Comskip Support Forum

Hi,

Comskip is a great software, but it only problem is the need to fine tune it to our needs, which may require quite some time to do.
May I suggest that an Automatic Tuning Agent be included.
Something that would allow a user to feed it a video with the expected result (in the form of the file created with VideoRedo, for example) and then, Comskip could finetune itself, knowing which frames that must be removed and then finding the right 'trigger' to produce the same result.

Said another way:
If Video + Config_file = SkipFile Then
Video + SkipFile could = Config_file!

Anyway, good work!

This is indeed something I would like to be able to implement, however there are many rules working at the same time and the you need a large set of test file to have a set that can automatically select the right combination of rules.
Also there are local and global rules, and special heuristics.

I have implemented a neural network to do this autotuning but even with about 20 different test files with 100's of test samples the manual tuning inside the default ini file is still better.

The best solution would be to have comskip open a utility after a show was recorded--and the commercials removed--that asked the user if comskip worked correctly. If the user reported a problem, this utility would ask if comskip skipped too much, didn't skip enough or did a little bit of both. Optionally, the user could then mark on a timeline of the video where the commercials really started. Using this utility once would not result in much success, but over time, comskip could compile enough data to figure out what went wrong. Also, it would be nice to have comskip compile separate data for each individual show that I watch. Over time, with the information I gave it, it would automatically tune each show.

I'm not going to say here "It shouldn't be too hard to do this" because I understand that there are so many variables in skipping commercials. Even if you factor in all the tuning features on comskip, there's also the brighness/contrast features on the PVR software. What could be done then is have comskip take the data compiled from the above mention utility and add it to an online database. When the user sets up comskip, it would ask them for their location, their cable provider, and the PVR software that they are using; comskip would download the appropriate data to their computer and suggest the best brighness/contrast settings (only if comskip couldn't manipulate these settings.)

I know I am revisiting an old topic, but couldn't you work through the GUI or debug window to mark the cutpoints and then have Comskip output an .ini file with the parameters that it used or calculated to try and match the manually located commercial cutpoints?

I did some experiments but there are simply too many different broadcasting styles in the world, and too many tunable parameters