Comskip with Tv headend

1st Official Post

    -asus chromebox now running the latest 8.01 krypton with 4.2 tv headend and the great addon for schedules direct by edit4ever !

    -have been trying to integrate / setup the comskip features from:

    GitHub - Helly1206/comskipper: This program can skip commercials while still recording. It's a wrapper over the original comskip software.

    and /or

    GitHub - erikkaashoek/Comskip: A free commercial detector

    - was wondering if anyone was successful with such a feature addition or even if a prepacked addon was available ?

    Edited once, last by gr00vy69 (April 18, 2017 at 3:32 PM).

    Quote from shanemeagher


    gr00vy69, I've previously built an Comskip addon (GitHub - shanemeagher/tools.comskip: Comskip packaged as addon for LibreELEC). It just provides the comskip binary which can be called with a TVHeadend Post Recording Script. I've an x86_64 build here: kodi-repo/x86_64 at master · shanemeagher/kodi-repo · GitHub.

    Hey shanemeagher -

    Thank you for writting the comskip addon. I am a bit of a noob, wondering if you can calrify a bit on how to get this working.

    I am on a raspberry pi 3 with LibreELEC 8.0.1. I see from your github that the contents of the tools.comskip director must be placed in /packages/addons/ but I am not seeing that location on my pi. Also, what do I do after I place the files in the correct location? I tried to install the addon from the zip file but that did not work. Any noob friendly instructions would be very appreciated! I imagine this could become a very popular addon with all the PVR folks.

    Hi Apollos, the instructions in the README file for placing it in '/packages/addons/' is for compiling the addon. It needs to be compiled from source for each architecture (x86_64, ARM, etc). You can try yourself by following instructions here: Compile - LibreELEC or if I get some free time this week, I'll make one.

    Quote from shanemeagher


    Hi Apollos, the instructions in the README file for placing it in '/packages/addons/' is for compiling the addon. It needs to be compiled from source for each architecture (x86_64, ARM, etc). You can try yourself by following instructions here: Compile - LibreELEC or if I get some free time this week, I'll make one.

    Thanks for the quick response, makes sense now. Those compile instructions are a bit over my head. I will wait for you or someone else to compile for pi 3 in spare time.

    Alright, so the zip file installed just fine.

    For anyone reading this and wanting to get it to run, I had to first change my tvheadend interface level to "Expert" and uncheck "Replace whitespace in title with '-':" to get the addon to run.

    One last issue, and that is the log is saying that I do not have a comskip.ini file I placed one in /.kodi/addons/tools.comskip/ and /.kodi/userdata/addon_data/tools.comskip but it seems like it still is not finding it.

    Do I need to put the comskip.ini file in a specific location?

    Thanks again for compiling and all your great work with this addon shanemeagher!

    Edited once, last by Apollos (May 9, 2017 at 10:27 PM).

    Quote from Apollos


    For anyone reading this and wanting to get it to run, I had to first change my tvheadend interface level to "Expert" and uncheck "Replace whitespace in title with '-':" to get the addon to run.

    This will depend on what TVHeadend names the recordings. If your recordings have whitespaces in their names, this will be required.

    Quote from Apollos


    Do I need to put the comskip.ini file in a specific location?

    Comskip will look by default where the comskip binary is '/storage/.kodi/addons/tools.comskip/bin/' but this will be overwritten by updates to the addon. Suggest to use '/storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/tools.comskip/' (create folder if not present) but it can be anywhere which isn't overwritten by updates. Place ini files there and when calling comskip, use '--ini=<path to ini file>/comskip.ini', e.g.

    Code
    comskip --ini=/storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/tools.comskip/comskip.ini


    to specify which ini file to use.

    Quote from shanemeagher

    This will depend on what TVHeadend names the recordings. If your recordings have whitespaces in their names, this will be required.

    Comskip will look by default where the comskip binary is '/storage/.kodi/addons/tools.comskip/bin/' but this will be overwritten by updates to the addon. Suggest to use '/storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/tools.comskip/' (create folder if not present) but it can be anywhere which isn't overwritten by updates. Place ini files there and when calling comskip, use '--ini=<path to ini file>/comskip.ini', e.g.

    Code
    comskip --ini=/storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/tools.comskip/comskip.ini


    to specify which ini file to use.

    When I add the ini location to the tvheadend post-processing script, it pulls the ini file and reads it ok, but then does not process further. I did an ssh into the system to run it manually and see what happens, and after reading file, the last output line is "segmentation fault (core dump)". I tried running again with a few different ini files, same result.

    Googling around a bit I came accross this regarding non-admin users:
    Comskip Support Forum • View topic - Comskip does a coredump when non-admin users an ini file

    Not sure if that applies here. I also saw that the Openelec version of this addon has the ini file baked in. Not sure if that would help or prevent segmentation fault in thise instance.

    OpenELEC Mediacenter - OpenELEC Forum - Comskip for OpenELEC (skip TV commercials) (1/3)

    Quote from Apollos


    I did an ssh into the system to run it manually and see what happens, and after reading file, the last output line is "segmentation fault (core dump)"

    Would you be able to post the full output when you run manually over ssh? It could be an issue with how I compiled it. As everything on LibreELEC runs as the root user, I don't think it is the same issue as the linked post.

    I'll have a look at adding a default ini file like the OpenELEC version referenced. I only built it to use personally in a situation where I have a few different ini files for different tv networks so the post recording script selects the ini file to use. From memory, the ini needs to be tailored to get the most out of comskip.

    Here is the output when I run manually:


    LibreELEC:~/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/tools.comskip # /storage/.kodi/addons/tools.comskip/bin/comskip --ini=/storage/.kodi/userdata/addons_data/tool
    s.comskip/comskip.ini /var/media/E/TVrecordings/Jeopardy!/Jeopardy!-E3734-11.1-KAREDT2017-05-09.ts
    Comskip 0.81.089, made using ffmpeg
    Donator build
    The commandline used was:
    /storage/.kodi/addons/tools.comskip/bin/comskip --ini=/storage/.kodi/userdata/addons_data/tools.comskip/comskip.ini /var/media/E/TVrecordings/Jeopardy!/Jeopardy!-E3734-11.1-KAREDT2017-05-09.ts

    Setting ini file to /storage/.kodi/userdata/addons_data/tools.comskip/comskip.ini as per commandline
    Using comskip.ini for initiation values.
    Segmentation fault (core dumped)(49.00 fps), 1.00 sec(49.00 fps), 0%

    Quick update - I have been using the compiled zip on my pi 3 for a few weeks now. Comskip works very well, even without pointing to an ini file. I would recommend it to anyone wanting kodi to auto skip commercials in their pvr recordings.

    • Official Post
    Quote from fishsicles

    I've installed this on my own LibreELEC machine, but attempting to run Comskip gives an error:

    If you like you can test Tvheadend nightly builds for LibreELEC some new build from here, it has comskip included (starting with 4.3-287-04.07.2017).

    Completely untested from my side.

    binary is then at /storage/.kodi/addons/service.tvheadend42/bin/comskip

    Quote from fishsicles

    syntax error: unexpected word (expecting ")")

    thats due a wrong executable (RPi used at generic or similar)

    Hi Apollo, hur did you get rid off the error "Segmentation fault (core dumped)(49.00 fps), 1.00 sec(49.00 fps), 0%"

    Thanks