Thank you for your swift response as always, Otto!
Yes. I’m seeing the same thing. Very annoying and no support. Uggh!
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Bug identified, report filed, would you like Fries with that?
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Hopefully it’s a quick fix as I am really missing the skipping ability right now, really got spoiled.
Any word on how long until commercial skipping feature will be fixed??
Nary a clue.
This reminds me of the time the battery in my car’s remote door lock died and I couldn’t figure out how to unlock me car until someone pointed out that the key built into the remote not only started the ignition, but also unlocked the door… You know, like old school…
Now if I can just figure out how to skip commercials manually in Plex…
Boink!
“plex commercial skipper.exe” “recording name”
That will generate the EDL file in the same place as the recording. You can then run it through MCEBuddy with “markup file” as the commercial skipper.
It works, but it’s super manual 
Anyone see anything different in the newly released 1.18.7? Commercial skipping wasn’t listed in the fixes that I saw
A post was split to a new topic: Which codecs?
I noticed commercial ripping has stopped working for me too. Am always on the latest stable version if possible.
I am working on a bit of an overhaul of my code, but I created a python package to help with all my movie/tv conversion and DVR post processing.
The part you may be interested in is the DVR watchdog; you tell the watchdog which directory to monitor and it takes care of commercials (either flag as chapters or remove completely), transcode to h264 encoded mp4 (or mkv), and downloading metadata and tagging files. It will even run Plex Media Scanner after post processing to make new files appear in library.
The overhaul I’m working on now is in my file naming convention; output name will be more similar to Plex standard (minus series name in output file, which is stupid if files are to be organized in series folders anyway, but I digress), input file name easier on end user.
I can generate the edl file, but I don’t have MCEBuddy. I tried some of the command line video cutters listed on the comskip site but couldn’t get any of them to remove commercials from a .ts file. Anyone have any suggestions? I guess buying MCEBuddy would be one but always looking for a free solution, hah.
Thanks
There is a free version of MCEBuddy, but a version behind. I’ve been using it for years (and have paid) - it’s a great tool.
You might start there, and see if it does what you need.
Good luck!
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Looks like the free version works for monitoring a directory and acting on files which show up there. I dinked around and got that working. The CLI part and other options like the above mentioned “markup file” commercial skipper seem to be absent in what I am using. Just need to figure out how to get the free version working with Plex using a directory monitoring scenario. Or pay and get the latest version. Maybe Plex with fixes this issue before I need to. Either way, would be nice to have a backup plan if it ever happens again. I’m spoiled by commercial removal and don’t want to give it up, hah!
Added note… I’m using MCEBuddy 2.3 Release 13
That’s pretty easy - Have it monitor where the recordings get stored and exclude the .grab/ folder, then it will pick up the recordings once the DVR is done with it, comskip scan, re-encode them, etc.
You can’t use the Post processing scrip in this scenario, but it works. I did this for a while until I got the post processing to work reliably. In the past there were some metadata issues with this approach, but that seems to have been mostly resolved.
One other tip: set up two recording folders - one for channels you know have commercials, one for ones that don’t (i.e., PBS). Have MCEBuddy monitor the commercial recording folder. You’ll also want to restrict it to only work on .ts files - otherwise, it will reencode all of your existing recordings. Good luck!
One more note: It looks like Plex Commercial Skipper is creating an EDL / XML file, it’s just not being acted upon. In MCEBuddy, you can choose the Yes (Use Markers) option for ad removal. That should use the xml file to cut out commercials and then use MCEBuddy to reencode.
The nice thing about this approach is that it allows you to use the post-processing option - vs waiting for monitoring to pick up the file. Taking this approach means that when the file shows up in the plex UI, it’s done being modified (rather than waiting for MCEBuddy to pick up the file via monitoring, reencode it, and then waiting for Plex to detect the file change).
Edit: Nevermind. Doesn’t work in my testing
I don’t see the exclude option on the free version. One nice thing though is I’m able to test some different comskip.ini configs to see what works best on my usual shows. No conclusion yet but hopefully I’ll see some substantial improvement from the testing.
The exclude option is hidden under expert settings at the conversion task level. I don’t remember when exactly it was added, but it should be there.
If it’s not, you can add all your recordings and then delete them from the queue before they’re reencoded - that will create a history entry for it so they’re not re-encoded.
WCTschumy. MCEBuddy (free) is working as a backup approach for now. Actually, it could become my primary approach as it potentially has some advantages. Primarily I am able to use a specific tweaked comskip.ini per show the way I have it set up. Since I was never able to find an exclude on this version, I simply added in each series top level folder to the config. So I can easily split one off with it’s own comskip.ini. The major problem show right now is “The Big Bang Theory” which always seems to cut off the end of the show. I can add some seconds with “always_keep_last_seconds” but end up with undesired padding on other shows if used globally. I might find a better method that works globally in which case separate comskip.ini files might not be needed but nice to have the option for now. Thanks…
From what I’ve read on Comskip’s forums, the per-show .ini file is the best practice. It was always more work than I was willing to put in, however.
Since you’re transcoding from TS, you could have a monitor location that looks at the master recording folder as the “not Big Bang Theory” comskip.ini. The BBT specific monitor will pick that up, cut it using the BBT specific ini, and then the resulting mkv file will be ignored by the general monitor. That approach may save you some work over the long term.
