Changing settings after starting a queue

General questions or discussion about HandBrake, Video and/or audio transcoding, trends etc.
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gentleben
Posts: 24
Joined: Sun Feb 07, 2021 12:21 pm

Changing settings after starting a queue

Post by gentleben »

Hello,
So I load up HandBrake and queue up a few folders by opening each folder and clicking add all to queue?

So I start the queue off. Now, if I change any settings at all after starting the queue, does it affect the videos in the queue? So after starting the queue, if I then change the video resolution, deinerlace and detelecline settings, change presets, change video quality, change video rotation, etc... will any of those changes affect the videos in the queue waiting to be encoded or will those changes only take effect when i click the Add to queue button again (i.e. when the queue has finished and i start a new queue). I did a test and it seems that changing settings after starting the queue has no effect on videos in the queue but wanted to be sure.

Also, I know that it's possible to have HandBrake start up with default presets simply by deleting the AppData\Roaming\HandBrake folder and I use a script to start HandBrake which does exactly that. So I can be sure that all presets are using default values. But is it possible for me to script a new custom preset based on an existing preset but with a few changes. I know that I could copy the presets.json file in my script but that would contain all of the preset data so I don't want that.

I would like to be able to tell HandBrake use a specific default preset but with a few selected changes only. I do that with the settings.json file. My script deletes settings.json and copies a new one to the AppData\Roaming\HandBrake folder but this new one only contains the settings that I want to change from the default. So it's really neat because it means I don't have to have every setting in my custom settings.json. I just put in settings that I won't changed from default and HandBrake (very neatly) uses default settings with my changes automatically. I would love to be able to do that with presets. But if I only specify a few settings in the presets.json file, HandBrake will say it's not valid and create a new one.

Also, two small feature requests:
- Add folder and all subfolders to queue (would save a lot of clicking).
- Recreate source folder structure in my chosen destination folder. I don't mean {source_path}. I mean, I would like to save my videos in D:\Movies\{source_folder_structure}. So if my source files are C:\Recordings\Outdoors\Sunshine, then they would be saved in D:\Movies\Recordings\Outdoors\Sunshine so all the folder structure is recreated. This would be very useful because I often add hundreds of videos to the queue but the folder names are often generic (such as 'Episodes' and 'Movies'. But the parent folder names are unique so I'd like to have the folder structure created in my chosen destination folder.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post.
Woodstock
Veteran User
Posts: 4614
Joined: Tue Aug 27, 2013 6:39 am

Re: Changing settings after starting a queue

Post by Woodstock »

Once something is in the queue, it will be encoded with the settings you gave it. You can remove it from the queue and edit it, but changes you make to settings for subsequent videos do not affect the queue.

If you're doing scripting, the Command Line Interface (CLI) version is far more flexible.
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