883% complete

[cryingraven]

Hia

Any idea why my x264 encoding goes into extra innings on some settings / files ?

This entire long weekend I was trying to convert a h264 raw file to x264 and after about 14 hours encoding it wold finally end at 150%.

Problem is, the filesize is 5.5G and the FULL HD video looks PRISTINE!!!!... for the first 1 hour and 38 minutes... after that it is a green screen. I recalled that debate about the MP4 format having a 4G filesize limit vs the FAT32 having a 4G filesize limit and decided to do a test... I decreased the quality from 5800 kbits to 5000 and sure enough, 14 hours later it finished at 150% with a filesize of 4.8G. Now the movie looked PRISTENE... for the first hour and 52 minutes... after that it was a green screen...

So it would seem that the closer the filesize gets to 4G, the more of the movie I can actually see... So the 4G limit is TRUE!!!! Except I have G movies that play perfectly all the way through ???????????? So how the hell???

I figured the ultimate test would be to lower the quality even more but it was already looking choppy.... so no thanks...

Instead, I used decided to crop out the letterbox and leave the aspect ratio at Unconstrained rather than 16:9 and voila... it is currently standing at 890% complete after 14 hours encoding and I have no idea wether it is going to go to 900, 950 or even 1000% before it is done...

Why is this???

Source: x264 - no container - 1920x1080 - 23.976 (I forget the exact decimals...) - 32 GB
Output: x264 - mp4 - 1920x1080 - 5800 kbits - unconstrained - no audio - around 260 combined lines cropped on top and bottom (nothing on the sides)

Any advice would be highly appreciated.

[jpschuck]

ffmpegX ussually uses the informations provided by the container format (.avi, .mp4, etc) to calculate the duration of the file. This duration is used to estimate the total encoding time and generate the progress bar. As you're encoding a raw h264 file, ffmpegX guesses an incorrect duration.