Comskip debug window, missing video

[orev]

I have been playing with comskip, and so far it works pretty well. Part of the documentation says that if you give it the .txt file instead of an mpeg file, it will display the debug window in "commercial reviewing" mode. If I give it the .txt file, the debug window does come up, but it does not display any video, just the timeline.

I'm using the latest version of comskip with the default install, only change is I enabled edl output files. I am calling it with the text file like this:

comskip filename.txt

and I've also tried some variations like:

comskip filename.txt filename.mpeg
comskip filename.mpeg filename.txt

Is there any way to show the video when starting comskip this way? Otherwise that mode is sort of useless. I'd like to run comskip on a bunch of files, then review the cuts before processing to the next step.

[erik1958]

it is possible comskip can not seek in the mpeg file.
What kind of mpeg do you have ?

(NTSC recording with HW MPEG encoder, DVB-T recording converted to MPEG, ATSC recording converted to MPEG?)

[orev]

It's downloaded from tivo using tivotogo, then decoded using tivodecode. I'm in the USA so it's NTSC. Here's some output from mencoder:

success: format: 0  data: 0x0 - 0x31de7e92
MPEG-PS file format detected.
VIDEO:  MPEG2  480x480  (aspect 2)  29.970 fps  5250.0 kbps (656.3 kbyte/s)
[V] filefmt:2  fourcc:0x10000002  size:480x480  fps:29.97  ftime:=0.0334

When I process the file the first time, I can use -w to bring up the window and everything seems to work fine. It's just when loading the .txt file. I noticed there's no filename in the .txt file, so I assume it uses the txt filename to determine which mpeg file to use. The file names contain spaces, if that makes a difference.

[orev]

I have figured out this problem. I need to run comskip with the --csvout option when it does the analysis. Then, I need to make sure the video file has the extension "mpg", NOT "mpeg". Once I have both the csv file and the extension, it will seek and work as expected. The docs weren't really clear on this.

[erik1958]

For just reviewing the .txt results you do not need the .csv output but the input file can not have the .mpeg extension.
Use .mpg and it should work.
.csv is also possible (and nice) for reviewing because you can call comskip with the .csv file.
This allows you to review how comskip did analyze the file.

[orev]

OK, so it looks like my problem was just the extension. So here's how I see it now:
- Name your files with .mpg
- To review the skips, you can use the .txt file
- To review and tune with all of the graphs and information, you need the .csv file

Edit: BTW: comskip amazes me. This program is simply awesome!

[erik1958]

Happy to hear it works well for you!
I do need to find the time to write a new manual, so many changes have been implemented.
Its always a conflict. Implementing improvements or writing documentation.