Comskip - need help tuning

[Robinlmp]

I’ve got an issue where comskip is not detecting different segments in short recordings. If the recording is 20 minutes it seems to work. If the recording is 15 or 16 minutes it does not seem to detect anything at all.

I’ve not tried editing comskip settings before. Is there a minimum length of recording where it doesn’t bother detecting? If so, can I edit that setting?

Is it possible to have different settings per show?

Sorry, I’m a complete beginner at these settings so these might seem very basic to some people.

[Robinlmp]

I've looked into this and I've got the comksip.ini file and I know where to put it.

But I don't really know which settings to change. I've experimented a bit and it's had no effect.

I think there are two things I'd like to achieve in creating a custom com skip file for using when re-running commercial detection on these problematic short recordings:

• I'd like it to detect more blocks within the recording
• I'd like com skip to keep the detection even if it thinks none of the blocks are commercials

Those are the two changes I'd like to make to the comskip.ini file. Any tips on how to achieve that would be greatly appreciated.

[chDVRuser]

I admire your determination and perseverence, but can't help.
You may want to re-title your post to "Need help tuning comskip.ini"
I assume you already have the manual and tuning guide from https://www.comskip.org/

[Robinlmp]

Thanks. Good tip. No, I’d not come across the manual, but I had started to try to get my head around what the different settings do from the comskip logs. It’s dense stuff.

A manual will be very helpful indeed!

[chDVRuser]

Also see this topic re: Channels DVR commercial editing and blocks found by comskip.

Autoskip doesn't seem to respect comskip padding

This originally started as a feature request for an option to control the behavior of automatic commercial skipping in relation to the section markers. In that thread I learned of the configuration options available in comskip, of which the padding option seemed to fit the bill perfectly. Unfortunately though, after quite a bit of experimentation (detailed in the thread), it doesn't appear that the automatic commercial skip actually respects the padded markers. Comskip appears to do it's job …

and this one

Option to control automatic commercial skip proximity to marker

What would you think about an option to control the proximity of the automatic commercial skip to the ending marker for detected commercials? We all know comskip accuracy varies quite a bit from channel to channel and even show to show. As a result, I find myself often leaving automatic commercial skip on, but not really trusting it. Because it seems to skip the detected commercial segment completely, you're dropped back into the show but you don't really know if the commercials actually just en…

[Robinlmp]

Hmm, I'm finding this way more unwieldy than I thought it would be.

My other thought is whether I can manually write the output from comskip? These recordings are really short and I essentially just need a start and end time stamp really. So it would be that complex as long as I knew the format and where / how to do it.

To be honest, I keep coming back to the same thing with this which I wish I could just mark the start and end timestamp directly within the Channels app. It would be so nice to be able to do this as I'm watching something, much like verifying commercials. @tmm1