How many bytes have been written so far

General questions or discussion about HandBrake, Video and/or audio transcoding, trends etc.
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pmennen
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Oct 10, 2015 11:56 am

How many bytes have been written so far

Post by pmennen »

Quite often I have a desired file size in mind for the compressed video file. Of course, I could set the desired bit rate with full two-pass encoding, but that is so slow I usually just take a guess at what RF setting (constant quality) is required. Often at say 20% complete, I will hit stop and see what the file size is. Multiplying by 5 will give me a rough estimate of the final file size, which might already be obviously way too small or too big. Then I can restart the encoding at a different RF setting. But suppose it is reasonably on target. I would hit start again, but it would simply start all over again from the beginning wasting all that perfectly good encoding done up to that point. So annoying. If instead of stop, I hit pause, then I can restart again without losing the work done, but when it pauses it doesn't write anything to disk. The file size is still zero. Is there any way to interrogate Handbrake at that point to find out how much data is in its data buffers or a way to dump the buffers to a file so I can judge the progress? If not, it seems crazy that what is happening with the encoding is such a deep dark secret until the moment of truth at the very end when you find out if the last hour was a complete waste of cpu cycles or not. (I'm using the latest handbrake release, or sometimes the latest nightly build. I don't know if this question is operating system dependent, but in any case, I'm using Windows 10).
Deleted User 13735

Re: How many bytes have been written so far

Post by Deleted User 13735 »

You won't be able to use a bitrate snapshot at 20% to estimate final file size in CRF encodes.
If you made such an estimate for this file, your estimate would be 180% too large.
maxrate0 (2019_10_26 22_42_06 UTC).jpg
maxrate0 (2019_10_26 22_42_06 UTC).jpg (40.32 KiB) Viewed 189 times
What is your purpose in wanting the same bandwidth? That restriction is usually reserved for oldschool internet streaming, and represents the most inefficient use of your disk space possible.
rollin_eng
Veteran User
Posts: 4840
Joined: Wed May 04, 2011 11:06 pm

Re: How many bytes have been written so far

Post by rollin_eng »

See my results on actual Blu Ray encoding and file sizes here:

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=34831

If you are on Windows you can right click on your output file and select properties, it should give you its current size.
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