Commercial processing problem

Channels DVR Server Troubleshooting
#1

So yesterday noted commercial detection was taking hours. I see in the log it aborted after 8 hours. Now I see the next recording processing is going on 6 hours so I assume it will also abort. I've been using this a little over a month and don't think I've had this before. Anyway, what should I try to get it working properly again? Thanks.

I did turn on tuner sharing yesterday if that would matter any (though I did little actual sharing). Could just be coincidence.

Update Using Windows 10. I've been checking from work. Indeed the next processing also aborted after 8 hours so that's two in a row. It's on The Bachelor right now which taped last night. Been several hours so far so that's going to be three that time out.

#2

I had the exact same problem yesterday. I'm running channels DVR on a Windows 10 server. Not sure if things are better yet today or not.

#3

Had the same exact issue... was wondering what on earth was going on. Glad I'm not alone.

#4

I had another movie record today and comskip didn't process. Even if I try and have it re-detect commercials it doesn't seem to work. It appears there is an error in the comskip log for this one. Not sure what this means though...

Initial audio pts = 0.000
Frame Rate set to 48000.000 f/s
Frame Rate corrected to 48000.000 f/s
Format changed to [1280 : 720]
Could not allocate memory for frame array

#5

What machine is your DVR server running on? Taking so long to process with comskip is usually indicative of two possible issues:

  1. The machine is underpowered. Scanning a video file frame-by-frame looking for a multitude of situations is quite processor intensive, and underpowered processors have issues this.
  2. The video file itself is corrupted. The comskip process will only give adequate results when given a good input file. If the video has a bunch of errors, such a timestamp mismatches, missing frames, or dropped audio, then the results may be either incorrectly flagged commercials, or possibility the inability to even process the file.

Is your DVR server suitable for the task at hand? Are you having any issues with recordings? Clear signal from your antenna or cable feed?

#6

Thank you racameron for the reply. I am running channels DVR on a Windows 10 PC with a Intel Core i5-3470 with 8GB of RAM and an Intel P400 graphics card. I'm currently on version 2020.02.03.2211.

Most of my movies take about 20-30 minutes to complete comskip, but since yesterday, some are taking several hours and then not completing. Others, like the one noted above, didn't process at all. I haven't been able to determine the issue, but it just isn't working right over the past couple of days. Any other ideas?

I should also note that the source for most of these are TVE. I do have an antenna, but have solid signals on my local channels and rarely experience issues there.

#7

By any chance are you using your own comskip ini ... ?

#8

I am not. I'm currently using just the default comskip.ini file. Some of my shows are being processed correctly, but others are not. Before yesterday, I didn't seem to have any issues with comskip. Maybe the issue is just a temporary problem, but it appears others are having issues as well. I'll keep an eye on it over the next few days.

#9

I just stopped my 3rd processing as it had been going for hours. The 2 before aborted after 8 hours of trying. Is there a way to have the server try to re-detect commercials? I just now re-booted so hoping that does something. I am using 1037u processor. It's been fine until yesterday.

#10

From the Recordings > Recordings listing, each recording has drop-down item with a menu. At the bottom of that menu is an option to "Redetect Commercials". (You must select the recording from the Recordings section, not from Shows or Movies.)

Redetect commercials
#11

FYI, this didn't work for me for the movies where comskip got stuck or failed. If comskip failed, doing a re-detect did nothing.

#12

I've noticed in the cases where commercial detection failed, that rerunning it did not fix anything.

#13

rebooting seems to have helped. just recorded judge judy and it appeared to process. i am going to try the powershell recomskip command on the 3 that timed out and see what happens.

#14

Did it do the other 3 properly? I'm assuming so since you didn't come back and state that it failed.

#15

The comskip on Judge Judy always skips detecting commercials on the last 6 minutes. I am recording OTA on the local Fox Affiliate here in New Orleans

#16

For those having the problem with commercial detection taking hours and timing out.
What channels and networks are these recorded from and is it OTA, CABLE or TVE.
My guess is they're all TVE channels, but which ones?

#17

For me, recordings on the FX channels tend to fail on commercial skip. When this happens, I manually mark the commercials with VideoRedo and encode the recording to mp4. After the encoding process, the number of video and audio errors being reported and fixed from the source file (by VideoRedo) is generally high. The resulting output file plays without issues as an Import in Channels DVR.

#18

Meaning they take hours, timeout and never finish commercial detection?

On all of these TVE channels?
FX-6080
FX-6081
FXX-6082
FXX-6083
FXM-6084

1 Like
#19

In most cases, all of the fans crank up to high on the computer; and if I look at the logs, I see errors related to invalid memory address (after a lot of other messages). It's been a while, for the past few months I stop the commercial detection and just manually process the file on another computer and convert it at the same time. Normally for an OTA 1 hour show commercial detection takes about 2 minutes. TVE for a 1 hour show takes a little more than 3 minutes. I have the comskip.ini set to use 6 cores out of the 12 available.

Yes, all of the channels you listed for FX, but mostly FX-6080. I don't record movies that often with Channels as I use YTTV. I can setup a recording tomorrow and monitor if that would help. I just presumed that the FX feed is not that great as it's the only channel that was giving me a problem.

#20

Was hoping everyone with the problem would compare notes on which channels have the issue.
I only have TVE for testing and don't normally watch or record from it.

If you want to record a specific show/movie tomorrow, let me know and I'll schedule the same one on the same channel so we can compare notes. I will set the same pre and post pad that you do for the recording, so our recordings should be identical except for the commercials.

In fact if you want to schedule more than one for tomorrow or the day after, let me know and I'll schedule the same ones.

I also use VideoReDo.

P.S. I have my TVE NAS set to use 2 of 4 cores for comskip and it also generates a VRD Project file I use to comcut those shows/movies I save.