About skipping commercials

ok, so, I have recordings, now HOW does it 'skip' commercials? promotiong says, it Automaticly skips... I have waited till End of show, wait 5 min... still commercials, alittle advise here please, thanks

In the settings you can choose what to do when you hit a commercial. One option is to skip it automatically.

You also have to enable Commercial Detection in your Channels DVR server web UI settings and then wait until after the recording and commercial detection are completed. Commercial detection speed basically depends on the length of the show/movie and the speed of your Channels DVR server CPU.
Screenshot_2020-06-16 Channels DVR

exactly WHERE, in 'settings' can I choose, to 'skip? sorry, haven't seen it, thanks

Where are you watching from? Apple TV? Android TV?

ok, I do Follow what you are saying, I was CURIOUS, about that "enable bonjour" ... ok, so UNcheck that... got it, and "Commercial detection speed" so, half hour news show... give me a clue, lets say, slow computer... what would your guess be in time? thank you

If its an OTA recording, comskip takes less than 5 min on my synology (Pentium N3710 1.60GHz).
If TVE, it takes longer.

watching on LG tv with a roku express

just watched, Jimmy Kimmel live, recorded last nite, so, perhaps, 10 hours later... full of commercials... I record, from, .. TVE

1 Like

The commercial skip settings are on the client. If you are watching on a Roku that is no longer being developed so I’m not sure if it has the option of auto skip (or skipping at all, frankly). Perhaps some others users with Roku clients can chime in.

slow computer is a relative term...

That would be a topic for another discussion. Depends on too many things.
Content video type and length, CPU load, CPU speed, CPU cores, comskip settings, speed at which comskip can read the recording to process it...

I've seen 30 minute mpeg2 SD shows comskip in less than a minute, some H.264 like TVE taking anywhere from 15 minutes to a couple hours for a one hour show, 3 hour H.264 movies taking 30 minutes to 3 hrs. And that's on my older/slower quad-core NAS.

If the Channels DVR server is software transcoding and/or updating the guide data during comskip it will slow it down also.

You can view the progress of commercial detection in the Channels DVR server web UI under Status>Activity.
Screenshot_2020-06-17 Channels DVR
If you want to know exactly how long comskip took for commercial detecting a recording you can see it in the Channels DVR server log.

2020/06/17 07:45:50.107714 [DVR] Running commercial detection on file 21 (TV/Storage Wars/Storage Wars S02E18 2011-11-22 Auction Sesame 2020-06-17-0743.mpg)
2020/06/17 07:48:14.916124 [DVR] Commercial detection failed for Storage Wars S02E18 2011-11-22 Auction Sesame 2020-06-17-0743.mpg with exit status 1

Above is just a quick 3 minute recording from a TVE channel to illustrate it took 2 minutes and 24 seconds to detect commercials on my older/slower NAS.

1 Like

That log entry says that commercial detection failed, and the process did not complete. (Most likely because it was a brief and incomplete recording.) You cannot use a failure to exemplify a successful run.

(Also, the number of processor cores is irrelevant: the commercial detection process by default will only ever use a single thread on a single core.)

The process did complete, but didn't find any commercial blocks in the short partial recording.
comskip log

################################################################
Generated using donator Comskip 0.82.005
Time at start of run:
Wed Jun 17 07:45:50 2020
################################################################
...
Parsed 5220 video frames and 5805 audio frames at    46.46 fps

Maximum Volume found is 13493
Finished scanning file.  Starting to build Commercial List.
...
Total commercial length:    0:00:00.00
...
5220 Frames Processed
################################################################
Time at end of run:
Wed Jun 17 07:48:14 2020
################################################################

True, I modified my comskip.ini to use two threads, but simultaneous transcoding/guide updates do affect comskip performance since both are processor and disk instensive.

1 Like

ok, thanks so much, I _am reading and tryin here... I find the log of a show, looks like Gone with the Wind... kinda long, doesn't mean much to me, but, its There, I will keep at this thing.

so, questions, is Roku... NOT the best thing for me to expect the best results with? I don't have appletv... I Do have an LG tv, but, I don't think there is a program for that?
so, in the Log, is there a 'keyword' to look for, to See, if its done, and successful at comskip? thanks

You can search the log for
commercial detection

You can also use a built-in rudimentary commercial editor on the recording to look at where it thinks the commercials are.


In a client player the commercial blocks will be highlighted in the progress bar.

You can see the Channels apps here: https://getchannels.com/apps/

The roku app you are using is unsupported and does not have commercial skipping.

thanks folks for the responses... so, what if I rephrase the question... IF you were gonna get the Best equipment to record as I have mentioned, WHAT would you recommend? thanks so much!

I would say the Apple TV 4K is currently considered the “flagship” client for viewing on a TV.

As far as what device to use for a Channels DVR server, you'll get different answers from everyone depending on what they have and their needs.

Kinda like saying "I need a vehicle, which one should I get".

Best thing about Channels DVR server is it runs on many devices/OS's and if you familiarize yourself with how to migrate your settings/recordings between different devices, you can try them all until you find what suits your needs.

Do you need quiet, low power, screaming fast, hardware/software encoding, able to run Channels DVR and Plex/etc.

Channels DVR Server platforms

How do I move Channels DVR Server to a new computer?