I currently use MCEBuddy to remove commercials from plex recordings and it works as expected. I recently started some recording from hdhomerun and their extensions are .mpg, I created a profile to cut their commercials and they will not cut. I don’t get any errors in the logs but the commercials do not cut.
I use mce buddy 2.4 version 9 donated version. Everything is default. I used the hdhomerun no conversion profile.
Wondering what I can do to make changes to get the commercials cut. Any help would be appreciated.
Yes I can. I don’t see anything in it that shows something failed. mcebuddy.log (1.8 MB)
In the file look for “The Curse of Oak Island S06E03 20181127 [20181128-0736].mpg” that is the one I added manually. It scanned and appeared it cut the commercials and moved it to the correct location.
Did The Curse of Oak Island S06E03 20181127 [20181128-0533].mpg get it’s commercials cut out? If not, can you upload the log for it so I can see what it looks like? Upload a log for a file that didn’t work. If I am misunderstanding you, please let me know.
correct, it did not cut the commercial. I uploaded mcebuddy log above. How do I get the log for just for The Curse of Oak Island S06E03 20181127 [20181128-0533].mpg?
Click the logs button on MCEBuddy and it will open the folder to C:\Program Files\MCEBuddy2x\log. It should be in there. You should have “log conversion jobs” ticked under general settings, too, for them to be logged. Let’s hope you do. Those logs give the play by play action of the actual conversion.
You cut out part of the log when you sent that, including the “INFORMATION> --> Task ->” part.
Also, I see you are using a custom path for comskip instead of the built-in version. Just to be clear, you do have comskip there too at C:\Program Files\comskip\comskip.exe?
If some commercials are cut out you could try to tweak a custom ini file for that show. It’s tedious work to get it right. I’d run it through with Showanalyzer first. I find that the shows comskip fails cutting everything out, it does a better job.
I would like to add that cutting commercials will fail sometimes when TV stations run a “crawl” or put up weather maps in the lower left corner, during storm events, breaking news, elections, or school closings for example. I think it is because the crawl and/or radar/weather image appears during both the show and the commercials, there is no clean “break” between the show and the advertisements for comskip or ShowAnalyzer to detect.
Another recent always-on “crawl” that comes up is a notice from the local OTA station that the bad greedy cable companies won’t pay to carry the local channels and tell viewers to complain to their cable company to keep carrying the nice friendly local OTA stations. Conversely, if you are recording clear QAM cable, they do the same thing and complain about the bad greedy OTA stations, telling viewers to complain to the stations to agree to your nice friendly cable company’s offers.
Just something to consider, especially if it is happening intermittently or with a channel that likes to do that (run continuous crawls even across commercials).
Mike, I agree. So much noise. Another thing that gets me is when the local station pops in a local commercial over a network commercial and it’s out a sync and a few seconds of the old commercial is left. That split moment of black between the local commercial and the network commercial sometimes tricks comskip. I have one station that does this all the time. It’s so bad I called them. That did not go over good. I have a profile for that station that just marks the commercials and then I edit through MCEBuddy cuts and process.
Also, these old show closing segments and new show opening segments get me every time. I couldn’t get a comskip INI to work. That’s when I first tried Showanalyzer which ignores these and do a pretty good job. I determined what shows do this and made a profile just for them to run on SA while I keep tinkering with Comskip. I have a ts sample at this thread. MCEBuddy thread: Prevent dual episode screen endings in Comskip from being seen as a commercial
I have only just contributed to MCEBuddy, but the first file that I have tried to convert has failed, both with the latest version, 2.4 and the beta 2.5. I am in the UK and recorded a program on Dave using an HDHomerun, and setting up MCEBuddy as above. I have tried both Comskip and Showanalyzer.
Both times, a new file is created which is exactly the same length and the commercials are not removed, but there don’t seem to be any errors. I have attached the log file, so please can you help?
I’m guessing Comskip probably didn’t get all your commercials. Have you seen the Comskip INI tuning page? You may need to get custom comskip INI files for your channels/country if the stock INI files doesn’t work perfectly.
I have a paid version of Plex with HDHomerun Tuners and I experience the same issues to the point I use Channel DVR to record the shows from a high-quality internet connection rather than low-quality off the air connection via TVanywhere software, then I use MCEBuddy to remove the commercials, mark the file as Movie/Show with a matching proper IMDB formated name stored in MP4 format, and then finally, moved the new file to the appropriate Plex directories. This arrangement seems to work almost faultlessly. I suspect the off the air recordings have too much artifact noise (poor quality) from transmission to allow comskip to work properly.
I am very disappointed that Plex, a DVR software, limits recording to shows, movies and the like offered via Plex. I have no desire to watch (record yes, watch no) any services’ on-line DVR or On-Demand service, I want to bring what I record & watch to one convenient place under my control. That’s why I bought Plex —To record shows and movies to avoid, reduce and in the future eliminate some of the cost of using these services.
