Hi,
I have been reconverting *.mp4 files to reduce their sizes. The destination is the same as the monitor location. The resulting converted files (also *.mp4 files) are being converted as well. How to avoid that? Is choosing a different destination the only option to achieve that?
Thanks.
Check that your Monitor location → Expert settings → Monitor converted videos and Re-monitor recorded videos aren’t checked.
Neither box is checked.
IS MCEBuddy supposed to automatically exclude converted videos from being monitored by default?
As I choose to keep original *.mp4 files, the connverted file is named as * (1).mp4. And then * (1).mp4 is converted again and the resulting file is named as * (1) (2).mp4, and on and on…
I like the fact a reconverted file’s name has (1) added to the end to help avoid reconverion again by mistake. Is it possible to replace “(1)” with “HEVC” or “H265” to make the reconverted files’ names even more distinguishable?
Yes MCEBuddy keeps a track of all converted files in the History file and it won’t reconvert them (based on full path and filename) unless explicitly asked to do so from the above settings page.
If can upload your MCEBuddy.log file and I can take a look and see what’s going on. Did you by chance clear the history? That’s one reason why it may reconvert files.
Maybe I haven’t made it clear enough. The question really is whethter MCEBuddy keeps a track of all the resulting files as well as the source files so that what MCEBuddy produces does not get converted as well.
produced files have an different file extension “*.mp4”
I do not have such a problem when *wtv files are being converted because the produced files have an different file extension that is not monitored. But when it comes to reducing *.mp4 file sizes, the produced files have the same file extension and are monitored as source files as well at least in my case.
I would like to upload my log file, but it seems to be unusually large. It has a files size of 1.19gb. Can I delete the log file without causing any issues? I am not sure if I really need it except for the issue I am raising now.
Yes it keeps a track of source and converted files and won’t reconvert them. You can safely delete log files or even limit their maximum size/age from the system settings page.
I have deleted the large log file and did a test conersion of a single source file. Could you please take a look at the fresh log file mcebuddy.log (319.9 KB) and see what leads to the conversion of converted files?
Can you give me the name of a file that was reconverted so I can narrow down the log activity?
There is only one source file in this fresh log file, but with multiple converted files with the same name plus (1), (1) (1), (1) (1) (1), (1) (2) etc.
History - US - Business - Inside… (2017–2019)_s3e4_Secrets of Coca-Cola- The Billion Dollar Beverage (Top of the Pops) (2019) pt1_SBS ONE_2020_02_01_19_29_47
I’ve replicated your setup here and it’s working fine. From your logs I suspect that your History file seems to be the root cause of the issue. It’s either corrupted or it’s locked by another process, so when MCEBuddy tries to read it to see if the file has been converted, because of the corruption/being locked, it assumes that it hasn’t because it can’t access the History file and then proceeds to reconvert it. You may want to either clear your History file or find which process is locking it.
I tried to clear history. Unfortunately, it did not help.
Which Conversion Task did you try? 2 of the 3 tasks I’ve got have no issues as they are for converting *.wtv files to *.mp4 when only *.wtv is monitored. The other task converts h264 *.mp4 files to h265 *.mp4 files when the converted file type is the same as the monitored source file type. This is the task that converts the already converted.
If a corrupted or locked history file is the issue here, wouldn’t all three tasks behave the same way and convert the converted?
It’s the monitor location and not the conversion task which is starting the conversion. Your logs show that the
Task → F: HEVC Downsizing
is the one reconverting so that the one and the corresponding conversion task I replicated without and issue here.
If some other process of blocking the history file when that folder is accessed it’s possible that you’re running into this problem. You may also want to update your MCEBuddy install to the latest beta version which includes additional debugging for locked or corrupt history files.
It’s possible that one section of the history file is corrupt which is related to the this Monitor task.