My DVR doesn't even try to do any commercial detections anymore

Channels DVR Server Troubleshooting
#1

Version 2023.07.06.1740

I don't know exactly when this started. Looking at the log now, going back as far as 2023/07/06 15:43:10.718536, there is no mention of commercial detection, and there have been several recordings since that time.

Right now, I just triggered a commercial detection manually and it worked:

2023/07/07 15:33:46.286771 [DVR] Running commercial detection on file 27867 (TV\Diagnosis Murder\Diagnosis Murder S05E06 1997-10-23 Looks Can Kill 2023-07-07-0659.mpg)
2023/07/07 15:35:15.165234 [DVR] Commercial detection for Diagnosis Murder S05E06 1997-10-23 Looks Can Kill 2023-07-07-0659.mpg finished with 12 markers in 1m28.902849s (12 threads).

This is one of the Hallmark channels that have smart commercial detection turned off and, until recently, it used to run comskip after each recording.

Looking in the log for this particular recording, it can be seen that no commercial detection was started after it. I didn't remove anything from the log, the DVR was idle for 26 minutes after this recording:

2023/07/07 08:03:10.754640 [DVR] Processing file-27867: TV\Diagnosis Murder\Diagnosis Murder S05E06 1997-10-23 Looks Can Kill 2023-07-07-0659.mpg
2023/07/07 08:03:15.566263 [TNR] Closed connection to M3U-DirecTV for ch565 Hallmark Movies & Mysteries
2023/07/07 08:03:42.784570 [HLS] Stopping inactive session ch6091-dTVE-DTV-ip127.0.0.1
2023/07/07 08:03:42.784570 [HLS] Stopping transcoder session ch6091-dTVE-DTV-ip127.0.0.1 (out: 2h4m1.414667s, finished: false)
2023/07/07 08:03:42.808859 [TNR] Closed connection to TVE-DTV for ch6091 HALLMARKMM
2023/07/07 08:03:42.846366 [SNR] Buffer statistics for ch6091 HALLMARKMM: buf=0% drop=0%
2023/07/07 08:29:50.010370 [DVR] Starting job 1688732990-194 Hot Bench on ch=[3051]

Logs have been submitted as f1f8f375-296c-4076-a764-38805cf2f52b .

#2

Is comskip disabled for the channel number?
You would see it in /settings as
"comskip.ignore.channel.565":"true"
or
"comskip.ignore.channel.6091":"true"
depending on which channel it is

Is comskip disabled for the Show?
You can see this in the web UI when you view the Show under Show Options > Detect Commercials

Is it happening on more than one channel and show?

Didn't want to state the obvious to you, but for others that may have the issue it has to be enabled in the web UI settings

Screenshot 2023-07-07 at 17-13-29 Channels Settings
Screenshot 2023-07-07 at 17-13-29 Channels Settings947×248 17.3 KB

#3

Wow, it was completely disabled!

Thank you, @chDVRuser, for mentioning the obvious. Sometimes it is necessary, like in this case.

After more than 2 years of using Channels DVR, I can't believe I didn't even check the main setting before posting in the forum.

To my defense, I have no clue how it got disabled. I'm 99.99% sure I didn't disable it myself and nobody else in my house even knows how to access the server. I guess that's why it didn't even cross my mind to check the basics.

This is strange. I kind of figured it had to be an issue on my side because nobody else complained about this issue recently.

I'm feeling really stupid right now.
The devs are going to hate me for sending diagnostics logs when there was no reason to.

Thanks again, @chDVRuser!

1 Like
#4

Don't feel bad. I once turned mine off so a recording in progress wouldn't use comskip and I forgot to turn it back on.

1 Like
#5

I've just disabled Comskip for a few channels using curl, and seem to recall I did some before. I'm unclear based on the above where I'd go to look for which channels I have set to "true". Would you mind elaborating some on what /settings you're referencing?

#6

http://127.0.0.1:8089/settings
replace 127.0.0.1:8089 with your dvr ip and port