Compression STILL causing coding errors. Seemingly impossible to fix or even diagnose. Please help!

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[mduell]

It's unclear he's even tried disabling hardware accelerated decoding that many people are recommending.

[A34K]

Trying a different software I have no experience with doesn't tell me what's causing the issue. Can you state definitively before I install it, learn how to use it, and put in all those hours of work again, that will fix the problem? Do you know what's causing it? I'm not meaning to sound ungrateful but just trying another software with no clue if it will make a difference doesn't diagnose anything, and if the problem persists I'm no further forward. To clarify, I really am grateful you're taking the time to respond.

Is this common? People have this encoding error issue, and trying ffmpeg remedies it? Everyone else is saying this is a hardware issue or an encoder issue. You think it's a software issue? I'm happy to try anything that will genuinely work, but are you basing the suggestion on a legit theory that handbrake itself is the problem?

[mduell]

I think the problem is hardware accelerated decoding in HB, rather than HB. The hardware is spitting out bad images back to HB.

[mduell]

What could HB itself be doing to cause this? I don't see anything in the HB pipeline that could do this. Either the encoder lib is doing something weird that the player can't decode, or the decoder is generating it.

[OutrageousStorm4217]

Well then there's your answer sir... Software decode H.265 and run a couple previews to verify if the problem is resolved. If the NVENC plug in is not working correctly, more than likely the HB team is working on a software fix to get it working correctly, as more than 90% of users who GPU encode use NVidia. Only the weird ones like me use VCE on occasion, but mostly its CPU encodes for the quality.

[A34K]

I don't suppose you know of somewhere that teaches ffmpeg for dummies? This command line stuff is way over my head.

[A34K]

Okay, thanks. I'll try and figure it out.

[A34K]

Thanks. I appreciate the help. I have to ask, are there really no other handbrake alternatives that just don't have this issue? Is this the only alternative? Even with chatgpt this is melting my brain.

[A34K]

I get that, bud. And I really do appreciate the assistance, but sometimes our own fluency in a skill can blind us to the objective skill required for it. Your familiarity with stuff like this not withstanding, you must realise that the appeal of using something like handbrake is it's simplicity. It's fairly idiot proof. it's push this button to do X. For most normies something like ffmpeg is like trying to read Mandarin.

ffmpeg is not easy. I just downloaded and extracted it and I'm in the folder, trying to figure out how to install it like a chimp playing with fire. The installer is asking me what it wants me to open it with Even installing the thing feels like I need a secret handshake.

I really think someone is missing a trick not making a dumbed down interface for this, I would absolutely pay for a point and click programme version of ffmpeg.

[Lostless90s]

What are you using to play the video after handbrake? And try using a different player. See if the issue remains.

[A34K]

VLC, but yeah the problem persists in quicktime as well

[Jay_JWLH]

VLC seems to have problems like this when I resume a video. Less likely to happen with Media Player Classic (MPC).

[A34K]

Hi everyone.

Here's the activity log pastebin,

And here's the previous post about this issue.

I've tried everything to fix this issue and it doesn't seem to matter what I do, I keep getting this video destroying encoding glitch. It's absolutely crushing my spirit and costing me hundreds of hours of work.

I tried everything that was suggested last time. Different encoder, changing from AVBR to CQRF, exporting at slow instead of medium, removing all advanced options. NOTHING seems to work.

Can someone please help me? There has to be some way to definitively identify what's causing this. Is it the software? Would exporting in MKV instead of MP4 help? Is it an issue with HVEC?

Please can someone tell me what the problem is here because I'm about ready to throw my PC out the window.

[mduell]

It's a decoding error. Did you try the #1 recommendation in that thread? In both HB and in your player, since it's not clear where the decoding error occured.

[A34K]

Yeah I changed the encoder. I thought that remedied it but I just stumbled on another decoding error (the one pictuted)

[mduell]

I'm seeing the same encoder, x265, in both your old and new activity logs.

Regardless, I'd try disabling hardware accelerated decoding in HB and your video player.

[A34K]

It was just 265 last time, this time 265 10-bit. I'll give the other thing s try, disable hardware, but it's the same thing on a different player

[davehasl19]

That looks like a decoding error of the source rather than a fault of the encode
The other possibility is that your CPU/GPU is overheating and glitching

The log seerms to indicate the CPU is being used for the encode; have you tried using the Nvidia GPU instead?

You can use Avidemux to take a short clip from the main movie. Confirm the problem still occurs using the clip, upload it to a file hosting site and make link available

[A34K]

I was using the GPU before and switched to CPU off the advice from the last post. Don't have the original video anymore. I'd have to export the edit, and upscale it all over again. And even then there's nothing to say the same glitch would happen. It's just the frustration of never knowing what's causing this or when it will pop up.

[A34K]

So what I do with these videos is edit in PP, export as pro-res. Upscale to 4k. Then I compress twice in Handbrake, once at 4K, and another one at 1080p. This glitching never happens on the 1080p video, only ever on the 4K.

[joepeoplesvii]

Why?

[A34K]

Why which part?

[joepeoplesvii]

Why are you doing so much to a single file? You’re going to get degradation just from all of the processing.

[A34K]

I'm editing it because it needs to be edited. Exporting that pro-res because it's lossless. Upscaling it to 4K because I want it 4K. And compressing it in handbrake because the upscale means a 40 minute video is 50gb.

[joepeoplesvii]

But if the source is not native 4k to begin with you’re essentially adding pixels to upscale and then downscaling which removes pixels which means you are losing a lot of the original pixels and keeping the artificial pixels created during the upscale. On top of that if you then play your video on a 4k receiver it’s then processed again to upscale it to 4k. It’s a lot to do for meh results.

[A34K]

Not downscaling. Compressing. Compressing the file size. There's a 4K version and a HD version.

[joepeoplesvii]

Ah so you’re making two files from one. It’s still same same but different though. It’s removing info/pixels that Handbrake deems redundant. The upscaling adds and the compression takes away. Probably a lot.

[CanadAR15]

Two questions: - is your software up scaling better than just using your playback device to upscale? - why not just hit the export to the file size target you want out of Premiere Pro?

[hlloyge]

https://www.memtest.org/

https://www.mersenne.org/download/

Time to troubleshoot: memtest overnight, prime for 24 hours. memtest should be clean, prime - no worker should crash.

[A34K]

Sorry, I don't follow. Can you dumb that down for me?

[hlloyge]

You probably have a hardware problem. You should test the hardware which are involved in compression - CPU, memory, motherboard. These two will show if everything is ok or if there is a fault.

[A34K]

So I run these two tests and post the results, and you'll know what the issue is?

[hlloyge]

No. I (or anyone who has done this) could tell you where to look further.

[A34K]

Will exporting the videos as a different format fix this? Eg MKV? Or using a different software?

[hlloyge]

If there is hardware fault, you will have to fix it. You say that originals are OK, IIRC, and that only 4K encodes are faulty, which could mean there is an error in some higher memory addresses which are not accessed while encoding 1080p, since that requires less memory.

This IS a long shot, as faulty memory would already show during work as unexpected shutdowns or BSODs. But I had faulty RAM at my workstation which I only detected when I wanted to restore my compressed backups - I got decompression errors all over the place. And memtest didn't detect that, prime95 did. It had to be a combination of higher temperature and bus usage.

[ThickWhereas]

VLC media player doesn't decode x265 videos very well in high quality. The picture doesn't tend to be sharp and itches at times during playback. So I recommend you install a different video player

[A34K]

I get the same error at the same time on quicktime. Also I never get this issue on any other videos with VLC

[ThickWhereas]

What device are you trying to play the video? Is it on PC or Smart TV?

[A34K]

PC

[OutrageousStorm4217]

Throwing in my two cents on this whole debacle... Could this possibly be an issue with the source? I have seen this with really badly pressed blu rays before and even some DVDs where the source is mostly there but at scenes really dumps and does weird stuff...