MeGui problem - 2 jobs instead 1

[Moonwalker]

Hi guys,

I have started recently using MeGui but I always get the same problem while encoding video file - I get 2 jobs instead of 1.

To begin, I am 100% sure that there are no other jobs in Queue because after first case I check it and if there is any job there I delete it.

What exactly is happening? Well, I extract desired video file with eac3to, after that I run it through File Indexer and save, then I set desired preferences in Bitrate Calculator and save, and after that I simply click on Queue (just once, it's not double click fault from my side) and MeGui starts encoding.

The problem is that after all that is done I always get 2 jobs in Queue instead of one, which always results in following: couple of hours of encoding and when the process is done job 2 starts and automatically over wrights encode which just finished. So basically for one encode I always need twice the time needed.

What should I do to prevent MeGui doing this? Can I just go to Queue and delete job 2 from the list?

Only thing which prevents me from deleting waiting task is that for Job 1 first it says nothing under Output card and for Job 2 it says video.264 under Output, so I don't want to mess up something.

Here is the pic of what I get after described process and when I should get just one job:



Any help is highly appreciated. Thanks.

[poisondeathray]

Maybe you set it for 2 pass encode ?

[Moonwalker]

Sincerely I wouldn't know. As I said, I started using MeGui just couple days ago, made few encodes (all did this double process) and all basic settings and parameters that I know I was shown by my friend.

[LigH.de]

If you want to fit the result in a bitrate or size limit (you possibly want, because you used the Bitrate Calculator), the video encoder needs to run 2 passes: In the 1st pass it calculates statistics so that it can calculate the optimal compression for the 2nd pass to just even get close to the target bitrate or file size.

Trying to use a constant bitrate would only need 1 pass, but would return bad quality.

If you don't care too much about the size (e.g. you have a collection on a big harddisk), you can also run only 1 pass with a more or less constant degree of quality loss (CRF in case of x264), but you will have to decide how much loss you can accept; smaller CRF means less loss but bigger results.

[Moonwalker]

Thank you very much, you helped me a lot. And you are very clear, I understood everything regard process and why it's happening.

I unfortunately care about care about size so I aim at 10 GB per video. And right now I am getting awful speeds, 1st pass took 4 hours and second is still running (6 hours passed and 4 more left). But it is what it is, at least now I know what is MeGui doing and why.

Cheers and thank you once again.

[hello_hello]

For a bit of added info......

If you click on the 1st job in the queue, both jobs should be automatically highlighted. It's MeGUI's way of letting you know one job depends on the other. If that doesn't happen, they're two independent jobs.
You can also right click and delete one of the jobs, but obviously you'd want to have a specific reason for doing so and MeGUI will ask you whether or not it should also delete any related jobs at the same time.

If you're after a specific file size you could also consider using the AutoEncode button. If you leave the x264 encoder configuration set for quality based encoding (single pass) and you specify a file size or bitrate using the AutoEncode method, MeGUI will switch to 2 pass encoding and calculate the required bitrate for you. If there's any audio loaded into the audio section it'll be included (use the "x" button in the audio section to clear it first if you don't want it included) and when the AutoEncode window opens you can also specify whether to add existing (extracted) audio to the final output. Whichever way you do it, MeGUI will take any audio bitrate into account when calculating the video bitrate in order to output the requested file size.

[LigH.de]

If the conversion takes too long, then the most probable reasons are: Either your PC is too slow for the efforts of filters and encoding (get a faster PC), or vice versa (attenuate the process).

Slower speed presets can cost a lot more time with only marginal visual improvements, compared to a rather balanced preset. My personal recommendation is not to use any preset slower than "slow" except with a purpose. The slowest presets may even reduce the compatibility with hardware players, because the may create overly complex video streams.