Successful Settings for the USA

[RandyHarris]

I thought I'd start a clean thread focused on the USA. It's difficult to find settings for your country in a single thread, so maybe this will help those of us in the USA.

I've played with settings posted elsewhere in the forums from DirtyGreek and Reboot, as well as the standard settings.

I've taken bits and pieces of them and have come up with a setting that so far has proved to be very good as a default setting for me to run with.

Here it is:

; ShowAnalyzer configuration file
; Copyright (c) 2005
; Jeremiah M. Jones
; http://www.dragonglobal.org
; -------------------------------
version = 0,5,6
Longest Possible Commercial Segment = 395
Longest Possible Individual Commercial = 90.5
Shortest Possible Commercial Segment = 10
Shortest Possible Show Segment = 120
[Score Modifiers]
Length Too Long = 0.1
Low Probability Length = 1
Length Too Short = 1
Medium Probability Length If Combined = 1
Medium Probability Length = 1.5
High Probability Length If Combined = 0.9
High Probability Length = 2
Edge Profile Positive Match = 0.1
Edge Profile Negative Match = 2
Edge Profile Unknown Match = 0.9
[Options]
Aggressive Segmentation = 1
[Advanced]
Border Top = 20
Border Bottom = 20
Border Left = 20
Border Right = 20
Padding Start = 0
Padding End = 0

[RandyHarris]

For CNBC (which has no blank black screens between the shows and commercials) I've had excellent luck with another modified setting. It doesn't capture all commercial segments, but it gets most of them:

; ShowAnalyzer configuration file
; Copyright (c) 2005
; Jeremiah M. Jones
; http://www.dragonglobal.org
; -------------------------------
version = 0,5,6
Longest Possible Commercial Segment = 381
Longest Possible Individual Commercial = 119
Shortest Possible Commercial Segment = 15
Shortest Possible Show Segment = 110
[Score Modifiers]
Length Too Long = 0.1
Low Probability Length = 2
Length Too Short = 1
Medium Probability Length If Combined = 1.5
Medium Probability Length = 1.5
High Probability Length If Combined = 2
High Probability Length = 2
Edge Profile Positive Match = 1
Edge Profile Negative Match = 1
Edge Profile Unknown Match = 2
[Options]
Aggressive Segmentation = 1

These are my settings for FOX and WTBS. They are untested on ABC, NBC and CBS.

Longest Possible Commercial Segment = 381
Longest Possible Individual Commercial = 89.5
Shortest Possible Commercial Segment = 9.5
Shortest Possible Show Segment = 99.5
[Score Modifiers]
Length Too Long = 0.1
Low Probability Length = 1.1
Length Too Short = 1
Medium Probability Length If Combined = 1.5
Medium Probability Length = 0.8
High Probability Length If Combined = 2
High Probability Length = 2
Edge Profile Positive Match = 0.75
Edge Profile Negative Match = 2
Edge Profile Unknown Match = 2
[Options]
Aggressive Segmentation = 0
[Advanced]
Border Top = 0
Border Bottom = 0
Border Left = 20
Border Right = 20
Padding Start = 0
Padding End = 0

Note that they are very similar to RandyHarris in the first post.

[RandyHarris]

Reboot, your settings didn't work well for me on a Fox show. My wife watches Gilmore Girls, and with your settings the first part of the show would get marked as commercial every time. This is the first short segment before the beginning credits of the show. I tweaked your settings so that this didn't happen. So far I've found that the modified settings also work well on shows that I record.

Randy

Very true. I do have the show segment rather large.
It works for me on Malcom, Simpsons, and movies (on FOX), usually.
I'm going to try your settings too.
Thanks

Is there a way to get SA to recognize the standard show intro as commercial? It misses the black frame (in schoolhouse) at the beginning of the intro. However, SA does recognize the intro as a commercial about half way through. Which setting would I tweak? I recall version 5.5 did find the beginnig of the intro and marked it as commercial.

[Jere_Jones]

Bear in mind that the accuracy of the preview window is only +/- 3 or 4 seconds depending on your individual system.

Jere

Is there a certain codec that we should use so schoolhouse's preview is more accurate with SA?

[Jere_Jones]

Not that I have found. If you find one, please let us know.

Jere

Lots of frustration for me....

I change one setting and one channel is good....but another is bad....change another setting to make the bad channel good and now the other channel is bad again.

Is it safe to say that for SA to work effectivley you need to develop individual profiles for each network?

With comskip v. 66 I got about 80-85% accuracy on all channels with just one config file.