MCEBuddy was working fine on my computer until last week. Trying to figure out why MCEBuddy has stopped working while converting video files. It starts working fine, but gets stuck on “Converting video file - Pass 1”, regardless of the file I am using. I uninstalled and updated MCEBuddy to the newest version 2.6.6, but that did not fix this.
Will need your conversion log to see what’s going on. You can attach it here.
MCEBuddy removed all commercials from one PlayOn recording without any issues today, but then it had the same issue as described in my post in the Support Forum yesterday with two other recordings - Nothing to Lose (1997) and The Penthouse (2009).
My conversion log is attached. Please let me know if you see what the issue is that is causing it not to work. Thanks.
From “Goose via MCEBuddy” <discussion@mcebuddy2x.com>
To misterjonez@outlook.com
Date 7/24/2025 12:13:05 PM
Subject [MCEBuddy] [General Support / Questions/Commercial Removal] MCEBuddy Not Converting Videos
(attachments)
mcebuddy.log (599 KB)
I need the conversion log, the one that contains the name of the recoding being converted. This is the engine log.
The conversion log for Nothing to Lose is attached. I tried it again today, same result. Thanks.
From “Goose via MCEBuddy” <discussion@mcebuddy2x.com>
To misterjonez@outlook.com
Date 7/25/2025 9:16:59 AM
Subject [MCEBuddy] [General Support / Questions/Commercial Removal] MCEBuddy Not Converting Videos
(attachments)
Nothing to Lose 1997.mp4-Remove Commercials-2025-07-23T11-53-19.log (7.97 MB)
It appears that your AMD hardware encode is hanging. It tries once via handbrake and it fails and then it tries again via ffmpeg and it hangs.
Hardware encoder hangs or failures are usually a faulty graphics driver.
Turn off hardware encoding in your Conversion task → Expert settings and if that solves the issue then you need a different graphics driver. Latest drivers unfortunately aren’t always the most stable drivers.
I also noticed that your source recording is hevc but you’re converting it to h264 which is a bit of a downgrade in terms of quality. If you don’t need h264 specifically I would recommending using the MP4 Unprocessed profile which will preserve your original hevc quality while cutting out the commercials and it’ll be super fast as well.
You can also update to todays 2.6.7 beta build, we’ve added an option to detect a hang hardware encoder and then it should fall back to software encoder. Try it out and let us know how it goes.
Will do. Thanks. If that does not work, I will try to update my graphics driver, but I updated my graphics driver on my computer last year and it totally screwed up the PC. Had to fully restore the system from scratch, so I need to back everything up before I update my graphics driver again.
From “Goose via MCEBuddy” <discussion@mcebuddy2x.com>
To misterjonez@outlook.com
Date 7/28/2025 8:32:51 AM
Subject [MCEBuddy] [General Support / Questions/Hardware Encoding] MCEBuddy Not Converting Videos
I installed the beta build of MCEBuddy today, and that appears to have done the trick. Both of the movies that were hanging at the same spot were able to finish converting without issue using the beta build of MCEBuddy. Thanks.
From “Joshua Jones” <misterjonez@outlook.com>
To “Goose via MCEBuddy” <discussion@mcebuddy2x.com>
Date 7/28/2025 10:35:43 AM
Subject Re: [MCEBuddy] [General Support / Questions/Hardware Encoding] MCEBuddy Not Converting Videos
Keep in mind latest drivers are NOT the best drivers. They are not the most stable drivers, sometimes you have you to go back in time to get older drivers but are more stable. We do not recommending automatically updating to the latest graphics drivers if your current drivers are working fine. It’s the No 1 reasons why hardware encoding suddenly stops working one fine day is because windows or something updated the graphics drivers.
NGL I’ve been using this for years without issue until recently. I logged into my server this am to check a job that usually takes less than an hour and I was at “14 hours 56 min” remaining and climbing. Pass 1 gets stuck at 100% for hours also. I just installed the beta and am re-running. It’s a VM with no changes made at all to the config or hardware.
I feel like this is a Windows Update thing but it’s just a hunch, some behavior change that we may see more of as people update and reboot.
This is good though. I assume this is just that “hang time” setting with a default of 5 min? or am I missing it?
Pass 1 is sitting at 100% for a long time, but I see it moving along in the log files so not sure. Hell, that might even be normal as I haven’t had to even worry about this app for so long, it works and I rarely look at it.
That applies to all operations, if something has not progressed (i.e. no change in state, if the ETA is increasing that’s no a hang, that’s some change) for 5 minutes it will terminate the operation.
If your ETA is increasing then there’s something else going on, it’s not a hang but it means the encoder is estimating it’ll take more time. If you’re using hardware encoding try turning it off. If that solves the issues then it’s the graphics driver (hardware encoder) that has a problem. If that started after a windows update, likely the driver was updated. Since you’re running a VM check what kind of graphics driver it’s using.