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The FLAC codec doesn't seem to be working for me
#1
Hi Selur,

First, thanks for your help in getting the latest version to run under Windows 7 x86, I really appreciate it.

Second, I made a previous thread about Hybrid constantly crashing under certain conditions, but I didn't understand what was going on, so the post probably doesn't make much sense. I created a new thread because I finally isolated the cause, kind of, but verbose log files won't help you reproduce the crash, unfortunately.

Here's whats happening. If I try to encode or re-encode a source file where the audio is FLAC, the job crashes. Under the job control tab the crash appears at "Create... with MKVMerge." It crashes at that point because the problem actually occurs during the second step or level. Basically it crashes because there is no audio file to be merged into the mkv container.

I have been playing with Hybrid for hours, and the problem seems to be with the FLAC codec. If it was just while encoding it was probably my messing up the settings, but it also happens while decoding.

For example, I tried to re-encode a 1080p movie with DTS-MA to FLAC 24-bit 5.1 audio, and 3 out of 3 times it failed no matter what settings I picked. I tried to re-encode the movie to PCM 5.1, and that worked. I tried to re-encode the PCM movie to FLAC, and 3 out of 3 times it failed.

So I went through some of the XML and ini files, played with the GUI, and looked in the temp directory of the system drive. Even when I manually assign a different temp path Hybrid is still using the temp directory in the system drive. Just to rule it out, I went from 500 MB of freespace on the tiny system drive to 4.68 GB of freespace. That did nothing, so I opened up the temp folder I manually assigned to Hybrid, and observed the contents in the folder as jobs were running.

As the jobs ran, Hybrid successfully extracted the PCM audio to the folder, and then broke. The audio was extracted, but when a new file should have appeared as part of the encoding process from PCM to FLAC... no new files appeared in the folder. I watched this over and over and over, and every time nothing new appeared in the folder, and two seconds later the .mov file was deleted. The reason that I don't think that the log file will help is because every time under the job control tab it shows that the audio encoding was a "SUCCESS". Also, when I went through older logs, it showed the encoding as being successful. The problem that I'm having is, how can the temp folder be empty if the encoding of the audio was a success, and the .mov file was deleted?

Please, understand that this is not a complaint, and in all my testing everything but the audio was passed through Hybrid. Under the tools tab I didn't see FLAC, or any way to manually add my own FLAC codec, but I did see FFMPEG. I thought I added all the extra codecs, but maybe not. I know that LAV and FFMPEG had some issues in the past with AAC and FLAC, but I think I'm just missing the FLAC codec for whatever reason.

I also learned that the pause "button" in the GUI never works for me the first time, probably because I forget to highlight or select the job first. I also learned that if you pause either too early or too many times, Windows reports that Hybrid has stopped responding, and the next time you start Hybrid you get the same message again, and again, and again if you pause a job. Rebooting seems to be the only way to fix it.

Simply put, because I added the MPlayer binary codec pack you linked to in a forum post, which is outdated by the way, did I screw up the FLAC codec?
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#2
Quote:but verbose log files won't help you reproduce the crash, unfortunately.
They at least let me see what calls are used on your system,... (since I don't own any 32bit system anymore this might be a good thing,..)

Quote:If I try to encode or re-encode a source file where the audio is FLAC, the job crashes. Under the job control tab the crash appears at "Create... with MKVMerge." It crashes at that point because the problem actually occurs during the second step or level. Basically it crashes because there is no audio file to be merged into the mkv container.
No debug output, no clue which calls are used,...

Quote:The problem that I'm having is, how can the temp folder be empty if the encoding of the audio was a success, and the .mov file was deleted?
Noe clue what calls are used.

If you want to keep the temporary files, you can tell Hybrid by enabling 'Config->Output->Container Settings->General Settings->Keep intermediate files'.

Since you don't want to share a debug output, do this:
a. share a small sample with me, which allows you to reproduce the issue
b. write step by step what you do starting from a clean installed Hybrid
This way I can create a debug output myself and debug where the file gets lost.

Here I have no problem reencoding DTS-MD to 24bit flac.

Cu Selur
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#3
Sorry. Besides trying to isolate the cause of the crashing in Hybrid, I broke my browser when I ran a test on it. I'm willing to generate and share a log file if it will help you, I'm just not sure it will.

I played more with not just Hybrid, but also Handbrake, MakeMKV, and MKVToolNix/MKVMerge. Since Hybrid couldn't convert the audio to FLAC I wanted to see if the problem was just with Hybrid. I re-encoded the movie with Handbrake, which showed it was successful, and tried to mux the FLAC with the original movie file in Hybrid. No surprise that failed.

I tried muxing the FLAC into the movie with MKVMerge, and that also failed with an error message. The FLAC file couldn't be parsed. I played the FLAC audio file, and other than a few seconds of sound at the beginning there was nothing else to it. A search showed that converting from DTS-HDMA to FLAC can be a problem with the codec, but I also went from DTS-HDMA to PCM to FLAC, and only FLAC couldn't playback properly.

The search also showed that MakeMKV could convert directly between DTS-HDMA and FLAC using an open source codec, so I tried it. MakeMKV did work, so I tried using Hybrid to replace the DTS-HDMA audio track with the FLAC track by extracting it from the version made by MakeMKV. This time it worked.

If I understand this correctly, the problem is with the FLAC codec, or maybe LAV or FFMPEG. I previously tried converting from FLAC to FLAC in Hybrid and had the same crash at the creation level. I will repeat one of the tests later to generate a log file for you. I know next to nothing about Hybrid or encoding, but from what I'm seeing there might be a problem with the FLAC codec. Then again I broke Chrome running a test on the browser, so it could be just me. lol
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#4
No clue what your browser has to do with the whole thing, but reading the sticky and providing a debug output is probably the only way to get me in a position where I can help.

Cu Selur
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