Comskip ini swap shop

[Ack]

Also, catching everything that has been changed is going to be a pain, anyone have a merge tool that can automatically compare the files and just post the changes?

WinMerge is open source and and works pretty well, especially for comparing and merging flat files like this.
Beyond Compare has more features and is about $30 USD.

[bobbob]

how are you guys running comskip? i'm looking into it for the first time and from what i can see dvrmstoolbox and the filewatcher service are the way to go. but its not the easiest to set up, if you are using dvrmstoolbox is there a guide anywhere to setting it up? i can only find a guide to setting it up with SA on hack7mc and getting the dtb addin to find whatever comskip produces is where its falling down. thanks!

[winterescape]

how are you guys running comskip? i'm looking into it for the first time and from what i can see dvrmstoolbox and the filewatcher service are the way to go. but its not the easiest to set up, if you are using dvrmstoolbox is there a guide anywhere to setting it up? i can only find a guide to setting it up with SA on hack7mc and getting the dtb addin to find whatever comskip produces is where its falling down. thanks!

sure, I wrote instructions here.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthre ... st19995680

One change is that the latest version of comskip will process wtv files so no conversion is required. I however have not yet tried it or updated my system to this version.

If you want to try the new version just use dvrmstoolbox with the default comskip profile and get the latest version of comskip from the website. Be careful not to replace the ini file or at least copy the lines that tell comskip to generate the output file.

another set of instructions here but this guy used another tool for the conversion...
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthre ... st21184846

[Glitchy]

First go at a ComSkip ini. Compared 3 below, made some calls and changed one or two other lines. I have processed about 800 shows and watched about 20 some. VERY good luck so far. AMC, SyFy, NBC, NatGeo, History that I can recall. "MOST" changed lines, I changed has WAS/ADD firsrt in the comments. For the most part, might see, quarter/half a second of commercial and comes back in on queue.

I just detecting, not removing commercials from file right now.

Thought I would share.
Jeff

detect_method=111 ;WAS 43: 1=black frame, 2=logo, 4=scene change, 8=fuzzy logic, 16=closed captions, 32=aspect ration, 64=silence, 128=cutscenes, 255=all
validate_silence=1 ; Default, set to 0 to force using this clues if selected above.
validate_uniform=1 ; Default, set to 0 to force using this clues (like pure white frames) if blackframe is selected above.
validate_scenechange=1 ; Default, set to 0 to force using this clues if selected above.
verbose=10 ;show a lot of extra info, level 5 is also OK, set to 0 to disable
max_brightness=60 ;frame not black if any pixels checked are greater than this (scale 0 to 255)
test_brightness=40 ;frame not pure black if any pixels checked are greater than this, will check average brightness (scale 0 to 255)
max_avg_brightness=25 ;maximum average brightness for a dim frame to be considered black (scale 0 to 255) 0 means autosetting
max_commercialbreak=600 ;maximum length in seconds to consider a segment a commercial break
min_commercialbreak=25 ;minimum length in seconds to consider a segment a commercial break
max_commercial_size=185 ; WAS : 125 maximum time in seconds for a single commercial or multiple commercials if no breaks in between
min_commercial_size=4 ;mimimum time in seconds for a single commercial
min_show_segment_length=125 ; any segment longer than this will be scored towards show.
non_uniformity=500 ; Set to 0 to disable cutpoints based on uniform frames
max_volume=500 ; any frame with sound volume larger than this will not be regarded as black frame
min_silence=12 ; Any deep silence longer than this amount of frames is a possible cutpoint
ticker_tape=0 ; AWASmount of pixels from bottom to ignore in all processing
logo_at_bottom=1 ; WAS 0 : Set to 1 to search only for logo at the lower half of the video, do not combine with subtitle setting
punish=0 ; Compare to average for sum of 1=brightness, 2=uniform 4=volume, 8=silence, 16=schange, set to 0 to disable
punish_threshold=1.3 ; Multiply when amount is above average * punish_threshold
punish_modifier=2 ; When above average * threshold multiply score by this value
intelligent_brightness=1 ; Set to 1 to use a USA specific algorithm to tune some of the settings, not adviced outside the USA
logo_percentile=0.92 ; if more then this amount of logo is found then logo detection will be disabled
logo_threshold=0.75
punish_no_logo=1 ; Default, set to 0 to avoid show segments without logo to be scored towards commercial
aggressive_logo_rejection=0
connect_blocks_with_logo=1 ; set to 1 if you want successive blocks with logo on the transition to be regarded as connected, set to 0 to disable
logo_filter=0 ; set the size of the filter to apply to bad logo detection, 4 seems to be a good value.
cut_on_ar_change=1 ; set to 1 if you want to cut also on aspect ratio changes when logo is present, set to 2 to force cuts on aspect ratio changes. set to 0 to disable
delete_show_after_last_commercial=0 ; set to 1 if you want to delete the last block if its a show and after a commercial
delete_show_before_or_after_current=0 ; set to 1 if you want to delete the previous and the next show in the recording, this can lead to the deletion of trailers of next show
delete_block_after_commercial=0 ;set to max size of block in seconds to be discarded, set to 0 to disable
remove_before=0 ; amount of seconds of show to be removed before ALL commercials
remove_after=0 ; amount of seconds of show to be removed after ALL commercials
shrink_logo=5 ; Reduce the duration of the logo with this amount of seconds
after_logo=0 ; set to number of seconds after logo disappears comskip should start to search for silence to insert an additional cutpoint
padding=0
ms_audio_delay=5
volume_slip=20 ;WAS 40
skip_b_frames=0 ; Set to 1 to force Comskip to skip frames for higher processing speed.
max_repair_size=200 ; Will repair maximum 200 missing MPEG frames in the timeline, set to 0 to disable repairing for players that don't use PTS.
disable_heuristics=4 ;bit pattern for disabling heuristics, adding 1 disables heristics 1, adding 2 disables heristics 2, adding 4 disables heristics 3, 255 disables all heuristics
delete_logo_file=0 ; set to 1 if you want comskip to tidy up after finishing
output_framearray=0 ; create a big excel file for detailed analysis, set to 0 to disable
output_data=0 ; create a dump of the user data channel, used for CC and XDS (such as V-Chip info). Can be use together with output_framearray to remote debug CC decoding
output_videoredo=0
output_womble=0
output_mls=0 ; set to 1 if you want MPeg Video Wizard bookmark file output
output_cuttermaran=0
output_mpeg2schnitt=0
output_mpgtx=0
output_dvrcut=0
output_zoomplayer_chapter=0
output_zoomplayer_cutlist=0
output_edl=1
output_dvrmstb=1 ; WAS 0, Set to 1 if you're running DVRMS-Toolbox
output_default=0
output_edlx=0
output_vcf=0
output_bsplayer=0
output_btv=0 ; set to 1 if you want Beyond TV chapter cutlist output
output_projectx=0 ; set to 1 if you want ProjectX cutlist output (Xcl)
output_avisynth=0
output_vdr=0 ; set to 1 if you want XBMC to skipping commercials
output_demux=0 ; set to 1 if you want comskip to demux the mpeg file while scanning
dvrmsstandoff=120000 ; ADDED
sage_framenumber_bug=0
sage_minute_bug=0
live_tv=1 ;WAS 0 ; set to 1 if you use parallelprocessing and need the output while recording
live_tv_retries=4 ; change to 16 when using live_tv in BTV, used for mpeg PS and TS
dvrms_live_tv_retries=300 ; only used for dvr_ms
standoff=0 ; change to 8000000 when using live_tv in BTV
cuttermaran_options="cut=\"true\" unattended=\"true\" muxResult=\"false\" snapToCutPoints=\"true\" closeApp=\"true\""
mpeg2schnitt_options="mpeg2schnitt.exe /S /E /R25 /Z %2 %1"
avisynth_options="LoadPlugin(\"MPEG2Dec3.dll\") \nMPEG2Source(\"%s\")\n"
dvrcut_options="dvrcut \"%s.dvr-ms\" \"%s_clean.dvr-ms\" "
windowtitle="Comskip - %s"

[bobbob]

well i bumbled my way through getting comskip set up in the end. mainly thanks to trial and error tbh, the guidance out there is limited!

its working well largely. it probably detects around 95% of commercials correctly and i've had to make a few adjustments because of that. the main problem is that while dvrmstoolbox is an excellent functional bit of software its about as user friendly as a hungry lion. i cannot consistently get dvrmstoolbox to disable if comskip has not got the markers set correctly so asking my g/f to do the same would risk the good WAF i have built up.

so i turned off the autoskip as that was where it was falling down. i then set the 9 button on the remote control (9 because the maximum commercial break i need to manually ffwd through is 4 mins, which uses the 7 button and 9 is therefore unused) to activate the jump forward action in dvrmstoolbox and that is it. everything else in dvrmstoolbox is off. then when a recording starts we press the 9 button to look for the markers and if they're not found we can then press 4 + ffwd to manually jump.

big thanks to malamute for his ini file, the only difficulty i am still having is getting comskip to run on all 8 cores of my i7 but erik seems to think its a wider problem.

[gpatlanta]

Hi all,

I am having a very different experience with Comskip preview as of a few days ago. I have it "working" with dvrmstoolbox but my wife is about ready to strangle me. Out of the box and also with settings tweaked based on what was posted here in this thread i am getting terrible results. I am using an infinitv4 and have settings to only process if no copy protection is present which limits to only network channels and that works. However the first experience i had was my wife screaming at me from upstairs, "It is skpping the content....". It was, she only saw commercials. Since then it seems to start skipping halfway into commercials and goes minutes into the show. It is almost as if the whole set of skip logic for each show is offset by a couple minutes.

Any ideas? So far my success rate is 0%.

[bobbob]

well i can't help you set up the ini file properly but i would advise that you turn off the automatic skipping unless you get to 100% success. I would say i'm probably on about 98% but there's still the odd time where it goes crazy. i let comskip do its stuff automatically in the background so that unless its still waiting to be processed, there should be a commercials file for every recording. I mapped the number 9 on my remote to the skip forward command in DVRMS Toolbox and turned everything else off and now it works well. I tell my g/f that when a recording plays back she should press 9, if there is a commercial file and its accurate all well and good, if its not accurate then just stop the recording, restart and use 4xffwd to skip the pre-record buffer. if there's not commercial file (and you get a pop up that tells you it doesn't exist) then just use the 4xffwd to skip to approximately the beginning. it works and i've had no complaints so far.

i chose 9 because its the one i never use to skip commercial breaks mid-programme, in the UK its always 7 or 8 + ffwd

[sccrgoalie1]

Hi all,

I am having a very different experience with Comskip preview as of a few days ago. I have it "working" with dvrmstoolbox but my wife is about ready to strangle me. Out of the box and also with settings tweaked based on what was posted here in this thread i am getting terrible results. I am using an infinitv4 and have settings to only process if no copy protection is present which limits to only network channels and that works. However the first experience i had was my wife screaming at me from upstairs, "It is skpping the content....". It was, she only saw commercials. Since then it seems to start skipping halfway into commercials and goes minutes into the show. It is almost as if the whole set of skip logic for each show is offset by a couple minutes.

Any ideas? So far my success rate is 0%.

What version are you using? There were about 8 of the beta versions released that had a timeline issue which caused everything to be wrong. This has been resolved in the latest beta.

[STC]

gp - what happens if you use the default comskip.ini?
That should get you decent detection with an InfiniTV.
Who is your cable co?
There are odd channels and broadcasts that can hinder comskip sometimes, but overall, great detection.

[gpatlanta]

What version are you using? There were about 8 of the beta versions released that had a timeline issue which caused everything to be wrong. This has been resolved in the latest beta.

just checked and am using the latest one that is still there since the 12th: comskip81_031_donators.zip

I started using the out of box config.ini and only enabling the dtmstb setting. That was really bad for me where it skipped all of the show and presented only commercials. I am on TWC in Raleigh. I wonder why it is so off for me and not others.

[STC]

It's weird because I had the exact same problem but the other way around;
Show Analyzer failed miserably with my Infini having the symptoms you describe. Detection was always off by a couple of minutes, no matter what I tried to tweak.
Moving to Comskip gave me great results.

Do you have any remnants of SA running on your machine if at all?

Also just a thought, but are the DTB service, profile and processing conditions set correctly?

[Jay]

Silly question I am sure....

"How do you tell DVRMSToolbox to use ComSkip vs. Showanalyzer?"

[sccrgoalie1]

It's in the find commercials action of the scan for commercials profile. Or by default comskip if show analyzer isn't installed.

[Crewski]

Lately on a lot of my network shows the very end of the show is getting cut off. At then end of the show there is normally a 2-3 minute section of show (at least that is typical of comedies). Comskip is considering this a commercial for the most part. Anyone else experiencing this? My ini is the same as others posted on here...no changes to speak of.

[STC]

How many tuners do you have available vs scheduled recordings? Maybe you are running out and a tuner is required for the next recording.

I usually have to turn off skipping (up arrow in my rig) to be able to watch the three minute blips at the end of some shows.

[Crewski]

I have plenty of tuners. One InfiniTV and one Avermedia Duet (QAM). I do the "10 minutes after" on my series recording to get around the back-to-back bug. The recordings are fine, its the commercial skipping.

That little 3 minute blip is exactly what I'm talking about. Right now I'm the same as you with turning off the commercial skipping (down arrow for me). Anyone else been able to fix this or know what parameter in the comskip.ini to mess around with. I'm running the latest donators version btw, I'm at work so I'm not exactly sure which one that is.

[bmblank]

Isn't there a minimum segment length variable or the like in the ini? If that is set for too long it will see that short segment and call it commercial.

I think this is a fairly common problem on the comskip forums. If not, ask Eric for help and he'll have you squared away in no time.

[STC]

I believe fixing it is tricky as shortening the segment length leads to more false positives.