HDTV on 5 TV's), like I do on the HTPC.

But... after messing with Comclean for a little while, my patience ran thin. I couldn't get it to work, and I wasn't willing to mess (that word begins with an "F") with it for too long.

So... I moved on to MCEBuddy. It does a fairly decent job of actually editing the resulting file to remove the commercials. It uses Comskip in the background to identify the commercials before it produces a new file without commercials (output in H.264).

But... I'm still interested in tweaking my HTPC to do a better job. Adam, I sent you a PM. Let's continue this conversation there. Thanks!

Further, Comskip seems to have the ability to have different "profiles" based on channel and other information... IF (big if) ... you are willing and able to write DOS batch scripts to make decisions based on the channel number and other information. However, Comskip seems very amateurish (is that a word?) compared to SA... and (IMHO) the documentation for Comskip isn't nearly as good as that for SA.

[sccrgoalie1]

Further, Comskip seems to have the ability to have different "profiles" based on channel and other information... IF (big if) ... you are willing and able to write DOS batch scripts to make decisions based on the channel number and other information.

You can use the DVRMSToolbox processing condition editor to determine the channel and then have different "profiles" for comskip via run external. It would be pretty easy to do.

[STC]

In my environment, now using an InfiniTV, Comskip together with DTB processing, has proved to be much more accurate and stable compared to SA. A much smaller footprint with less processor and memory overhead IMO.

[adam1991]

Do you have a speed comparison between the current beta Comskip and SA?

[barnabas1969]

When I got home last night, I did some poking around in the SA settings. I finally figured it out! It is not a very intuitive interface. I've never seen a Windows app that displays settings in gray, as if they cannot be changed... but if you double-click them, you can change them. Weird.

In case you've never seen it, there's a decent article on tweaking your SA settings here. I've known about this article for quite some time, but I couldn't figure out how to change the settings. The article doesn't explain the double-click thing that I mentioned above.

Also, I found an interesting post in the Dragon Global forums about how to query the SA database to get info that is helpful when tweaking the settings here. I tried the SQLite software the OP in that post recommended and it works very well.

I will definitely be paying attention in the future when SA doesn't detect a commercial or worse, skips part of a show. This doesn't happen often for me, but I would love to get it to 100% accuracy.

As for stability, I've never had SA crash or hang. Not even once. Not sure what people are talking about in that regard.

As for speed comparison: On looking at my SA history, it takes anywhere from 5 minutes to 1 hour per hour of recording for SA to analyze the file. This is probably because the default settings in SA make it so that it only scans the show when the CPU and disc on the PC are idle... and my HTPC is pretty busy sometimes. Comskip took about 15 minutes on the one hour show that I scanned with it. That's the only comparison I can provide.

Now that I know how to tweak it, I think I'll stick with SA.

[STC]

I used to use SA when I had a Hauppauge analogue tuner. It worked very well. As soon as I upgraded to a InfiniTV, SA literally kept going wrong on pretty much all scans. Commercial detection would be poor. No matter what I tweaked, it still failed. It also kept leaving partly scanned files in the queue and would not remove them.

I tried CS and it 'just works' in my environment. Hence me using it now. I much prefer the smaller, cleaner interface.

[wassupTC]

Any war stories? Things to look out for?

Most importantly, how easy is it to turn SA off and turn Comskip on?

War stories? I've had SA installed twice and it crapped out my machine once (but almost twice). Move on or give up on commercial skipping altogether. SA is a piece (and I don't mean heaven).

Trying to get rid of SA? Good luck. Simply uninstalling won't work. It's a process. After the uninstall process jacked up my machine, I performed a System Restore and that *appears* to have worked (fingers still crossed).

I don't have any experience with ComSkip, but it appears that people praise it's stability, unlike the Lindsay Lohan of commercial skipping software (SA). Eventually SA will just give up altogether and maybe do you a favor and create a skipping .xml file just so you don't have to say no to your DTBAddin when it asks if you want to scan a show for commercials.

I'm considering going with ComSkip, but skipping software definitely has me quite a bit gun shy. Right now, clicking the skip button on the remote a few times is better than disrupting my whole TV viewing life every 4-5 months.

Am I bitter? Maybe. SA bad. Comskip...has to be better than the alternative and it appears to be especially now that it will scan WTV files out of the $10 box.

[barnabas1969]

Any war stories? Things to look out for?

Most importantly, how easy is it to turn SA off and turn Comskip on?

War stories? I've had SA installed twice and it crapped out my machine once (but almost twice). Move on or give up on commercial skipping altogether. SA is a piece (and I don't mean heaven).

Trying to get rid of SA? Good luck. Simply uninstalling won't work. It's a process. After the uninstall process jacked up my machine, I performed a System Restore and that *appears* to have worked (fingers still crossed).

I don't have any experience with ComSkip, but it appears that people praise it's stability, unlike the Lindsay Lohan of commercial skipping software (SA). Eventually SA will just give up altogether and maybe do you a favor and create a skipping .xml file just so you don't have to say no to your DTBAddin when it asks if you want to scan a show for commercials.

I'm considering going with ComSkip, but skipping software definitely has me quite a bit gun shy. Right now, clicking the skip button on the remote a few times is better than disrupting my whole TV viewing life every 4-5 months.

Am I bitter? Maybe. SA bad. Comskip...has to be better than the alternative and it appears to be especially now that it will scan WTV files out of the $10 box.

Strange. My experience with SA is exactly the opposite of yours. Right out of the box, it works very well. It's at least 90% accurate for me. Of course, it can't scan copy-protected content... nothing can. I wrote a little program that is scheduled to run once per day. It cleans up all the unnecessary files created by SA and DTB. It also creates empty XML files for the copy-protected shows so I don't get the prompt (unless I watch the show the same day it was recorded).

My commercial skipping setup has been running, maintenance free, for almost a year.

[wassupTC]

Strange. My experience with SA is exactly the opposite of yours. Right out of the box, it works very well. It's at least 90% accurate for me. Of course, it can't scan copy-protected content... nothing can. I wrote a little program that is scheduled to run once per day. It cleans up all the unnecessary files created by SA and DTB. It also creates empty XML files for the copy-protected shows so I don't get the prompt (unless I watch the show the same day it was recorded).

My commercial skipping setup has been running, maintenance free, for almost a year.

I'm not that smart, so that may have something to do with it. I'm kind of a wannabe and SA can definitely tell that I'm not a part of the 'in' crowd.

[barnabas1969]

I'm not that smart, so that may have something to do with it. I'm kind of a wannabe and SA can definitely tell that I'm not a part of the 'in' crowd.

You don't have to write any programs or do anything special. The main problem that I was trying to solve was to clean up all the little files that DTB and SA leave behind. The prompt asking me to scan for commercials (on copy-protected shows) was just a little annoying, so I also added the part that builds the empty XML file so I don't get the prompt. Basically, I just followed the setup guide at the link below, and it worked perfectly from day 1.
http://thedigitalmediazone.com/2010/11/ ... ia-center/

You can also follow this guide to tweak your settings if you aren't satisfied with the accuracy of SA out of the box:
http://hd.engadget.com/2010/08/02/how-t ... ection-ac/

EDIT: I should add that my little program also cleans up the XML files after the WTV files have been deleted. I've been asked in the past to post my little program along with instructions for using it. I'll try to get to that soon.

[1454]

Two questions, is it possible to "set" comskip to skip copy protected files? and Is it possible to set it to scan the newest content first over the older content? It seems to take longer than a week or more to get to that content that is recorded that isn't copy protect. For the longest time I thought that it wasn't even working because it was going through my 5 tb worth of older content first. I just want to set a default priority for newer items first and also have it skip the items from like NatGeo and the like since they are copy protected on my provider. Thanks for any help.

[barnabas1969]

Two questions, is it possible to "set" comskip to skip copy protected files? and Is it possible to set it to scan the newest content first over the older content? It seems to take longer than a week or more to get to that content that is recorded that isn't copy protect. For the longest time I thought that it wasn't even working because it was going through my 5 tb worth of older content first. I just want to set a default priority for newer items first and also have it skip the items from like NatGeo and the like since they are copy protected on my provider. Thanks for any help.

Wow. There are many Comskip-lovers here... and most recommend setting up all kinds of contortions to prevent Comskip from attempting to analyze your copy-protected shows. Weeks? Really? Wow.

Show Analyzer simply skips the copy-protected shows. I have mine set to analyze 24 hours after creation of the file. I have no special settings for copy-protected shows. It just works. In fact, someone on this forum recommended a setting for SA that would supposedly skip the copy-protected shows... and it only served to skip ALL shows. I removed the settings that were recommended by that person... and everything returned to working as expected.

[adam1991]

SA doesn't "just skip the copy protected shows".

In fact, it tends to hang after watching the copy protected show. Hence the need to tell it to skip those altogether.

I'm not sure how you're set up or what actual software you're using...

[barnabas1969]

SA doesn't "just skip the copy protected shows".

In fact, it tends to hang after watching the copy protected show. Hence the need to tell it to skip those altogether.

I'm not sure how you're set up or what actual software you're using...

I use DVRMSToolBox (DTB) and Show Analyzer. I do not have any special settings to make SA ignore the copy-protected shows. I've never experienced a hang in SA.

When I setup DTB and SA, I followed this guide to the letter, and it worked just fine, with about 90% accuracy. It correctly identifies about 9 out of 10 commercial breaks... maybe more.

[1454]

Two questions, is it possible to "set" comskip to skip copy protected files? and Is it possible to set it to scan the newest content first over the older content? It seems to take longer than a week or more to get to that content that is recorded that isn't copy protect. For the longest time I thought that it wasn't even working because it was going through my 5 tb worth of older content first. I just want to set a default priority for newer items first and also have it skip the items from like NatGeo and the like since they are copy protected on my provider. Thanks for any help.

Wow. There are many Comskip-lovers here... and most recommend setting up all kinds of contortions to prevent Comskip from attempting to analyze your copy-protected shows. Weeks? Really? Wow.

Show Analyzer simply skips the copy-protected shows. I have mine set to analyze 24 hours after creation of the file. I have no special settings for copy-protected shows. It just works. In fact, someone on this forum recommended a setting for SA that would supposedly skip the copy-protected shows... and it only served to skip ALL shows. I removed the settings that were recommended by that person... and everything returned to working as expected.

I just can justify paying 30 dollars for something with no developer support. It kept causing hang ups on my computer during the trial period. And it was no faster at going through my old recordings than comskip has been. I just want to pre program it to skip the copy protected content and work from newest to oldest.