Very long conversion output, mostly blank

I have some 1-hour videos recorded from Max using PlayOn Home. I process them with MCEBuddy to strip commercials. The converted output files are smaller than the original input files, but when viewed in VLC or QuickTime Player, the converted output files have over an hour of empty (black screen) time after the end of the recorded show.

FWIW, I had the same thing happen with a 2:45 movie. The converted output was over 13 hours long.

I’ve uploaded a log, the original and converted file for one recording in /topher18 on the FTP site.

This is the first time I’ve needed support with the software. Is the developer around and responsive? I can’t find any place to directly access support. Is peer-to-peer forum support all we have?

Hey @topher18, sorry no one has responded yet. It’s not always this long to get a response and we have a pretty good community here.
I’ll take a look into your issue to see if I can help.

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Thanks for the video samples and logs.

I tried playing your converted file it appears that the converted file has an issue with the total reported time. The video part is fine but the encoder incorrectly set the total duration to double of the actual video playtime. What you’re seeing not “emtpy” video, the playback stops after the video finishes but the video player will show double the actual play time (this is from the converted video that you uploaded)

Digging deeper into the logs, I noticed that you have an AMD graphics card and when MCEBuddy tried to use the hardware encoder at first it threw an error. Eventually the AMD encoder accepted the video for encoding but it threw errors along the way. I suspect your graphics driver has an issue and the hardware encoder may be causing the issue that you’re seeing.

I also noticed that your AMD encoder is very slow at 0.355x which is slower than a CPU based encoder, this could also be related to a bad graphics driver or just older GPU hardware (AMD Radeon Pro 5300M).

Try turning off the hardware encoding feature from Conversion task → Expert settings and then try it again.

Thanks Goose! I verified that the HW acceleration box was unchecked and tried a couple short conversions today. They worked fine. I know I tried it earlier without success, but perhaps the service needed to be stopped and restarted? I’ve rebooted the system since I posted the issue, so that would have had the effect to restart the service.

FWIW, I’m running this on a 2019 MacBook Pro 16" with a 6-core i7 and the Radeon Pro 5300M. It’s booted directly into Windows 10 with Boot Camp.