Comskip Support Forum

Right now I have Comskip process recordings live, and the results for live detection aren’t great. When the file is finished recording, Comskip continues to run for 2-3 minutes and all of the inaccurate cuts are essentially fixed.

I know I can trigger Comskip to not run until after the recording is finished, but for an hourlong show it usually takes 20-30 minutes for it to do its thing. Even longer for longer recordings.

Is it possible to use live processing, but not actually output the EDL file until the recording/processing is completely done? This way I wouldn’t have to deal with in inaccurate cuts of live processing if I happen to be watching the show, and I wouldn’t need to wait for Comskip to run from the beginning once the recording is done.

Thanks.

Why not simply disable live output?
set in your ini file
live_tv=0

I tried doing that, but Comskip exits after just a few seconds if I run it on something currently recording. I essentially want the processing to be done live, but not output anything until the recording is done. Setting live_tv = 0 doesn't seem allow processing of a growing file.

The alternative is that if I set Comskip to not run until a show is finished recording, it takes 20-30 minutes to process an hour long recording on my system.

If I can get Comskip to process the recording live, and just not output until the recording is done, then it only takes a couple minutes for the EDL file to appear (versus 20-30 minutes for an hour longer recording).

Is this possible and I'm just not setting it up correctly?

Can you start comskip 10 minutes after the recording has started?

I only have two options in SageTV to start Comskip, live or wait until the show is over.

Would delaying it 10 minutes even help though? Wouldn't Comskip catch up to the live data at some point, and then just exit? Since shows are different lengths, the delay would have to be different for every recording length so it wouldn't catch up to live.

Comskip sometimes get confused with the initial recording file. Once there is about 10 minutes of recording it seems to be more robust.
Do you record in .ts of .wtv format?

I record in .ts format (H.264, if that makes any difference)

That is weird
Comskip should be able to process live with TS, I do it all the time myself....
Can you get me a short recording? 100mB or so is sufficient.

It does process live just fine, as long as I have live_tv = 1 set in the comskip.ini file.

If I set live_tv = 0, then Comskip exits within a few seconds of a recording starting. I tried it with 3 different recordings last night, and every time Comskip exited pretty much straight away. I set live_tv = 1, and tried a few more recordings, and Comskip ran just fine.

live_tv = 1 is the way I typically have Comskip set up to run, and I rarely if ever have any problems with it. I just assumed that the live_tv setting needs to be set for Comskip to deal with growing files.

I'll email you a Dropbox link to a short recording, I should hopefully be able to get that to you within the next hour.

Thanks!

Email sent!

Just as I test, I set SageTV not to run Comskip right away on recordings. I started a recording and let it go for about 6 minutes, then I manually triggered Comskip (with live_tv = 0). It took a few minutes for it to catch up to the end of the recording, but as soon as it did, Comskip exited.

I deleted the .edl file for that recording, changed live_tv = 1, and ran Comskip manually again. Comskip is still running on the file as it grows, and it hasn't exited out.

Will have a look why live_tv could influence behavior