The old runner (fixed -cq 27 + fixed 256k audio + maxrate at 1.5x the FILE bitrate) left 54 files
BIGGER than their originals - the worst at 124.8%. Re-encoding those from their current HEVC would
be second-generation loss, so the source must be the pre-conversion original; a dated snapshot of
the library holds it (582 files / 324 GiB measured).
A file already HEVC is now re-done only when it is bigger than its original (>1.01x), which makes
the run idempotent with no extra state. The tier and every gate use the ORIGINAL, dst stays the
live path, and os.remove(src) is suppressed whenever the source came from the origin tree so the
archive of originals can never be deleted by a replace.
The previous runner encoded everything at a fixed -cq 27 with -maxrate = 1.5x the FILE bitrate,
which is how a library ended up at 111% of its source size. This replaces the encode step with the
policy the skill documents, and adds the gates that make it a guarantee:
* classify by bpp: <0.025 copy the video (bit-identical), 0.025-0.040 hevc_nvenc, >0.040 libx265
* -maxrate = 1.0x the source's VIDEO bitrate (never the file total) + a post-encode assertion
* SSIM gate: per-frame comparison of a 60 s window against the source, retry once at +2 quality
if it fails, then fail the item (the original is never touched)
* audio: copy when AAC, else AAC at the SOURCE's bitrate (a fixed 256k cancelled the video saving)
* x265 tier pinned to the E-cores; --tier to run tiers separately; --keep-local for a pilot that
touches nothing
* defaults cq31 / crf26 from the measurement below, not cq27
Measured on three real sources (60 s window, video-only): cq27 GROWS two of three files (115%,
119%); cq31 lands at 43-74%; x265 crf26 at 34-67% with min SSIM 0.988-0.993 - and x265 beats NVENC
by 10-22% at matched SSIM. Pinning min SSIM >= 0.996 leaves only cq27, which is bigger than the
source, so ~0.99 is the usable quality frontier and the owner gets to make that call explicitly
(references/hevc-conversion-policy.md section 11, SKILL.md scope section).
The installed skill had drifted ahead of the repo: SKILL.md carried the whole owner-requirements
section and references/hevc-conversion-policy.md was missing here entirely. Synced both.
Also states the boundary the policy needs: this skill's size hunt (SSIM-pinned quality, maxrate
1.0x source video bitrate, bpp tiering, matched audio) is for H.264 / MPEG-4 sources. YouTube's
VP9/AV1 sources are already near-optimal for their quality, so a re-encode can only grow them or
lose quality - the accepted answer there is 'same size, do not chase smaller', and the job reduces
to: never decode with *_cuvid, keep -fps_mode cfr, gate the output on pictures vs the source, and
source any repair from the pre-conversion snapshot backup rather than the converted file.
hoelee