I will add that I’ve also just re-upped my license.
Dropped in fresh nightly builds for MKV merge and extract,
Handbrake CLI, FFMPEG (the 2.8.2 20230930 build is said by the authors to be stable and includes new support for NVdecoder and NV AV1 encoding), and avidemux.
My preliminary testing doesn’t seem to indicate that comskip with NVdec is appreciably faster than my ancient i5-4430 Haswell CPU.
However, after installing the new MCEBuddy 2.6.2 Oct 14 build, and updating the tools I listed above, I did notice MCEBuddy literally /blazed/ through a bunch of pending conversions.
So I have some more investigating to do to isolate what got a huge boost for some reason, but my initial takeaway is that either MCEBuddy turned it up to eleven, or one of the updated tools did. I use comskip and handbrake, and handbrake comes with its own internal statically linked FFMPEG, so my upgrading the MCBuddy version would not affect that.
Whatever you all are doing, keep on doing it.
Thanks, Goose and RBoy for this excellent and vital automation tool.
We have started work on the new versions. This is a big change because the new binaries no longer support older graphics cards so we’ll have a lot more work going into this release maintain support for older GPU’s while also adding support new GPU’s and codecs. Anyone else with a newer GPUs (AMD, Nvidia, Intel) which support AV1 feel free to PM me if you’d like to be part of the testing process.
Oof! Did not know FFMPEG was dropping support for older cards. Or mencoder or handbrake if those are dropping support for older cards.
I wonder how many MCEBuddy users have those older cards, given that newer low-end cards are relatively in the same range as the cost of MCEBuddy.
And it’s not like those older card owners have to stop using the older versions of MCEBuddy that support those cards, or that they’ve been pulled from the archives.
It doesn’t seem to me to be a compelling argument that future development of MCEBuddy must be crippled or delayed to support GPUs (or CPUs) that no are longer being made or supported themselves by the manufacturers based on conjecture that they’re still in use by people that can afford to pay for the new version license, but not a newer low-end video card that is probably also orders of magnitude more performant than the obsolete card for the same cost.
Anyone still needing support for floppy drives, for example?
Just curious how big the population of MCEBuddy users that also have those cards or CPUs being dropped and can’t just switch to software codecs, or are there specific cards or CPUs in use that can’t be upgraded, can’t use software codecs, and also just have to upgrade their version of MCEBuddy?
Mike808, You are running an older card, Why not upgrade this holiday season. newegg has some good deals on the arc a380 also the rtx4060 is not too bad ether
Drivers/API’s support it but the hardware needs to be out there (RDNA3 architecture like the Navi 3x and Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs) for mcebuddy to use it
Some disappointing news, MCEBuddy fans using the new Handbrake 1.7.1 in the MCEBuddy 2.6.2 beta.
Looks like we are going to need to upgrade Handbrake to 1.7.2 (GitHub) sooner rather than later. i.e. Manually replace MCEBuddy’s Handbrake CLI binary (and ‘hb.dll’ because on GitHub it is not linked into the main CLI binary like it is in MCEBuddy) if you need the fixes before they get merged into a future beta.
I have experienced the issue with NVENC and VP9/AV1 encoding that creates unusually smaller files that have unreasonably long durations. As in transcoding a 2 minute video and it looks a little small, but the run time says the AV1 version is almost 2 hours long. This is how the “inserting excessive key frames” bug noted below manifests itself. That is in addition to fixing (on Windows) not using the new NVDEC (GPU decode) feature that was just added.
Defects fixed in Handbrake 1.7.2 (from the Handbrake 1.7.1 currently included in MCEBuddy 2.6.2 20231221 beta):
Video
Improved automatic selection of Dolby Vision Level
Fixed an issue in AMD VCN, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, NVIDIA NVENC, and VP9 encoders that could cause the creation of an excessive number of keyframes (#5530)
Fixed unintentional automatic pass through of closed caption side data when using NVIDIA NVENC encoder
Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
Linux
Improved performance by removing duplicate graphic assets and reducing file size
Fixed Flatpak file chooser opening home directory instead of the previously selected directory
Fixed last item in the queue sometimes having the wrong destination path
Fixed some memory leaks in the graphical interface
Mac
Added a workaround to prevent a system crash when using VideoToolbox encoders with macOS 14 Sonoma on Apple Silicon Ultra
Added a workaround to prevent issues decoding H.264 video by disabling VideoToolbox hardware decoding for Level 6.1 and 6.2
Fixed a crash opening an empty folder
Windows
Added Automation Properties to some controls on the audio tab to assist screen readers
Looks like Goose has been a busy elf!
The Handbrake 1.7.2 release is in the 20231225 build of MCEBuddy 2.6.2 beta.
Also note that you only need to include the “hb.dll” with the CLI binary if you are using the Nightly builds. It is included in the main release builds.
