Comskip not working when using DVRMS Toolbox

[marvin-miller]

Yes, I've been using DVRMSToolbox since before the Vista release.

I beleive these are the two lines;

output_dvrmstb=1
dvrmsstandoff=120000

Can't fathom the logic behind moving the DLL file around and then expecting it to work. All that's required is to install the Toolbox, update the existing comskip that comes with it (in the same directory!) and away you go.

[heffneil]

And you are running windows 7?

[marvin-miller]

Yes....

[adam1991]

I'm running the latest public comskip with DVRMSToolbox with zero issues - it works perfectly. Mind you, I'm running 3 commercial detection products (the old Show Analyzer, the latest one and Comskip).

Simultaneously?

I ask because I'm using the latest SA, but am looking seriously at moving to comskip now that it works with WTV files. I'm new here, lurking and browsing with the goal of finding tips to switch from SA to comskip as painlessly as possible.

But if I can leave SA alone and just install comskip, and it work, I will do that. Don't know how to tell DTB what marker file to use, though...

[heffneil]

For some reason comskip works for me perfectly now. I have NO idea why and changed nothing in the ini. Now idea but I am very happy

[marvin-miller]

I'm running the latest public comskip with DVRMSToolbox with zero issues - it works perfectly. Mind you, I'm running 3 commercial detection products (the old Show Analyzer, the latest one and Comskip).

Simultaneously?

I ask because I'm using the latest SA, but am looking seriously at moving to comskip now that it works with WTV files. I'm new here, lurking and browsing with the goal of finding tips to switch from SA to comskip as painlessly as possible.

But if I can leave SA alone and just install comskip, and it work, I will do that. Don't know how to tell DTB what marker file to use, though...

Yes, I'm running SA .097 & 1.x as well as comskip. Both Show Analyzers install to their own unique directory so you can run both at the same time. Same thing with Comskip. So, you can have all 3 installed and operational for doing real world testing. Or, you can make profiles that use any one of the three if you find that one works better than another on a particular program.

You can choose which one you want to run in your profile. SAV1 is the latest Show Analyzer, Show Analyzer is the old version (.097) and Comskip is Comskip You can set it by profile or globally.

For me, Comskip is working better then both of the other Show Analyzer's. The latest Show Analyzer is MUCH faster but I find commerical detection is pretty far off. I would rather have slower analysis with more accurate results (ComSkip) then speed and poor performance.

But like I said, the nice thing is you can run all 3 at the same time and choose between them through your profiles or globally on the first tab in DVRMS-Toolbox (the Preferred Analyzer box).

[erik]

Good to hear about the quality, that is indeed my priority.
Did you guys test the multi threaded decoding of Comsip?
More speedups coming soon.

[marvin-miller]

Good to hear about the quality, that is indeed my priority.
Did you guys test the multi threaded decoding of Comsip?
More speedups coming soon.

Hi Erik!

Yes, the quality of ComSkip seems to have eclipsed that of Show Analyzer. I had excellent result with the old Show Analyzer (I swore by it) but with every release since it's been going downhill with the exception of speed - it's very, very fast.

About a month ago I decided to try ComSkip again as it had been many years. To my surprise it picked off ads that SA couldn't. I tentatively decided to keep it in use and it's been excellent!

My personal views on priority are these;

1) Reliability (ie. no crashes)
2) Accuracy
3) Speed

I'm just using the public release so I'm not sure about multi-threading etc. I did reccently make the move to HD with a STB and I have a Hauppage Collosus on order so in short order I'll be testing out ComSkip on HD and different providers with different logo schemes etc.

I'm really impressed with ComSkip and I'm so glad it's still under development. SA's gone the way of the wind and I've had lots of conversations with Jere about it - all to no avail so it's now doubly important that ComSkip exists because it's not going to be long before SA disappears (at least from my system

[erik]

When testing HD you can have VERY bad results.
This is cuased by one ini parameter that needs to be adjusted (but not the same for every user)
If HD fails, ask for help.

[marvin-miller]

Thanks Erik!

The card is showing up first thing tomorrow and I plan to get on it early
Just in case, what is the parameter?

Btw, I sent you a donation this morning

[erik]

As I said, different for some users.
Ask for help when having problems.

[marvin-miller]

Very good

Should I use the latest public build or is there a better build for contributors? What would be the best build to use?

[erik]

Build for contributors is some releases ahead, better to use that.

[btracy]

I'm running the latest public comskip with DVRMSToolbox with zero issues - it works perfectly. Mind you, I'm running 3 commercial detection products (the old Show Analyzer, the latest one and Comskip).

Simultaneously?

I ask because I'm using the latest SA, but am looking seriously at moving to comskip now that it works with WTV files. I'm new here, lurking and browsing with the goal of finding tips to switch from SA to comskip as painlessly as possible.

But if I can leave SA alone and just install comskip, and it work, I will do that. Don't know how to tell DTB what marker file to use, though...

I just switched from Show Analyzer 1.0 to the early access Comskip this last weekend and have used them both with DVRMSToolbox on WMC. I record all my shows in HD only using an infiniTV4. So far I have had better results with Comskip than I had with Show Analyzer 1.0 in detecting commercials and I have worked out all of my DTB issues. On the DTB front (I am using 1.2.2.4), I made the following changes.

1) I disabled my ShowAnalyzer service and re-named the ShowAnalyzer executables as I found DTB looking for ShowAnalyzer first and then looking for Comskip as a fallback. This allows me to switch back to ShowAnalyzer if I needed to easily (though that has not been necessary).

2) I added output_dvrmstb=1 to the comskip.ini file and added dvrmsstandoff=120000 for good measure but I tested without the second setting and have not noted any issues.

3) The early access version of Comskip doesn't work currently with live recordings unlike ShowAnalyzer. So if DTB tries to start looking for commercials while your show is recording (if you had it set for live scanning like I did with SA), they will all fail to detect commercials. On the FileWatcher tab of DTB, the setting for "Wait Time" is supposed to control this value (0 means do live recording while setting a value of 2 would mean wait 2 minutes after the file stops being written to). I found this didn't actually work properly and I had to modify the "Find Commercials in DVR-MS" template (which is the default comscan template) to add MetaDataWait as the first piece of the profile. This will force DTB to wait until the "EndTime" metadata is written to the file before it starts processing the file. So the profile should read when modified:

Wait 0 min from date time in the "WM/WMRVEndTime" metadata property
Throttle DVRMStoMpeg
Get Video Information
Find Commercials in file
Write commercial spans as xml

After making this modification, all my commercial skipping is working properly using Comskip rather than ShowAnalyzer. Some of the other differences you may notice between the two:

1) ShowAnalyzer uses far less resources during a scan than Comskip. I originally started with thread_count=2 but went back to the default of thread_count=1 since I had set DTB to run 4 instances of the commercial skipping program at once (as I have 4 tuners). With ShowAnalyzer I could easily run 4 at once all while recording 4 live TV shows however, with Comskip each instance will eat up an entire CPU thread (I have 4 CPU's) making my MCE box incredibly sluggish if I run 4 instances. I dialed it back to 3 and can work fine but expect Comskip to use far more CPU resources than SA did.

2) Comskip doesn't recognize files that have DRM and are marked Copy Once. ShowAnalyzer would begin to work with DRM protected recordings and bail out after a few seconds when it couldn't properly read DRM protected files (as neither program should be able to read them). Comskip doesn't recognize this and will spend the full 20 minutes scanning the file (a 1 hour HD show is about 20 minutes on a scan for me). Not a huge problem but without being able to do live scanning and without the ability to bail on DRM protected files, commercial detection in essence is far slower with Comskip than with ShowAnalyzer.

3) I have found some issues with DRM files where Comskip believes it can actually recognize some form of commercial in the file which isn't possible resulting on com skipping that is inaccurate for these files. I am still looking at modifying some .ini settings to see if it ever stops believing it can read a DRM protected file but I believe this is just a bug with the early access version. I plan on doing more testing with some saved DRM files I have to see if I can find a pattern (aka does it always detect the same commercial for the same .wtv file with DRM protection every time or is it a random thing, etc.). If I have some sort of reproducible scenario, I will raise a support request to see if it can be resolved in a future release.

4) Comskip has generally been much better at detecting commercials than ShowAnalyzer was so the performance tradeoff is worth it for me. I would like to see Comskip dial back its CPU usage per thread however so I can easily run 4 instances at once but I shouldn't get as backlogged with commercial scanning when we can do live recordings again (assuming it starts bailing on on DRM protected files in the future).

5) Comskip has so far been far easier to tweak than ShowAnalyzer was. I still have some detection issues that I am messing around with the .ini settings for but overall it has been great.

I am sure there is something else I am forgetting at this point but those are the basics.

[WScottCross]

2) Comskip doesn't recognize files that have DRM and are marked Copy Once. ShowAnalyzer would begin to work with DRM protected recordings and bail out after a few seconds when it couldn't properly read DRM protected files (as neither program should be able to read them). Comskip doesn't recognize this and will spend the full 20 minutes scanning the file (a 1 hour HD show is about 20 minutes on a scan for me). Not a huge problem but without being able to do live scanning and without the ability to bail on DRM protected files, commercial detection in essence is far slower with Comskip than with ShowAnalyzer.

3) I have found some issues with DRM files where Comskip believes it can actually recognize some form of commercial in the file which isn't possible resulting on com skipping that is inaccurate for these files. I am still looking at modifying some .ini settings to see if it ever stops believing it can read a DRM protected file but I believe this is just a bug with the early access version. I plan on doing more testing with some saved DRM files I have to see if I can find a pattern (aka does it always detect the same commercial for the same .wtv file with DRM protection every time or is it a random thing, etc.). If I have some sort of reproducible scenario, I will raise a support request to see if it can be resolved in a future release.

I set up DTB to skip processing on the DRM protected channels. Using the Processing Condition Editor, create a new condition and put in a description you like such as "skip DRM channels", etc. and select the "Create an empty Commercials File" profile from the dropdown. Add rules and use "WM/MediaStationCallSign" Contains "HBO" or whatever the station call sign is. Change the "And" modifier dropdown below the Add, Edit, Remove buttons to "Or" and continue adding rules in the same format.
Make sure the new condition is before the "Every file" condition and then DTB will not call Comskip for those recordings and will save processing time and avoid the erroneous commercial markings. Having it create an empty commercials file prevents Media Center from complaining about a missing commercials file. Works great for my dual Ceton cards.