I have two passes set to record at specific times on Pluto. The passes work great, however commercial skip doesn’t run on these passes. If I manually run it from the web admin, it detects commercials as expected.
Any ideas why this is happening?
You can disable comskip for all recordings, on a per show and per channel basis. Maybe one of those.
If not, you would need to post the DVR log from the time it starts the recording until a few minutes after it's done recording.
I’m not seeing an option to enable or disable comskip on selected passes. Where is this option located?
Thanks 
Isn't one per pass.
It's per show and per channel.
Well I haven’t set any custom options for these shows or channels, so it must be another issue causing this…
You could either post the DVR log from the time it started the recording until a few minutes after it's done recording, or submit diagnostics from the server and let the devs know which recording failed to run commercial detection.
Even if you don't remember setting the setting, it's at least worth checking ¯(°_o)/¯
Also, submit diagnostics from your Channels DVR Server web admin.
Ok, I checked the logs and it does appear that commercial detection is in fact being run on this program, however they don’t seem to be reflected in the playback timeline as there are no edits and all commercials are still being shown. Any thoughts?
2024/06/06 12:01:15.119604 [ADS] Detected 20 commercial markers in file-23708: TV/Glenn Beck Radio/Glenn Beck Radio 2024060609 2024-06-06-0900.mpg
2024/06/06 12:01:15.345783 [DVR] Finished job 1717678800-131 Glenn Beck Radio
If there's a crawl at the bottom of the screen that continues through commercial breaks, then commercial detection will never detect any commercials.
As that sounds like a news program, this is probably the reason.
That's using the newer smart commercial detection.
You can look at the File json for the recording to see where the markers are it detected, they should show on the timeline.
You can also edit commercials on it to see.
Thanks for the suggestion. That said, this doesn’t make any sense as I manually ran commercial detection on the same video and this time it found all the commercials and they are correctly shown in the timeline. Why would it make any difference whether the com detection is done automatically versus manually?
Automatic detection log files:
2024/06/06 12:01:15.119604 [ADS] Detected 20 commercial markers in file-23708: TV/Glenn Beck Radio/Glenn Beck Radio 2024060609 2024-06-06-0900.mpg
2024/06/06 12:01:15.345783 [DVR] Finished job 1717678800-131 Glenn Beck Radio
Manual detection log files:
2024/06/06 20:23:45.522249 [DVR] Running commercial detection on file 23708 (TV/Glenn Beck Radio/Glenn Beck Radio 2024060609 2024-06-06-0900.mpg)
2024/06/06 20:31:41.649721 [DVR] Commercial detection for Glenn Beck Radio 2024060609 2024-06-06-0900.mpg finished with 18 markers in 7m57.211940833s (4 threads).
Although comskip is not 100% accurate, I find it more accurate than the new smart detection.
Originally it used the new smart detection, then when you redetected commercials, it ran comskip.
Don't know if you remember this one
I'm a big fan of smart detection. It is usually quicker than comskip. I find the detection to be rather accurate in my experience. Its all about performance and not wasting time and resources finding all the commercials (which I like)
I totally agree, but only when it works as good or better than comskip. I only use comskip to get scene markers and don't rely on the markers for use in a client like most Channels DVR users do.
Ok, that makes sense. Thank you for clarifying. Since the breaks are usually in the same spot every time, or at least close enough, it there any way to hard code the breaks for each new recording?
There is a way, but it's an overly complicated hack.
You would have to run a couple commands after each recording to set the markers and refresh the metadata. If you could figure out how to script it, then it would be automatic. I would rather just use the skip forward/back buttons.
If you're interested in pursuing it, just modify the POST command to send the commercial marker times instead of "[]" and then run the refresh metadata command (may not be needed). No need to Regenerate Video Index.
This is a bit over my head . Do you happen to know if it’s possible to use a webhook to start a manual scan? This way, I could simply create a time based macro to run each day after the program has finished recording and trigger a manual scan.
Thank you so much for your time…
I don't think Channels DVR has any webhooks for that.
It's been asked before if they could provide post-recording hooks.
Thanks anyways for your help…
2 Likes