Job Control

When you set up a recording, you can choose to defer it instead of starting it immediately. Deferred recordings are called jobs, and they're stored in a job queue. You can queue any number of jobs, and run them all at once while you're doing something else. This is known as batch processing.

The job queue is managed via the Job Control dialog; to show the dialog, use File/Job Control, or press F4. The dialog's layout should look very familiar to users of VirtualDub. The dialog contains a list, each row of which corresponds to a queued job. The columns are described below.

To start batch processing, press the Start button. To cancel processing, press the Abort button. To cancel the current job, but continue processing, press the Skip button. Jobs are processed in the order in which they appear in the queue, and only jobs with a status of Waiting are processed.

Editing the queue

The job queue can be edited at any time, even during processing. The only restriction is that you can't delete or change the status of a job while it's in progress. The editing commands are as follows:

To move a job

Simply drag the job to the desired position, or select the job and use the Move Up/Down buttons.

To delete a job

Select the job and press the Delete button, or right-click the job and choose Delete from the context menu.

To prevent a job from running

Select the job, and press the Postpone button, or right-click the job and choose Postpone from the context menu. The status is changed to Postponed, unless it already was Postponed, in which case it's changed to Waiting.

To make a job ready to run

Double-click the job. The status is changed to Waiting, unless it already was Waiting, in which case it's changed to Postponed. If the status was Failed, the error message is displayed, and the error is then cleared. To view the error without clearing it, right-click the job and choose View Error from the context menu.

To change the status of multiple jobs at once, use these commands from the Job Control dialog's Edit menu:

All Waiting => Postponed

Postpones all jobs with Waiting status

All Postponed => Waiting

Makes all postponed jobs ready to run

All Done => Waiting

Makes all completed jobs ready to run again

All Failed => Postponed

Makes all failed jobs ready to run again

To delete all completed jobs, Use Edit/Delete done jobs. To delete ALL jobs, use Edit/Clear list. The job queue can be saved to a file, or restored from a previously saved file, via File/Save job list and File/Load job list. To shutdown your computer after all jobs are completed, select Options/Shutdown when finished.

Job independence

Once a job is queued, it's completely independent of the project from which it was created. This is possible because the queued job contains a copy of the project data. Any subsequent changes made to the project file have no effect on the queued job. The project file can even be renamed or deleted. Note however that the job still depends on the project's plugins and input video. Be careful not to rename or delete plugins or clips referenced by a queued job, otherwise the job will fail.

A queued job also contains a snapshot of all application settings that could affect the job's behavior, including those found in the Options dialog and Record dialog. A job runs with the settings that were in effect when the job was queued, NOT the current settings. For example, if the engine frame size was 640 x 480 when a job was queued, that job always runs at 640 x 480, regardless of the current frame size.