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Probe Order when Loading Media

Why is this mentioned here? So many programs have been written whose functionalities overlap and you may want to ensure that the one you wish to use is actually used. Over time which one matches first may vary. Ffmpeg is so generic that if your setting is Try ffmpeg first it will almost certainly get used and it leaves little chance that other methods will even get a chance. Some of the codec file drivers can open a variety of media, and some of the more common methods may have more than one file driver which could be useful to decode your media file, for example Tiff. For expert specialized usage, when you want to guarantee that a certain method is used, you can change the probe order. Use the pulldown Settings → Preferences to get to the Interface tab where you will see a box in the Operation section on the left side called Probe Order. Click on the box and use the up/down/enabled boxes to change the order of the item you have highlighted (figure 4.5).

Up
  move the item up 1 (if the item is currently on the top, it will be moved to the bottom)
Down
  move the item down 1 (similarly, if on the bottom, it will be moved to the top)
Enable
  there will be a check mark if the item is currently enabled. If you disable it, it will not be used to probe the media to determine what it is. Double left mouse click will toggle the enabled/disabled state of the highlighted item. If both FFMPEG Early/Late are enabled, the FFMPEG code could be run twice if the 1st FFMPEG run failed (but so will the 2nd!).

The default setup is set to duplicate the past expected behavior with the exception that CR2 for Raw Camera mode is disabled. Changes made in the settings will be retained in the .bcast5 file.

Figure 4.5: Three example of Probes window

Figure 4.5 show the first few probe items. Note that the up arrow on the left, signifies enabled. Scrolling down shows the next 2 pages of possible drivers for a total of 17.

The order change will not take effect until you click on the checkmark in both the Probes window and the Preferences window. When you click on the FF button, which is in the corner of the main window (figure 9.1) to change Try FFMpeg first/last, enabling of FFMPEG_Late or FFMPEG_Early will be toggled automatically in Probes to match that choice but does NOT change its position in the table. Be sure to only click on the FF button without the Preference/Probes window up to avoid unexpected results. It is also recommended to leave FFMPEG_Early/FFMPEG_Late close to the top/bottom positions. There is one case where you may want to disable all of the probes if you want to force PCM – Pulse Code Modulator. This code is always run when all other probes fail.