After breaking out `strace` and just a ton of other stuff I finally figured out what was going on. A single encoder option was invalid which caused the workers to crash before even writing the file in the data directory. Fixing the setting cleared up the issue and made everything happy.

What caused this rabbithole initially was `av1an` eating itself when trying to put the video and audio stuff together at the end of an encode. Unfortunately the `audio.mkv` file it was trying to mux into the container kept causing `mkvmerge` to fail because the audio file was empty. _This_ was caused by bad audio encoder options being passed to `ffmpeg`.

I made sure I documented both of these and I'm currently running test videos before calling it 100% good.

#av1an #sisyphus #encoding #ffmpeg #mkvtoolnix

Free Software that I rely on. One per day.

Day 18:

MKVToolNix

This is a tool kit of utilities, including a GUI front end, for manipulating Matroska streaming multimedia files (usually "MKV" or "MKA" files).

The Matroska container format allows for multiple audio, video, and text streams, which means you can encode a video with multiple options for audio and subtitles (as well as alternate video tracks).

It also supports setting up "Chapter" marks.

A must-have for authoring and checking complex videos for streaming and download use.

https://mkvtoolnix.download/

#FreeSoftwareAdvent #MKVToolNix #MKV #Multimedia #Matroska