Transcode failure
Also known as: conversion failure, failed encode
A conversion that did not complete, which for anything processing uploads is the most common technical fault in the whole pipeline.
Updated
What it means
A transcode reads one format and writes another, and either end can fail. A source the decoder cannot read, a target setting that makes no sense, or a machine that ran out of room partway through. Transcoding has two ends and both of them fail.
The causes divide into three groups. Damaged input, unsupported input and an environment problem such as disk space, and the three need completely different responses.
It differs from a Playback error in who sees it. One happens during processing where it can be caught and retried; the other happens in front of a viewer with nothing to be done.
How it works in practice
Validating the input first avoids most of it. Checking that a file decodes before committing to a long conversion turns a failure at the end of a long job into a rejection at the start of it.
Damaged sources are frequently salvageable. A Video file repair pass on an unfinalised recording produces a file that converts normally, which is worth trying before anything is declared lost.
Retrying is reasonable for one category only. An environment failure succeeds on a second attempt, where an unsupported source fails identically however many times it is tried again.
What to watch out for
The error message names the wrong thing. A decoder complaining about a header is describing a symptom of File corruption rather than the cause, and the real cause is usually back on the card.
Partial output is worse than none. A conversion that stopped halfway can leave a playable file that ends early, and nothing about it announces that the rest is missing.
One bad clip stops a whole job. A timeline or a batch containing a single unreadable file fails as a unit unless something is built to skip it and carry on regardless.
How RawClip handles it
A clip that cannot be decoded is skipped and reported rather than allowed to stop the run, so one damaged file does not take a whole session with it. Where a file can be repaired first, the readable part is used like anything else.