VidCoder: Alternative HandBrake GUI for Windows

[RandomEngy]

Oh I just got this too. I'll figure out what's going on.

[ckmox]

@RandomEngy

slightly offtopic but do you know any documentation for using or knowing the parameters of libhb.dll?

[RandomEngy]

They don't have any documentation. There's some comments in the source: most of the relevant functions are in libhb/hb.c . I've also written a C# wrapper over hb.dll called HandBrakeInterop that has some XML comments on the functions (it's checked into the CodePlex site and HandBrakeInterop.dll comes with the VidCoder install). Nothing official and standalone though. If you'd like some more tips on how to use it, let me know.

[RandomEngy]

About the encodes reporting as failed: It appears that updating HandBrake to revision 4024 fixes it right up. I'll have a fix out shortly.

[RandomEngy]

Released VidCoder 0.9.2 (http://vidcoder.codeplex.com/releases/view/67904):

* Updated to HandBrake 4024svn. This fixes problems with mpeg2 sources: corrupted previews, incorrect progress indicators and encodes that incorrectly report as failed.
* Fixed a problem that prevented target sizes above 2048 MB.

Just a quick "breaking bug" update.

[Vilmalith]

It's working great!

[ckmox]

They don't have any documentation. There's some comments in the source: most of the relevant functions are in libhb/hb.c . I've also written a C# wrapper over hb.dll called HandBrakeInterop that has some XML comments on the functions (it's checked into the CodePlex site and HandBrakeInterop.dll comes with the VidCoder install). Nothing official and standalone though. If you'd like some more tips on how to use it, let me know.

thanks RandomEnergy ill check it out

[Vilmalith]

Just a heads up, I'm still getting the failed status every once awhile even though it appears that encodes complete successfully and the videos seem to work. If I had to put a number to it I'd say maybe 1 out of every 4 movies ends with a failed status.

[RandomEngy]

Well that's troubling. What sources are you using? DVDs? Do you notice how close it gets to finishing before cutting out?

[Vilmalith]

So far they have all been DVDs. Since I have to redo my whole entire dvd and blu ray collection (due to audio sync issues I didn't catch early on, this was with a different process not VidCoder) I'm not sitting around and watching them encode. I start one on each pc, leave and do something else and then come back after 30mins or so to see if they're done. Check them with media info, start the next encodes then stream the previous encodes to make sure all is good.

When I have made it back at the end of an encode I do notice that the encodes sit at ETA: 0s and status bar saying 100% for awhile and this time is not consistent between movies.

[RandomEngy]

Hmm, I guess HandBrake might just be off a bit on that. I'll turn off that feature for the next release so you don't get scary "encode failed" messages when everything is fine.

[flebber]

I am on wndows xp sp3 and have completed 10 encodes now with no error. not sure if that really helps but I can't see any errors here at the moment.

[Vilmalith]

Just as a heads up, not sure what was happening before, but I haven't had a status show as failed in like 20 encodes now.

[thewonderer]

Great program... thanks for all your work.

Just a quick bug report. In win7 64bit, when i change the picture/screen resolution settings via the up and down arrows, if I click on the arrow buttons too many times, it crashes. Also, when i want to just set the height and width to auto, i dont find it easy to do...

[RandomEngy]

Yeah it crashes on making previews sometimes. I've tried to do what I can to mitigate it but the crash happens down in the bowels of HandBrake somewhere and it's tough to debug. As for changing the height and width to auto, just delete the number.

[JohnAStebbins]

Yeah it crashes on making previews sometimes. I've tried to do what I can to mitigate it but the crash happens down in the bowels of HandBrake somewhere and it's tough to debug. As for changing the height and width to auto, just delete the number.

Have you tried sprinkling printf's or hb_log's through hb_get_preview to see how far it gets?

[RandomEngy]

I was investigating this a while back and I believe I tracked it down to one of the avpicture_fill calls. I suppose I could drill into that one by modifying the contribs and building but I have not worked up the nerve to go down that road yet. I think at the time I assumed I had screwed up the pinvoke structure marshaling somewhere and was messing up some memory, but I've since re-checked everything and I think I'm doing that correctly. (accounting for struct alignment in x86/x64 and all that). I may make one more stab at mitigating the problem then try and see where it's actually crashing.

I wish I had a proper debugger for this. :(

[JohnAStebbins]

I was investigating this a while back and I believe I tracked it down to one of the avpicture_fill calls. I suppose I could drill into that one by modifying the contribs and building but I have not worked up the nerve to go down that road yet. I think at the time I assumed I had screwed up the pinvoke structure marshaling somewhere and was messing up some memory, but I've since re-checked everything and I think I'm doing that correctly. (accounting for struct alignment in x86/x64 and all that). I may make one more stab at mitigating the problem then try and see where it's actually crashing.

I wish I had a proper debugger for this. :(

if avpicture_fill is failing, I would check that title->width/height and job->width/height are set to sensible values. Bad dimensions are the only way I can think of that avpicture_fill might fail. avpicture_fill really does very little work. It is merely setting up pointers to each color plane in the buffer you are passing and sets row strides.

[RandomEngy]

Okay well I know at least one problem... the minimum width/height seems to be 46 now, not 32. So pressing the "up" arrow when the width or height is on (auto) will crash it. That might be the crash that everyone is seeing.

[RanmaCanada]

Is there anyway to change the audio encoder from ffmpeg? I have some older anime I ripped a few years ago, ok, like almost a decade ago, and I am having issues with the conversion. I did it back when ogm was all the rage for space saving and stuff, and vidcoder/handbrake is having serious issues with the audio. The audio is ogg, and whenever I am trying to convert it to ac3 or aac, the audio has static, pauses and is just plainly horrible. I have tried using other apps like bencos, hybrid, megui, mediacoder and they all are able to process the audio properly, but not the subtitles. I want to use vidcoder because this is 7 seasons of anime, all the titles done properly and chapter breaks. I do not feel like re-ripping all 150+ episodes again haha. But if I must I must. I know it more than likely is a handbrake limitation like vfr, but it never hurts to ask? :)

[Vilmalith]

Just wanted to say this is still working great. I've ripped 200 of my movies so far. Ever so often I still get a failed status even though the movie works. But so far so good, loving it.

[Hobbe]

thanks for a great program... just a feature request.. Is it possible to show the input audio on the audio tab like you do on the video tab? Right now you only see the type of audio.. and not channels, bitrate and sample rate.

[ralph9994]

Would like to let you know that VidCoder runs great on Windows 8.

[RandomEngy]

Thanks for the reports. Working on the next version at the moment.

Vilmalith: I'm going to remove the incorrect "failed" messages.
Hobbe: You can see the channels in the description: usually it says (2.0) or something similar on the track title. I'll look into displaying bitrate/sample rate as well on the audio tab.

[RandomEngy]

Released VidCoder 0.9.3 (http://vidcoder.codeplex.com/releases/view/70601):

* Added option to Sleep, Log off or Shut down after the encode queue completes.
* Added support for DTS-HD passthrough. Note that Target Size/Size estimation will not work correctly for this as the underlying libraries do not report the bitrate correctly.
* Added Dynamic Range Compression (DRC) support
* Added shortcuts to re-open recent sources
* Updated Normal preset x264 settings to be faster. (mirroring HandBrake update)
* Moved encode progress bar and ETA down to the bottom of the window.
* Updating to HandBrake SVN 4103.

* The XmlSerializers used are now pre-compiled. This means things should be a little faster on startup and this should eliminate some crashes related to compiling them.
* Changed update metadata storage to use the sqlite DB. This along with some extra checks to ensure the installer file exists should eliminate some reported crashes around auto-update.
* Stopped reporting early completions as failures. Too many false positives.
* Prevent a crash when getting the system DPI fails.
* Removed code that reads an old version of the encode queue. Should prevent crashes that have been reported.
* Fixed buggy "(Empty)" drive option appearing in the source list.
* Fixed a crash that occurred when attempting to pause a restored queue item before the on-demand scan had completed. The pause button is now disabled until it can have effect.
* Fixed some controls getting partially cut off in the Picture tab at minimum window width.

[flebber]

Thanks for the new version. Will it be possible to add selector for AAC LC, HE, Hev2, or to use nero to acheive it?

[flebber]

0.93 On windows XP SP3. When using it from DVD drive to scan source it is freezing. I have tried it with two of my DVD's now the progress bar moves along 3 bars and that's where it stays.

To be sure I wasn't impatient I left it an hour and a half and still at the same point. Got a new DVD in at the moment and stil same result after 20 minutes.

[Przemek_Sperling]

Thanks for the new version. Will it be possible to add selector for AAC LC, HE, Hev2, or to use nero to acheive it?

I already asked for that feature. The answer seems to be "no" :-( Pity because the quality of sound is so-so if compared to Nero.

[RandomEngy]

Yeah AAC audio is up to the HandBrake people. They recently added FFMpeg AAC but it's worse than FAAC right now. They can't do Nero due to licensing issues so their hope is that FFMpeg AAC will get better.

As for the scan freeze: Are you using AnyDVD? Does the freeze happen when you copy the source to the hard drive first? I'm not getting that problem here.

[flebber]

No I don't use the program AnyDVD, the freeze only occurs when I click DVD source using vidcoder. I will install handbrake later and see if that works for the two DVD's I tried.

[RandomEngy]

Are the DVDs commercial DVDs with copy protection? VidCoder needs another program to strip off the CSS to read those.

[flebber]

Yeah Fast and the Furious 1 & 2. So how do you tell vidcoder to use another program for libdvdcss

[RandomEngy]

Options are on the VidCoder main page: http://vidcoder.codeplex.com/

I tried getting VidCoder to load in libdvdcss.dll but it would always blow up with an inexplicable error.

AnyDVD, Passkey for DVD, DVDFab DVD Copy and DVD Decrypter are some options for you. DVD43 if you're on an x86 OS.

[Mr. Monte]

RE,

I have a working 0.9.2 Vidcoder x86 running on my x64 Win 7 video machine. I D/L'd the new 0.9.4 X64 version and installed. I ran it and the add to queue button would not become active so I could do a batch encode. I then downloaded the X86 version and installed that and it worked fine...any suggestions?

[RandomEngy]

Do you have your output directory set? Does the tooltip say anything when you hover over the button?

[ziemlichdunkel]

When using copy source audio and it's an DTS MA HD, then Vidcoder job gives an unsuccessful error, I clicked then on Log in the Menu then the app didn't respond anymore.
After viewing the Log manually it says:

[11:52:10] * audio track 0
[11:52:10] + decoder: Deutsch (DTS-HD MA) (5.1 ch) (track 1, id 0x1)
[11:52:10] + DTS-HD passthrough
[11:52:10] * audio track 1
[11:52:10] + decoder: Chinese (DTS-HD MA) (5.1 ch) (track 1, id 0x2)
[11:52:10] + DTS-HD passthrough
.......
x264 [info]: profile High, level 5.0
ERROR: muxmkv: Unknown audio codec: c0040000
[11:52:37] work: average encoding speed for job is 0.000000 fps
[11:52:37] sync: got 0 frames, 172920 expected
[11:52:37] h264-decoder done: 7 frames, 0 decoder errors, 0 drops
[11:52:37] reader: done. 1 scr changes
[11:52:37] render: lost time: 0 (0 frames)
[11:52:37] render: gained time: 0 (0 frames) (0 not accounted for)
[11:52:37] dca-decoder done: 0 frames, 0 decoder errors, 0 drops
[11:52:37] dca-decoder done: 0 frames, 0 decoder errors, 0 drops
[11:52:37] mux: track 0, 0 frames, 0 bytes, 0.00 kbps, fifo 8
[11:52:37] mux: track 1, 0 frames, 0 bytes, 0.00 kbps, fifo 8
[11:52:37] mux: track 2, 0 frames, 0 bytes, 0.00 kbps, fifo 8
[11:52:37] mux: track 3, 0 frames, 0 bytes, 0.00 kbps, fifo 8
[11:52:37] decomb: deinterlaced 0 | blended 0 | unfiltered 0 | total 0
[11:52:37] libhb: work result = 0
# Encode failed. Error(s) were reported during the encode.

Also I noticed this warning:
x264 [warning]: --psnr used with psy on: results will be invalid!
x264 [warning]: --tune psnr should be used if attempting to benchmark psnr!

What does it mean?

best regards, and thanks for the program...

[JohnAStebbins]

ERROR: muxmkv: Unknown audio codec: c0040000


It means HB_ACODEC_FF_I_FLAG was somehow propagated from the input audio codec value to the output audio codec value. This flag should only be present on input codec values. Also, this flag completely goes away in HB svn 4141.

[JohnAStebbins]

Also I noticed this warning:
x264 [warning]: --psnr used with psy on: results will be invalid!
x264 [warning]: --tune psnr should be used if attempting to benchmark psnr!

What does it mean?


HandBrake enables psnr statistics logging in x264. Many people doing comparisons of encoders try to use these statistics improperly. So the x264 developers added this warning to try to get these people to do proper comparisons. The numbers are still somewhat meaningful without --tune psnr, just not suitable for comparing encoders.

[RandomEngy]

Thanks for the report (and the explanation). I'll look into the error (and I'll see if I can repro the encode log freeze) for the next version.

[ziemlichdunkel]

Thanks from me too for explaining, hope to see a fixed version soon, because your program rocks.
* MAy I suggest one thing for future releases: I noticed that there is no way to change the temporary directory which is used during conversion.
Because my C:\ Drive is an SSD and therefore not so big, I would really love to see an option to change the temp Folder from the currently used Windows Standard Temp Folder too a custom one...

[JohnAStebbins]

Thanks from me too for explaining, hope to see a fixed version soon, because your program rocks.
* MAy I suggest one thing for future releases: I noticed that there is no way to change the temporary directory which is used during conversion.
Because my C:\ Drive is an SSD and therefore not so big, I would really love to see an option to change the temp Folder from the currently used Windows Standard Temp Folder too a custom one...

Hrm, libhb uses GetTempPath() to get the temp directory from the OS. So it should use whatever you set your TEMP environment variable to.

[RandomEngy]

It means HB_ACODEC_FF_I_FLAG was somehow propagated from the input audio codec value to the output audio codec value. This flag should only be present on input codec values. Also, this flag completely goes away in HB svn 4141.

Ahh I see. I had applied the HB_ACODEC_PASS_MASK to see if the codec was valid to pass through, but I neglected to apply to to the final output codec (which would have cleared out that flag). That problem will be fixed in the next version.

[RandomEngy]

Released VidCoder 1.0.0 (http://vidcoder.codeplex.com/releases/view/71622):

* Added splash screen
* Updated to HandBrake svn 4167: This adds AAC and MP3 passthrough as well as DTS and DTS-HD passthrough for MP4.

* Fixed that reported encode failure with the incorrectly masked output codec.

So it's out of beta! Nothing really special about it, just thought it has gone through enough use and stabilization to get to 1.0. Didn't want to hang out in 0.9.X with HandBrake too long. :)

[Frozen-Figo]

I really like this encoder, very simple, easy to use. For now I have one problem, the high CPU usage (100%)

I have Core 2 quad, 8 GB of ram, Win 7 64-bit
Here's the settings I use

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<UserPreset Version="3">
<Preset xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<Name>Frozen</Name>
<IsBuiltIn>false</IsBuiltIn>
<IsModified>false</IsModified>
<EncodingProfile>
<OutputFormat>Mkv</OutputFormat>
<PreferredExtension>Mp4</PreferredExtension>
<IncludeChapterMarkers>false</IncludeChapterMarkers>
<LargeFile>false</LargeFile>
<Optimize>false</Optimize>
<IPod5GSupport>false</IPod5GSupport>
<Width>0</Width>
<Height>0</Height>
<MaxWidth>0</MaxWidth>
<MaxHeight>0</MaxHeight>
<CustomCropping>false</CustomCropping>
<Cropping>
<Top>0</Top>
<Bottom>0</Bottom>
<Left>0</Left>
<Right>0</Right>
</Cropping>
<Anamorphic>Loose</Anamorphic>
<UseDisplayWidth>false</UseDisplayWidth>
<DisplayWidth>0</DisplayWidth>
<KeepDisplayAspect>true</KeepDisplayAspect>
<PixelAspectX>0</PixelAspectX>
<PixelAspectY>0</PixelAspectY>
<Modulus>16</Modulus>
<Deinterlace>Slow</Deinterlace>
<Decomb>Off</Decomb>
<Detelecine>Default</Detelecine>
<Denoise>Medium</Denoise>
<Deblock>0</Deblock>
<Grayscale>false</Grayscale>
<VideoEncoder>X264</VideoEncoder>
<X264Options>rc-lookahead=50:b-adapt=2</X264Options>
<VideoEncodeRateType>TargetSize</VideoEncodeRateType>
<Quality>15</Quality>
<TargetSize>350</TargetSize>
<VideoBitrate>900</VideoBitrate>
<TwoPass>false</TwoPass>
<TurboFirstPass>false</TurboFirstPass>
<Framerate>0</Framerate>
<PeakFramerate>false</PeakFramerate>
<AudioEncodings>
<AudioEncoding>
<InputNumber>1</InputNumber>
<Encoder>Faac</Encoder>
<Bitrate>160</Bitrate>
<Mixdown>DolbyProLogicII</Mixdown>
<SampleRateRaw>0</SampleRateRaw>
<Gain>0</Gain>
<Drc>0</Drc>
</AudioEncoding>
<AudioEncoding>
<InputNumber>2</InputNumber>
<Encoder>Faac</Encoder>
<Bitrate>160</Bitrate>
<Mixdown>DolbyProLogicII</Mixdown>
<SampleRateRaw>0</SampleRateRaw>
<Gain>0</Gain>
<Drc>0</Drc>
</AudioEncoding>
</AudioEncodings>
</EncodingProfile>
</Preset>
</UserPreset>

[RandomEngy]

Having high CPU use is the objective (during an encode). The more CPU you use, the faster the encode goes. The priority is set to Below Normal so other processes can do things if they want.

[Przemek_Sperling]

Released VidCoder 1.0.0 (http://vidcoder.codeplex.com/releases/view/71622):
[...]
So it's out of beta! Nothing really special about it, just thought it has gone through enough use and stabilization to get to 1.0. Didn't want to hang out in 0.9.X with HandBrake too long. :)

Congrats! :thanks:

[Frozen-Figo]

Having high CPU use is the objective (during an encode). The more CPU you use, the faster the encode goes. The priority is set to Below Normal so other processes can do things if they want.

True, but it sounds that Vidcoder use all available resources, I don't have any problem with that, but it's weird compared with others encoders

[RandomEngy]

Video encoding is a very CPU-intensive process. Usually when an encoder doesn't make full use of CPU that means that it's not multi-threaded and is simply unable to put all of the CPU cores to work.

[acrespo]

I have problems with subtitles here.
Two computer, first with Windows Vista Ultimate 32 bits. All movies i did with this computer are ok, including subtitles in .srt format.
Second computer with Windows 7 64 bits. The subtitles here have a black background and the position is not correct (align on right).

I am using the same profile in both computers. I already tried x64 and x86 versions and the result is the same.
Anybody knows a workaround?

[mike20021969]

Hi. Can anyone tell me where VidCoder stores the user presets file?

I've looked in Program Files>VidCoder = I can see the BuiltInPresets .xml file.
All Users>Application Data = found nothing.
MIKE>Application Data>VidCoder = Found nothing.
MIKE>Local Settings>Application Data>VidCoder = found user.config file - looking at it using notepad, there were none of my numerous presets.

I thought there would be another .xml file with my user presets stored somewhere. I feel I'm looking in the wrong locations :confused:

(I have 22 presets and know they can be exported individually. But 22 are loaded when the program starts - chosen via the drop down menu - so they must all be stored somewhere).