Channels Commercial Detection not working properly

[lebenson]

I'm new to Channels. Excellent software. But I'm not getting proper commercial detection. Only about 2 or 3 shows have it. The rest are pending. The activity keeps showing shows like this:

Activity

Detecting commercials in Sunday Today With Willie Geist S08E01 2023-09-24-0700.mpg

But the ad detection is not on the recording. It also states 26 shows are pending.

Any help or guidance is appreciated.

[slampman]

What are you using for a server?

[lebenson]

It's a synology diskstation:
OS

Synology DS118
Linux
(kernel: 4.4.302+)

CPU

4 cores / Cortex-A53

load averages: 1.02 1.03 1.04

RAM

643.66 MB
41.4% free

[Edwin_Perez]

That ram is pretty low.

[lebenson]

The Disk Station supposedly has 1GB onboard. But I thought ram might be the issue.

[chDVRuser]

How many threads did you select for comskip to use (each thread takes 100% of a CPU core)?

[lebenson]

The thread count is 1. Should I up it to 2 or 3?

[chDVRuser]

You can see in the DVR log how long it takes for comskip to detect commercials on each recording.
It will vary.
Support > Logs in the DVR web admin UI
Example:
2023/09/26 10:13:18.298111 [DVR] Commercial detection for Quantum Leap S05E10 1992-11-24 The Last Door July 28 197 2023-09-26-0900.mpg finished with 12 markers in 12m17.318270003s.

[chDVRuser]

Commercial Skipping threads

The best number is what works for you. Each thread uses one CPU core. Depends on what else the machine is being used for. The more threads you use, the faster it detects commercials. But it's a case of diminishing returns, so 4 threads is not 4X as fast as 1. Best to experiment with a single H.264 recording of an hour or more and try different settings while recomskipping the same recording. Check the DVR log to see how fast it finished and watch your CPU usage. You can go from CPU lookin…

How many cores for ComSkip with 4 available?

Best answer I came up with is try with 1, then 2, then 3, then 4. Set Channels DVR to use 1 thread for comskip. Record a 30 minute (H.264 if you can) show. Time the comskip run (you can view run time in the DVR log) and observe your CPU usage. Set Channels DVR to use 2 threads for comskip. Re-Comskip the same recording. Time the comskip run and observe your CPU usage. repeat using 3 threads I found on my Synology quad-core NAS's that 2 was the best setting. If I also had a transcode goin…

[lebenson]

Like i said, very few library records have comskip. I record some programs in ATSC 3.0, does that make a difference?

Here's a typical entry I found in the log:

2023/09/26 10:10:50.416311 [WRN] Commercial detection took longer than 8 hours, aborting...
2023/09/26 10:10:50.516899 [DVR] Commercial detection failed for Good Morning America 2023-09-23-0800.mpg with signal: killed

[chDVRuser]

Could be it's having a problem with the ATSC 3.0 HEVC
You would have to look in each comskip log (video.log) to see what it says.
They are located under the Logs/comskip folder where Channels DVR records to

For example

2023/09/26 08:01:00.881992 [DVR] Running commercial detection on file 7084 (TV/Quantum Leap/Quantum Leap S05E08 1992-11-17 One Little Heart August 8 2023-09-26-0700.mpg)
2023/09/26 08:13:51.468231 [DVR] Commercial detection for Quantum Leap S05E08 1992-11-17 One Little Heart August 8 2023-09-26-0700.mpg finished with 14 markers in 12m50.58652258s.

The comskip log for file 7084 would be Logs/comskip/7084/video.log

Those logs are text files, but a lot of lines. If yours are failing, just look at the last few lines in the video.log file and hopefully that will be the smoking gun.

Here's the last few lines from that file 7084

217395 Frames Processed
################################################################
Time at end of run:
Tue Sep 26 08:13:51 2023
################################################################

[slampman]

Im not a nas expert but that system seems really underpowered. Atsc3 recordings take a lot longer for comskip to process. I have a dedicated server for channels running on an intel nuc i7 with 8 cores. 1hr atsc1 recordings will run comskip in about 6 minutes. Atsc3 recordings take about 15 minutes

My advice, get one of those cheap beelink machines and just run channels on it. You will feel like you did a massive upgrade.

Edit: i was way off. 60min atsc1 comskip ran in 1min 30sec. 1hr atsc3 comskip ran almost 19min.

[lebenson]

UPDATE: Commercial Detection is now working for me.

I turned off HEVC encoding and that solved the issue.

I realize i don't have the fastest server around, but for DVR use only, I don't think i need a faster NAS just yet.

Thanks to all for the responses.