In progress comskip scanning

Channels DVR Server Feature Requests
#20

Because technically, scanning a stream while it is recording and scanning it while it is streaming live to a client are essentially the same thing.

The only way the two topics become different and separate is if you want to have the overhead of kicking off a fresh scan every X minutes against the recorded portion. There are two different approaches to the same task, and one of the approaches will work equally well against live TV as it does for in-progress recordings. So, since one technique encompasses both situations, live TV is relevant.

#21

Having recently moved here from Windows Media Center, in progress commercial skipping is the one feature I miss the most. Being able to join a recording in progress of sports, news etc. is incredibly common in my household and automatically skipping the commercials while the recording in progress would be a huge plus.

I agree that commercial skipping a live channel is useful, but it would also be relatively easy for someone to start recording an in progress show (moving the buffer to the DVR) if they wanted to enable commercial skipping. Yes, they need to delete the recording at the end (or wait for it to be deleted automatically), but is that really that hard?

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#22

Yes, I agree. It isn't really that much more difficult to start a recording vs pressing pause.

#23

Anyone who uses an SSD with Channels will heartily disagree with this. The big difference here is storage usage on the DVR. Live TV, right now, uses basically nothing on the DVR side, strorage-wise.

I've lived on both sides of this, though - i think my preference would be to keep commericial skipping on in-progress recordings and leave live TV alone. I can see both sides here, though.

#24

so, I ask, HOW do you do this? for one program? ABC news for us is very poor with ad skipping... thank you

Is it possible for Comskip to run WHILE recording?
#25

Find the recording on the web UI and click Redetect Commercials.

Is it possible for Comskip to run WHILE recording?
#26

For that to work you need to make changes to the INI ... or else you might wind up with only half the show comskipped.

From
live_tv=0 ; set to 1 if you use parallelprocessing and need the output while recording
live_tv_retries=4

To
live_tv=1 ; set to 1 if you use parallelprocessing and need the output while recording
live_tv_retries=4

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Is it possible for Comskip to run WHILE recording?
#27

Doesn't work if all you have access to is the TV.

#28

If you watch TV without a phone or tablet at hand... bless you.

#29

To follow up on this point with a real-world example:

I just pressed the Pause button on my live stream because my mother called. While I was only expecting a brief call to discuss a simple matter, the reality was that our call lasted nearly an hour. This resulted in the same situation as those wanted to skip through recordings-in-progress: wishing to pass over the junk to get back to the content that I was interrupted from viewing.

Instead of being able to double-press Right to gloss over each ad break I now need to pay attention to the screen to back up when I've advanced too far.

In short, the reality and implementation is the same. Just because your viewing habits do not align with mine does not mean my use of a feature is less worthy than yours.

#30

Congratulations. You've made it to my block list.

#31

Curious what client device you used that buffered Live TV nearly an hour?

I use the DVR web UI and am interested in watching an ongoing recording with comskip markers.
My client (Channels DVR web UI) doesn't behave that well with Live TV and pausing.
Perhaps if it did, I would like to see comskip implemented with Live TV while pausing.
My TiVo's did it. But that's due to all its tuners being streamed to disk in a closed system.

#32

The Atv4k will buffer about 10 hours.

#33

AppleTV. Of course, any Android device with Channels on an external drive of 32GB or more will do that, too.

#34

...but your live stream buffers on the client, not the DVR. Buffering live streaming on the DVR is a REALLY fundamental change in how Channels works, and may make some things we all take for granted worse.

A one-click record/copy from buffer, combined with in-use comskip, would seem to be the best of all worlds (and add a less intrusive upgrade in functionality on a few fronts.)

#35

It would seem like it would be theoretically possible that when a show is paused on a local client that the DVR server also starts buffering the same content.

That buffered content could be scanned.

Depending on the time on pause, the paused content would replay from the DVR recording rather than the local buffer. Say 5 minutes? Perhaps configurable.

Perhaps upon unpausing a show that had started buffering on the DVR server, the user might be prompted whether they wish the buffered content on the server to be saved permanently or not.

Once the buffer is on the DVR server, it might as well follow the same thresholds as watching an in progress recording with regards to a pre-scan for COMSKIP.

Implementing that is undoubtedly many times more difficult than writing it down, but it would seem to be a logic flow there that could work.

#36

Both are currently possible right now manually and just need to be automated to make it a great feature but should have enable / disable switch's on server settings page.

To do either or both of these manually

To skip in progress recordings currently you would need to enable the live_tv setting in the comskip ini file then select option to redetect commercials on the program to start comskip.

To buffer live tv on the server you would start a recording of what you want to watch then play the recording to add comskip same as above then delete the recording when finished.

Tedious I know and requires some precognition.

They just need to happen automatically and requires the developer to want to do it. It seems like tmm1 may like the idea of running comskip on in progress recordings but requests to buffer live tv on the server have never gone over well and my guess would be conflicts with the remote feature.

#37

Something I haven't seen anyone mention re: comskip Live instead of in process recording.

Everyone seems to be thinking in terms of only a single client.

Consider there's a possibility of multiple clients watching the same Live program. Could be all local, all remote or a mix. Could be through the Channels DVR m3u or a Channels client using tuner sharing or not. I seriously doubt every client will pause at the exact same timecode for the exact same amount of time. And every client will have a different amount buffered on the device depending on when they started playing Live and how much pausing and skipping they do.

#38

Watching football with live comskip today, and it is freaking awesome. Thank you!

So, with the live comskip checked in the server web interface, and 6 cores available for comskipping, if I have 5 programs recording simultaneously, will it comskip all 5 programs at the same time?

Answering my own question ... yes, it will live comskip them all.

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#39

Look, this is just crazy talk, but hear me out. What if ...

  • In the list of recordings, on each line item, instead of little circle with recording progress, it had a timeline across the bottom of the line item that looked very similar to the one while watching a show.
  • That timeline could also show watched vs. unwatched portions (just like it does when watching)
  • That timeline could also show the live comskip commercial blocks (just like it NOW does while watching live TV)
  • and last, what if there was a tiny little box in the upper right corner of that line item live recording that said "CS" in it that appears when comskip is running on that particular program. It's possible that a user only allows comskip on 2 programs at the same time, but if 5 recordings are active, the user would know which 2 were being processed.