Understanding Conversion Errors

The Net (1995)_tt0113957.ts-FullQualityGeneral-2024-01-12T12-42-31.log (2.0 MB)
Is there any documentation on understanding conversion errors? I’m still using the 2.6.3 beta from Jan 9th you mentioned to me and was trying to convert a movie this morning but my output in MP4-AV1 (no hardware acceleration) was truncated so I tried again in my normal mp4-hvec and same. My output is a 14 second video instead of what should probably be close to 120 minutes at least. I see some errors in the log but not sure which might matter.
And just to mention, the source of my TS files is same as I use pretty much daily, so unless some freak issue with saving the file I’m not sure. It loaded into custom cuts fine and I made my edl like I normally do.

You’ll just need to go through the log and see what’s happening. In this case your video timestamps are heavily corrupted which is causing a lot of grief for ffmpeg and it’s unable to recover:

2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f0251800] start time for stream 0 is not set in estimate_timings_from_pts
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f0251800] stream 0 : no TS found at start of file, duration not set
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f0251800] Could not find codec parameters for stream 0 (Video: h264 ([27][0][0][0] / 0x001B), none): unspecified size
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → Consider increasing the value for the ‘analyzeduration’ (0) and ‘probesize’ (5000000) options
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f02a4b00] start time for stream 0 is not set in estimate_timings_from_pts
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f02a4b00] stream 0 : no TS found at start of file, duration not set
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f02a4b00] Could not find codec parameters for stream 0 (Video: h264 ([27][0][0][0] / 0x001B), none): unspecified size
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → Consider increasing the value for the ‘analyzeduration’ (0) and ‘probesize’ (5000000) options
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f02a4b00] start time for stream 0 is not set in estimate_timings_from_pts
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f02a4b00] stream 0 : no TS found at start of file, duration not set
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f02a4b00] Could not find codec parameters for stream 0 (Video: h264 ([27][0][0][0] / 0x001B), none): unspecified size
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → Consider increasing the value for the ‘analyzeduration’ (0) and ‘probesize’ (5000000) options
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f02a4b00] start time for stream 0 is not set in estimate_timings_from_pts
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f02a4b00] stream 0 : no TS found at start of file, duration not set
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f02a4b00] Could not find codec parameters for stream 0 (Video: h264 ([27][0][0][0] / 0x001B), none): unspecified size
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → Consider increasing the value for the ‘analyzeduration’ (0) and ‘probesize’ (5000000) options
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f02a4b00] start time for stream 0 is not set in estimate_timings_from_pts
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f02a4b00] stream 0 : no TS found at start of file, duration not set


2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f02933c0] Non-monotonic DTS in output stream 0:1; previous: 226800, current: 220320; changing to 226801. This may result in incorrect timestamps in the output file.
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f02933c0] Non-monotonic DTS in output stream 0:1; previous: 226801, current: 222480; changing to 226802. This may result in incorrect timestamps in the output file.
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f02933c0] Non-monotonic DTS in output stream 0:1; previous: 226802, current: 224640; changing to 226803. This may result in incorrect timestamps in the output file.
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f02933c0] Non-monotonic DTS in output stream 0:1; previous: 226803, current: 226800; changing to 226804. This may result in incorrect timestamps in the output file.
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f02933c0] Non-monotonic DTS in output stream 0:1; previous: 324000, current: 319680; changing to 324001. This may result in incorrect timestamps in the output file.
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f02933c0] Non-monotonic DTS in output stream 0:1; previous: 324001, current: 321840; changing to 324002. This may result in incorrect timestamps in the output file.
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f02933c0] Non-monotonic DTS in output stream 0:1; previous: 324002, current: 324000; changing to 324003. This may result in incorrect timestamps in the output file.
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f02933c0] Non-monotonic DTS in output stream 0:1; previous: 436320, current: 429840; changing to 436321. This may result in incorrect timestamps in the output file.
2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.FFmpeg → [mpegts @ 00000120f02933c0] Non-monotonic DTS in output stream 0:1; previous: 436321, current: 432000; changing to 436322. This may result in incorrect timestamps in the output file.

Sometime the logs may give you a tip on what to try. In this case ffmpeg has trouble merging the cut segments back and the log gives you a tip.

WARNING> 2024-01-12T12:47:06 MCEBuddy.CommercialScan.Remover → Using FFMPEG instead of AVIDemux to merge tracks. There may be artifacts/issues with the video at the merged segments, set CommercialMergeTool=avidemux in the profile if you are facing issues

In your profiles.conf file edit your profile and add the line CommercialMergeTool=avidemux to the end of the profile you’re using. See that helps.

You could also try to check the Skip remuxing option in the Conversion task → Expert settings page, it may help in such situations.

Generally if you’re recording via a tvtuner card or some some video capture card and when your video has such severe timestamp issues it’s usually one of two reasons:

  1. The driver of the capture device was updated and the new driver is creating corrupted timestamps. Try rolling back to an older driver or contact the manufacturer for a fixed driver
  2. If you’re using OTA recordings, then the signal strength is very weak which causes timestamp issues in the recordings, get a stronger antenna or booster

I’m using a hardware capture device and only update was a windows update, but had 3 other recording since that were fine. The error has happened before, maybe some sort of fluky situation as I re-recorded this time and the new version converted fine without changing anything.

I took a look at the new logs and from what I can see I get the ‘incorrect timestamps’ ones all the time, literally 1000s of them per log so don’t think they hurt anything. What I don’t see in the working conversions is the first set you noted, for example searching for ‘could not find codec parameters’ → good conversion has 0 of these, the failing ones had 20-30 of them, so in my case these chunks seem to be my problem.

Thanks for the help.