How-To use Comskip to cut out commercials via MediaPortal

[and-81]

risu:

Now that MediaPortal 0.2.3.0 is out and MediaPortal II has been announced I'm much more free to discuss this with you, so I'll try to explain this as best I can...

Regarding which channels ComSkip will run on ...

You can pass the channel name to the target of the ComSkip launcher plugin. So by writing a simple batch file you could filter out the channels which don't have adverts.
Use these command line parameters in the comskip launcher plugin:

{0} = Recorded filename (includes path)
{1} = Recorded filename (w/o path)
{2} = Recorded filename (w/o path or extension)
{3} = Recorded file path
{4} = Current date
{5} = Current time
{6} = Channel name


Now, ComSkip support in the timeshift buffer would be quite difficult at this stage. And I will tell you now that it will not make it into MediaPortal for the 1.0.0.0 release. Given this fact I will say now that if it was added to MediaPortal after 1.0.0.0 it would not be done by me. What I mean is, I have no plans to add this feature to MediaPortal 1. MediaPortal II however is another story. It's too early to say when this would be added, but it's definitely on the list.

Having said that. When you look at this feature in terms of Cost & Benefit (Cost being the development effort and Benefit being how much use the end user would get) the cost is pretty high and the benefit is unclear (maybe high, maybe low), so even though it would be nice to have I doubt it will be done any time soon.

When the time comes to add ComSkip support to MediaPortal II I will reassess and try to keep everyone informed.

Also, just out of interest... I'm considering writing a TV3 plugin based on the ComSkip Launcher but for general post-processing of recordings. Basically, it could be used to convert recordings into DivX or run Comskip or things like that... some sort of scripted actions... And it would be rules-based, so you could filter by channels or recording types and things like that ... I haven't started and I'm quite busy with other things, but maybe in the next month or so I'll get onto it ... so that might be of some interest to the comskip crowd too ...

Cheers,

[johnrw]

Originally Posted by and-81

Once MP 0.2.3.0 Final is released I will put my code into SVN. It will then be available in SVN releases within approx. 24 hours.
Cheers,

When the Comskip and autoskip is available in the SVN, will you notify it here in this thread or is it to be announced on the Home page?

[and-81]

hehehe, I knew it wouldn't be long before that comment came back to haunt me

We have a team meeting coming up where this feature will be discussed. After that I will move the code into SVN or make any changes the team decides upon before moving it in.

I will post back here or in the forums in general to notify people of the addition.

Thanks for your ongoing interest, I hope I can give you some good news within a week or so.

Cheers,

[KRA]

I have a problem with comskip (not 100% confirmed yet, but initial test seem to indicate so)

When I enable comskip in tv-server I get 2 problems.

first scheduled recording never stops, just goes on and on
later scheduled recordings never start.

Disabled the comskip plugin, and problem seemed to go away. I'm using 0.2.3 +SVN as of today

[risu]

Originally Posted by and-81

Once MP 0.2.3.0 Final is released I will put my code into SVN. It will then be available in SVN releases within approx. 24 hours.
Cheers,

Are we waiting for 1.0 release now?

[and-81]

Announcement regarding Automatic ComSkip ...

We recently decided that the automatic skipping should be able to be turned on or off and should be turned off by default.

I've now made the change to my code and merged it into SVN. It will be available in the next public SVN release.

To enable it you will need to go into Configuration and in the general section find the new checkbox that is appropriately labelled and turn the feature on.

Good luck,

If you have any problems please report them immediately so they can be fixed or the feature removed if it is too troublesome.

Cheers,

- Aaron.

Originally Posted by KRA

I have a problem with comskip (not 100% confirmed yet, but initial test seem to indicate so)

When I enable comskip in tv-server I get 2 problems.

first scheduled recording never stops, just goes on and on
later scheduled recordings never start.

Disabled the comskip plugin, and problem seemed to go away. I'm using 0.2.3 +SVN as of today

Hmm, I'm looking into this. Thanks for raising it. I'll post back if I find anything.

Cheers,

[risu]

Thanks, just tested this and it seems to work alright. Now I'd need to figure out a way to clean comskip files from recordings less than hour duration where comskip seems to do some weird stuff..

Any chance to put configuration option to use automatic skipping only for recordings that last for over one hour etc? Comskip doesn't work well with short recordings anyways.

Best option would of course be to mod comskip plugin so it wouldn't start comskip at all if scheduled recording was too short.

[and-81]

Hey risu, that's good to hear.

As for ComSkip not working on short recordings, I think you can get around that by feeding it the logo file for the channel or having per-channel settings...

But other than that I think it's probably a job for the more advanced plugin I hinted at in the first post on this page (#111). I might start on that next month, maybe next year depending on how my MP2 commitments pan out.

Cheers,

[risu]

So far I haven't tweaked comskip settings at all so I don't know too much about it. You seem to be right on that logo-thing. I'll try making a batch file for comskip, will also get rid of running it on some channels too. Thanks for the tips.

[erik1958]

On short recordings I would recommend to disable all heuristics
disable_heuristics=255

and NOT to use intelligent_brightness (its better not to use it anyway)