Best setup for removing commercials ?

Rickt1962

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Best setup for removing commercials ?

#1

Post by Rickt1962 » Tue Aug 08, 2017 3:43 pm

I am using W7 with 6 tuners running 24/7 my personal puppy mill ! with Paid MCEBuddy and paid comskip the problem as most know its not perfect. There must be a better setup for removing commercials and suggestions ?
HTPC W7 pro with HDhomerun with 6 tuners using Comcast scanned by MCEbuddy uploaded to network to be watched by KODI

Space

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#2

Post by Space » Tue Aug 08, 2017 8:11 pm

I'm not sure what you are asking. Are you asking if there are better programs than Comskip to mark commercials? The only other one I know of it Show Analyzer, but it is no longer in development.

Comskip has a config file that can be tweaked. I haven't really messed with it too much (although I would like to if I ever had any time). I am not aware of any "ultimate" config that handles all commercial detection perfectly, but it would be great if there was one.

You can also set up separate config files on a per-channel or even per-show basis if you need separate settings for different scenarios, but I haven't bothered with that either.

Rickt1962

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#3

Post by Rickt1962 » Tue Aug 08, 2017 10:07 pm

Any TV show you can stream off of websites always have perfect shows with no commercials is what made me wonder how they are doing that. Yes I know I can tweak comskip per network. I rather pay for it already done.
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adam1991

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#4

Post by adam1991 » Tue Aug 08, 2017 10:45 pm

Rickt1962 wrote:I am using W7 with 6 tuners running 24/7 my personal puppy mill ! with Paid MCEBuddy and paid comskip the problem as most know its not perfect. There must be a better setup for removing commercials and suggestions ?
I've used ShowAnalyzer forever, it seems.

I tried to change to comskip last year, with no success. I went back to ShowAnalyzer.

I was able to tweak SA well on a per-channel basis, all built in. I honestly don't think comskip is worth all the praise it seems to get.

RyC

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#5

Post by RyC » Tue Aug 08, 2017 11:14 pm

Not sure what went wrong for you, I tweaked comskip slightly and it's accurate 90-100% without having to tweak it per channel. It didn't skip a beat when Comcast switched to H.264 either.

I wouldn't trust MCEBuddy to automatically cut out commercials without double checking the cut points, however.

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#6

Post by Space » Wed Aug 09, 2017 12:42 am

Rickt1962 wrote:Any TV show you can stream off of websites always have perfect shows with no commercials is what made me wonder how they are doing that. Yes I know I can tweak comskip per network. I rather pay for it already done.
I've always assumed that this was done manually, or at least double-checked and corrected after an automatic attempt was made to mark the commercials initially.

There is no way to automatically detect commercials 100% for all channels/programs, but it is possible to get fairly accurate detection if you are willing to do tweaks on a per-channel or per-show basis.

Even TiVo doesn't use automatic tools to detect commercials, they rely on humans to detect them:

https://support.tivo.com/articles/Features_Use/SkipMode

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#7

Post by ZippyTheChicken » Wed Aug 16, 2017 8:56 am

I have been using MCEBuddy with ShowAnalyzer to convert my recordings and strip commercials
something went flakey with comskip for me and I went back to ShowAnalyzer which does ok on most channels

the way these things work is they see a totally black frame when they go to commercial .. most dark scenes in shows or movies aren't 100%black and unfortunately some stations don't always go to full black frames to show the cut in commercials so the software misses them.. also TCM sucks.. they add like 15minutes of commentary to each movie you can't strip out automatically .. which is quite a bit of file size if you have a number of shows like that

if you want MCEBuddy the freeware version is about to disapear as the author is no longer supporting it and only the pay version.. the pay version is worth the money in my opinion but I bought in early and it was only like $10 or $15 but it saves me so much time and space on my drive it was worth it... unfortunately their comskip version is totally screwed now .. its lagware that can take hours to strip one movie or show as an incentive to make you upgrade..

adam1991 wrote:
Rickt1962 wrote:I am using W7 with 6 tuners running 24/7 my personal puppy mill ! with Paid MCEBuddy and paid comskip the problem as most know its not perfect. There must be a better setup for removing commercials and suggestions ?
I've used ShowAnalyzer forever, it seems.

I tried to change to comskip last year, with no success. I went back to ShowAnalyzer.

I was able to tweak SA well on a per-channel basis, all built in. I honestly don't think comskip is worth all the praise it seems to get.

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#8

Post by hongkongphoey74 » Tue Sep 12, 2017 6:37 pm

Absolutely best setup is comskip. I had DVRMSToolbox with showanalyzer for years and comskip is way better. Out of 3 shows it might miss one commercial. Granted, you'll need to tweak the ini file to your personal experience. out of the box it missed one commercial per show.

jachin99

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#9

Post by jachin99 » Wed Sep 27, 2017 2:23 pm

You can look at this, and see if it helps...

https://web.archive.org/web/20150314025 ... s-for.html

Space

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#10

Post by Space » Wed Sep 27, 2017 11:13 pm

jachin99 wrote:You can look at this, and see if it helps...

https://web.archive.org/web/20150314025 ... s-for.html
This article seems to be about converting *.WTV files to *.DVR-MS files so that they can be processed by the free version of Comskip (which is what DVRMSToolbox uses to detect commercials).

If you have the donator (payed) version of Comskip, it handles WTV files natively, so there is no need to do this.

When I used to use the free version of Comskip, I did use this method to convert the file first, but it was very disk intensive (and sometimes affected video playback while it was running in the background) so I abandoned it.

The donator version of Comskip has several options that make it much faster than the free version, so I would recommend it.

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DavidinCT

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#11

Post by DavidinCT » Thu Sep 28, 2017 1:00 pm

Rickt1962 wrote:Any TV show you can stream off of websites always have perfect shows with no commercials is what made me wonder how they are doing that. Yes I know I can tweak comskip per network. I rather pay for it already done.
IF it's an official site, commercial breaks are done via time code (those lines off the edge of the screen). If it's a hack site, non official site, 5 min with a show in a program like Adobe Premiere would come out flawless. Someone very experienced could do stuff like this in 30-60 seconds.

Commerical skip on WMC can be hit or miss. I tried this years ago and tweeked the heck out of it and still cut off too much or still had commercials.
-Dave
Twitter @TheCoolDave

Windows Media Center certified and WMC MVP 2010 - 2012

marvin-miller

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#12

Post by marvin-miller » Thu Oct 05, 2017 11:53 pm

I used Show Analyzer for years and worked with Jere at times with troubleshooting issues. The previous release of Show Analyzer (pre 1.x) was ideal as it had school house and it was very easy to tweak all the way down to the per channel level if needed.

The problem is that everyone knew the pre 1.x version was the cat's ass. 1.x was not good and this too was well known and embarrassing to Jere. The problem was that he could not fix 1.x and told me at that time that he programmed himself into a box.

The problem is that .9x (the good version) only works with DVR-MS. In order to process H.264 you have to have 1.x which is crap. Probably no one around here is old enough to know that 1.x is crap because it's all they've known.

Either way, Jere could not fix 1.x and publicly stated it's broken and can't be fixed. So he moved on to (at that time) developing Android apps and abandoned Show Analyzer. So that's the history on SA.

All through that time Erik kept Comskip going. Comskip was there first but the pre 1.x release of SA was so good that not that many people used Comskip. Comskip won out over the long haul though as it's still maintained and has gotten much better then it was (back then). The paid version of Comskip processes H.264. I've been using it for years (ever since Jere abandoned Show Analyzer) and my DVR has been processing roughly 8 hours a day ever since. For years. It's very, very good right out of the box. I use one instance on ALL channels and it's very nearly perfect.

The problem with Comskip is that there is no Show Analyzer. I've asked Erik to create one a couple of time over the years but he says he can't because you have to be good .net and he isn't.

I use VAP for handling all the processing. This is a custom app that a guy over at the Video Redo forums created years ago. When I got there (the forums) and tried it out it didn't work. I posted up bugs and the author got on them really fast (within hours). It seems he had been waiting for valid feedback as not many people were using it. Over the span of about a month I went back and forth with the author on an intense basis and the net result is a really, really, really nice app for handling video post-recording processing. It is dependant on having Video Redo but this makes it very powerful.

I would never go back to anything else. VAP, Video Redo and Comskip. They are an ideal recipe for handling ANY DVR's recordings.

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#13

Post by jachin99 » Sat Oct 07, 2017 3:47 am

Why do you need comskip when video redo has ad detective? i have a video redo liscence from a few years ago, and the donator's version of comskip so I can set this up.

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#14

Post by marvin-miller » Sat Oct 07, 2017 4:21 am

Video Redo's 'ad detection' is garbage with a capital G. I mentioned it to them when they were making it. The very premise was stupid especially when someone as experienced as Erik had been addressing it for more then a decade at that point.

The end result was a wildly inaccurate 'feature' that was more of a disaster. It's useless.

Go with Comskip / VAP / Video Redo and see how you like it. I used to use DVRMS-Toolbox extensively, for years, and VAP actually eclipses it, and it's a LOT easier.

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#15

Post by adam1991 » Sat Oct 07, 2017 2:20 pm

I have SA 1.x (which, contrary to popular opinion, I *have* tweaked very nicely with superb results--on a channel by channel basis, no less, and yes, CBS, I'm talking to you) and DTB, and have had for...6+ years now.

The setup works, but something went screwy with DTB and I can't launch it anymore without an error. And I can't uninstall or reinstall it because of the same error. I guess I should look into ripping it out by the roots; I took a casual look-see at that, but it doesn't look pretty.

Anyway, now you have me interested. Can you elaborate on the Comskip/VAP/Video Redo process and how it compares to DTB/SA (or DTB/Comskip)? What does what, and how do they relate?

Honestly, I tried Comskip donator version but got zero results from it. I simply went back to SA, and haven't left yet. But I'm open minded.

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#16

Post by marvin-miller » Sat Oct 07, 2017 5:35 pm

VAP is the filewatcher (like DTB)
Video Redo is the engine
Comskip is the commercial detection.

It's much easier to use then DTB and it supports pretty much everything that Video Redo supports. So file conversions etc. I have mine set up to commercial cut all recordings and then rename them by show name and episode and then file them in their own series folder. Movies are renamed to moviename and release date - you know, all the standard DTB stuff. You can transcode to other formats, do movie database lookups, set certain channels (like commercial-free ones) to not be comskipped, you can do QSF operations on files. It uses the recycling bin so the original recordings are there if you need them.

But, it's very straightforward. I loved DTB and had it set up quite elaborately but VAP/Comskip/Videoredo really put an end to monkeying for me. I'm up to 600 movies recordings and probably 7,500 series recordings (keepers) and God only knows how many it's recorded over the years.

It's just a nice tidy and neat solution. I got in with VAP literally on the ground floor, was probably the first person to use it, and worked with the author to make it right (back then). So a LOT of my DTB background went into it :) until the author made it do what I was doing with DTB. Thing is, it's a nice clear and simple interface and because it's hooked into the Video Redo engine it's very powerful.

It's also almost completely unknown. I mentioned to the author that I could promote it for him (years ago, when I was active all over the Media center sites) and he didn't seem to care so I didn't bother. I wouldn't be surprised if there's only 5 people actually using it. Thing is though, it's supported. It's his baby so whenever an issue is mentioned he gets on it right away. It's very well done.

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#17

Post by adam1991 » Sat Oct 07, 2017 9:18 pm

Ah. So I don't need Video Redo for what I do. I can just replace DTB with VAP? And leave SA if I'm happy with its detection? Will VAP read SA's markers?

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#18

Post by marvin-miller » Sat Oct 07, 2017 11:21 pm

Nope, you need video redo as it's the engine the front end processor uses (VAP). It's designed to work with Video Redo

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#19

Post by adam1991 » Sun Oct 08, 2017 12:00 am

OK, thanks. I used to use Video Redo back in my ReplayTV days, so that's no big deal.

So VAP does not, in fact, directly replace DTB? It's the VAP/Video Redo combo that directly replaces DTB? I guess I'm confused. I know that comskip or SA watches the show and marks the commercials. DTB is the part that reads the commercial markers and controls WMC. Right? Well, I guess it also does the directory watching, right? So there's that.

So I'm still confused. All I need is something to tell SA to do its thing, and something to read those resultant markers and control WMC. If VAP is the file watcher as well as presumably the thing that tells WMC to skip to the end of the commercial block, what role does Video Redo play in that context?

EDIT: OK, I get it. It's just a front end for automating Video Redo. And it looks like Video Redo can now alternately use comskip instead of its own Ad Detective.

But I don't want to edit the file or do anything else with it; I just want the DTB functionality of watching for new files and passing them on to ShowAnalyzer, and then controlling WMC to honor the commercial marker times. And if the commercial marker times are wrong, I want temporarily to disable the DTB-like system that controls WMC, and give me manual skip control.

So ultimately I want the original recording to be left alone.

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#20

Post by jachin99 » Sun Oct 08, 2017 4:55 am

I've set this up but I have the donator's version of comskip, which I have moved into my VAP folder replacing the stock version. Is this known to cause any issues or will this be ok. I'm not entirely sure I set this up right. I installed video redo, installed vap, set the vap folders, and replaced that comskip folder and so far thats it. Does it look like I might be doing anything wrong?

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