Xvid .pass file automatic unique name

[captainvideo]

Anyone else wish that the .pass file would automaticly take a name that referenced the file being encoded?

This is not a huge issue, but it has become a problem at times when I am doing multiple encoding (multiple files and multiple passes) At times I want to keep the file, and at times I want to be able to run multiple instances of virtualdub (sometimes a firstpass on one file while a second pass on another). I have to change the default location from the root directory to the same directory as the file being encoded, and make sure I keep all files I want to encode in seperate directories. I guess I can try to set a unique name for the pass file as well, but this depends on the program I am using to manage the encode, and how well it plays with the xvid setup.

Is there any way to use a wildcard in the name of the pass file to pickup something unique as an identifier?

let me give a quick example of how this issue comes up. I have a tv cap card with mpeg encoder chip that uses almost no cpu cycle to record tv. So if I am watching the show, I may decide to start and stop my recording to avoid the commercials. I will then have many small mpegs that I want to downsize into xvid avi's. If I start doing multipass encodes on each small file, xvid is writing the pass file into the same place with the same name each time so it is an issue to do more than 1 file at a time.

Does anyone know a quick fix for this, is it an issue for anyone else? I would not mind if there was an option to have the passfile named after the file being encoded. I dont know how much of a change would be required in he source code to achieve this, but it seems like it could be done.

Am I missing a reason that this should not be done?

[squid_80]

The codec has no idea what the filename of the movie is.

[foxyshadis]

Virtualdub could be hacked to hand the info over or modify codec settings in its joblist, but it wouldn't be pretty. Now, the all-in-one GUIs like megui could do something like this, though they don't. You could post in their threads asking as a feature request.

[Didée]

In the past years, encoding through job queues always worked fine for me.

The described way of capturing with manual interrupting and starting a new 2-pass encoding immediately on every interruption, running in the background, while continuing with capturing & interrupting, hence more immediate 2-pass encodings, to me sounds ... chaotic.


Or, from an other point of view:
I may decide to start and stop my recording to avoid the commercials. I will then have many small mpegs that I want to downsize into xvid avi's. If I start doing multipass encodes on each small file, ...
... then you're obviously not too much concerned about squeezing max quality, and could use CBR or constant quant encoding just as well, which don't need any stats file.
If you were concerned about quality, you surely would not 2-pass-encode every single sniplet on its on, but all of them as a whole instead. :)

[berrinam]

MeGUI actually already does it.

[foxyshadis]

MeGUI actually already does it.
My setting a custom stats name way back probably broke it then, sorry about the mistake. I guess I have to set something back to default for it to work. Thanks!

[captainvideo]

another day, another video utility. Looks like I will be learning MeGui now.

I wasn't thinking when I was 2pass encoding the individual 15 minute clips. It now seems more sensible to reassemble them.

The issue has actually come up for me becuase in an insane attempt to justify my new AMDx2 dual core chip, I am attempting to run multiple instances of anything that I can. I am now using the smp version of xvid as well, but that just came out recently, and prior to that, I was getting good results by opening multiple virtualdub instances and setting up multiple job lists.

I still would like to have unique pass file names as sometimes I want to re-do the second pass or I am sometimes shuffling files from one machine to another. I know I can set a filename in one of the advanced options areas of the xvid setup, but I was hoping it could be done automatically.

I guess if the codec doesnt know the name of the file (which makes sense to me now) then it cant write that name into the name of the pass file. I had also considered having the pass file just take a timestamp or counter, but that would not be good as the second pass would not know what the 1stpass name was.

I'll look into how megui handles it. looks like I have to make sure I have the .net framework for that one as well.