Therefore the MCAQ argument text would read:
-a -e -source=[Filename] -qsffirst -adscan
...
What did I get wrong? Let me know what you think.
Well, you found a bug, but not the one you think you did...
The core problem is: --adscan and --qsffirst are mutually exclusive options. Actually, more correctly, --adscan itself is a special mode that precludes
all other options in MCVideoRedoer, but specifically, it can't work with the QSF mode at all.
The bug you found is that the messaging is (apparently) broken. If you try to do this from within the GUI, you'll find it won't let you (unless that too is broken, I'll have to check). The command line options are supposed to detect this and provide good messaging if you try to combine the two, but apparently that is broken right now. It also dawns on me, reading through my documentation previously in this thread, that I didn't explain that explicitly (or, at least, not in a place that is easy to find).
So... I'll explain now.
What QSF First mode does is:
1. Transcodes the source file to a temp file (in your actual system temp file location, by default), with a random-generated filename, using the special QSF "mode" of VideoReDo. This creates a new copy of the source file, it does not "fix" the existing file in-place (and cannot).
2. Then, it essentially swaps-in this temporary QSF-ed file and uses it as the source file for the rest of the processing.
3. This temp QSF-ed file is then deleted when the processing completes.
What AdScan mode does is:
1. Takes the source file and runs it through VideoReDo's Ad Detective feature.
2. It then saves the results of this to a VPrj file (a VideoReDo Project File). This file does NOT "contain" a copy of the video, it is just a little "text" file, which points to the original source file.
3. It then imports this VPrj file into MC so that you can track them and use MC to "queue" your manual review of the detected ads.
The idea is that later you can run these VPrj files back through MCVideoRedoer and it'll then "finalize" your video out to a new file, cutting out the specified ads.
You can't do both of these things, if you think about it.
The QSF First makes the temp file, and then deletes it. The temp file is only useful as a means-to-an-end to make the transcoded "final copy". The problem is that if we did both, then the VPrj file would point to the temporary QSF file in your temp directory, which would be deleted when it finishes the run. Even if I worked around that, it would have to create a new file on disk, and this would be one that MC doesn't know about at all.
Now, I considered making QSF First mode handle things specially when AdScan mode is enabled, and to actually overwrite the original source file. But, this would be dangerous. QSF does sometimes (though not often) make a broken file
worse. If the source file is sufficiently broken, VideoReDo's QSF transcoding can actually excise substantial portions of the source video, screw up aspect ratios, and other stuff like that. This only ever happens if the source file is pretty badly hosed, so it isn't the end of the world, but I can't be sure that you'd be okay with losing your source file (even if it is broken). Making it worse and overwriting the source without being told to is bad-form.
There are other possible alternatives, but they can get pretty complex.
A better method would be to just do this part when you complete your AdScan (running it through again to cut the actual commercials out). That phase would be the time that would make sense to do the QSF (if needed).
Of course, there is a downside. If the file is sufficiently broken, then AdScan will fail (either entirely, or by not detecting ads correctly). QSF
could fix this, if done first, but there's not a clean way to do this through MCVideoRedoer currently.
I'll think about it, but nothing soon.