I've been using auto commercial skipping in Channels DVR for a couple years with a windows 11 server. In the last few days, I've noticed that there isn't any commercial skipping anymore, and the progress bar at the bottom during playback no longer shows commercial segments. I imagine that comskip is no longer working for some reason. I haven't changed anything lately, and commercial skipping is still set to "auto" in the client (Google TV Chromecast). I've tried rebooting the server, which didn't make a difference. What steps should I take to debug this?
To cut to the chase, I would look at the Channels DVR log to see if comskip ran for those recordings.
Look for lines like this after the recording
[DVR] Running commercial detection on file 5039 (TV/Star Trek Voyager/Star Trek Voyager S01E04 1995-02-06 Phage 2022-08-14-2300.mpg)
[DVR] Commercial detection for Star Trek Voyager S01E04 1995-02-06 Phage 2022-08-14-2300.mpg finished with 18 markers in 2m24.808306641s (2 threads).
Example recording in log
2022/08/14 23:00:00.004100 [DVR] Starting job 1660543200-505 Star Trek: Voyager on ch=[376]
2022/08/14 23:00:00.604194 [TNR] Opened connection to 1323AADB/0 for ch376 KQCADT2
2022/08/14 23:00:00.618205 [DVR] Recording for job 1660543200-505 from 1323AADB ch376 into "TV/Star Trek Voyager/Star Trek Voyager S01E04 1995-02-06 Phage 2022-08-14-2300.mpg" for 1h0m59.995739367s
2022/08/14 23:00:00.855924 [IDX] Generating video index for job 1660543200-505
2022/08/15 00:01:00.002262 [TNR] Closed connection to 1323AADB/0 for ch376 KQCADT2
2022/08/15 00:01:00.072524 [SNR] Statistics for "TV/Star Trek Voyager/Star Trek Voyager S01E04 1995-02-06 Phage 2022-08-14-2300.mpg": ss=90%-91% snq=100% seq=99%,0%-100% bps=2198862,0-2994464 pps=207,0-274
2022/08/15 00:01:00.072561 [SNR] Buffer statistics for "TV/Star Trek Voyager/Star Trek Voyager S01E04 1995-02-06 Phage 2022-08-14-2300.mpg": buf=0% drop=0%
2022/08/15 00:01:00.091683 [DVR] Finished job 1660543200-505 Star Trek: Voyager
2022/08/15 00:01:00.197177 [DVR] Processing file-5039: TV/Star Trek Voyager/Star Trek Voyager S01E04 1995-02-06 Phage 2022-08-14-2300.mpg
2022/08/15 00:01:00.411614 [DVR] Running commercial detection on file 5039 (TV/Star Trek Voyager/Star Trek Voyager S01E04 1995-02-06 Phage 2022-08-14-2300.mpg)
2022/08/15 00:03:25.219657 [DVR] Commercial detection for Star Trek Voyager S01E04 1995-02-06 Phage 2022-08-14-2300.mpg finished with 18 markers in 2m24.808306641s (2 threads).
Thanks for the tip! My logfile indicated that Comskip was running successfully, but for some reason ffprobe.exe was missing from my server PC. Found it and copied to the correct directory - now client commercial skipping is working fine again. Have no idea why ffprobe.exe disappeared!
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