Commercial Skip Stopped Working After Update

Live TV & DVR
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1

Commercial skip has been working fine up until the latest update (Version 1.18.7.2434).

Running “Plex Commercial Skipper.exe” it says:
Metadata:
service_name : Service01
service_provider: FFmpeg
Stream #0:0[0x100]: Video: h264 (Main) ([27][0][0][0] / 0x001B), none(progressive), 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], Closed Captions, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 90k tbn, 90k tbc
Stream #0:10x101: Audio: ac3 ([129][0][0][0] / 0x0081), 48000 Hz, 5.1(side), s16p, 384 kb/s
Stream #0:20x102: Audio: ac3 ([129][0][0][0] / 0x0081), 48000 Hz, stereo, s16p, 192 kb/s
Unsupported codec!
Could not open video codec

Swapping “Plex Commercial Skipper.exe” for comskip.exe results in the creation of the comskip files but does not result in the conversion desired.

Windows 10. All the latest updates applied. Have performed a complete removal of Plex and a re-installation of Plex.

2

There’s another thread regarding recent issues with commercial skipping over here, if you haven’t seen it:

When you ran the commercial skipper manually, did you set up its required environment variables first? If not it will cause the “Unsupported codec” error. I run on a Mac, but the idea is the same; the EAE_ROOT and FFMPEG_EXTERNAL_LIBS environment variables must be set for the codecs to be found:

EAE_ROOT='/var/folders/mg/s81mwtcn7fn6t3dvp5rh2g1m0000gn/T/pms-4439520d-90c5-4a7f-ad72-4b856b410fce/EasyAudioEncoder' FFMPEG_EXTERNAL_LIBS='/Users/philipsw/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Codecs/0bc617e-2965-darwin-x86_64/' '/Applications/Plex Media Server.app/Contents/MacOS/Plex Commercial Skipper' blah blah blah

You can look in your Plex Media Server.log files to see what it’s passing for those variables by searching for ‘Plex Commercial Skipper’, provided you have debug logging enabled.

Personally, I’ve had mixed results with commercial skipping recently. For older shows (and the channels on which they’re aired) it seems to work well. For new shows it seems less reliable.

3

Thanks for the link to the other thread. That one seems to have quite a bit of attention.
I don’t see the environment variables options listed for the binary I have but I will see if I can’t try that next.

It is a neat feature I miss when it is gone.

4

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