Failed Commerical Detection

Channels DVR Server
#1

Hi,

I have the channels DVR on a mac mini m1 and my output is an external SSD formatted in apfs.

Below is the log output for a show:

020/12/09 16:00:00.277688 [DVR] Processing file-74: TV/The Best Thing I Ever Ate/The Best Thing I Ever Ate S08E14 2018-03-05 Serious Spice 2020-12-09-1530.mpg
2020/12/09 16:00:00.539861 [DVR] Running commercial detection on file 74 (TV/The Best Thing I Ever Ate/The Best Thing I Ever Ate S08E14 2018-03-05 Serious Spice 2020-12-09-1530.mpg)
2020/12/09 16:03:22.715740 [DVR] Commercial detection failed for The Best Thing I Ever Ate S08E14 2018-03-05 Serious Spice 2020-12-09-1530.mpg with exit status 1

Thanks

#2

If the commercial detection process succeeds but didn’t identify any commercial breaks it will report an error code of 1, like you are seeing. If commercial detection is working on other recordings everything is likely working fine, it just couldn’t detect commercials on this recording for some reason.

#3

You can go to the DVR web UI, click the gear dropdown next to the recording and select Edit Commercials.
If comskip ran and didn't find any commercials it would look like this (just did a 16 sec test recording to demonstrate)
Screenshot_2020-12-09 Channels DVR
You can also click on the comskip.log link to view comskip's log file.

Screenshot_2020-12-09 Channels DVR(1)
And almost at the end of the file you find the line that says how much commercial time was found.
Total commercial length: 0:00:00.00

#4

Is there any fix for it? It ran the comskip log file and it found no commercials.

#5

No, because it's not broken. It just means that the algorithms that comskip is using were not able to reliably find any sections of commercial breaks using the specified settings.

Commercial detection has never been 100%. And over the past year, networks have been making changes to their broadcasts to make automated tools like comskip harder to use to find commercials, such as running a ticker during breaks, or using a border of sorts to display static network information while commercials play in a smaller window.

You can search the forums on how to modify the comskip.ini file used to specify settings for commercial detection, and override the defaults. However, less than perfect detection is just a reality.

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