Commercial skipping no longer works

Live TV & DVR
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Server Version#: 1.19/1/2645
Player Version#: n/a
Tuner Make/Model: HD Homerun Connect Quatro
Guide/Lineup name: Broadcast TV Boston (Manchester) OTA Broadcast
Using XMLTV?: No
Channel number/Name: All (NBC, CBS, primarily)

The problem here is pretty basic: for the last few months, commercial skipping hasn’t been working at all. Basically, it’s like it’s not on.

But it’s on. DVR Settings are set to “Detect and remove commercials”. The shows were all “Remove commercials”, but I tried “DVR Default Settings” too, and neither work.

The comskip.ini is where it should be in the default location and hasn’t been modified.

The server is a Skullcanyon i7 NUC.

I’m just not sure where to go at this point - I didn’t change anything (save for keeping up to date on the server) and it’s not working…

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The only thing I can think is a 4 letter word.

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LOGS

1 Like
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Provide the entire log package right after a show is finished recording so we can check that the commercial skip function is being called.

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Hi, @anon18523487 - thanks for responding.

Can you give me a hint as to which of the logs I should examine? I’m a developer and looked generally at the logs, but there are a lot of them and it wasn’t clear which was specific to this operation,

I assume the application being called isn’t comskip but rather “Plex Commercial Skipper.exe” - that’s there, and up to date as of the last update (4/9, from the looks of it).

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I can’t remember the exact wording but yeah it will include comskip or some variation of it. You can also look for .grab which is where the file is stored before being moved so it should reference that file.

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Right, but which of the log files? The server log or one of the other ones? There are a lot of logs in there.

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The PMS log covering the time after a recording finishes.

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Thanks, I wasn’t aware of this issue. There is a work around on that thread for now.

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Thanks to you and @NDInnovations for that - it’s quite a long thread, and while I read the whole thing, it’s not entirely clear to me what the workaround is. One person says they copied the .ini file to the ‘custom’ location, some say that doesn’t work, others are using another service entirely, someone is basically pushing a non-Plex server, another says there’s a missing CODEC, etc.

Which are you recommending as the fix?

The timeframes here - it started a few months ago - agrees with when it started happening to me, so that all makes some sense. Surprising that Plex hasn’t fixed it, since it seems it doesn’t work at all, for anyone…which doesn’t bode well for the unit tests they’re doing…

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I don’t know whats required for a fix but it has been filed internally with the team.

I would recommend trying to move the comskip file to the custom location. If that doesn’t fix things for you, you have another issue that hasn’t been identified. We’ll definitely need logs then.

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So after a month or so of my commercial skip not working, I seem to have found a fix based on another thread. You go into the main DVR settings and disable the “Remove Commercials” option, save, then re-enable it. That seemed to magically kickstart mine. Hope it helps someone else.

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