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Clip health

Steam records clips as DASH: a manifest (session.mpd) plus many small video and audio chunk files. If Steam crashes, the disk fills up, or a folder is partly deleted, a clip can lose pieces and stop playing. Steempeg checks every clip and labels it with one of four health states.

The four states

State Dot Plays? Can render? Meaning
Healthy 🟢 green Yes Yes Nothing wrong found.
Issues 🟡 amber Yes Yes Plays, but something is off (see the list below).
Dead 🔴 red No No Cannot play normally. The card is dimmed.
Cured 🟣 purple Via salvage Yes Was Dead, but salvage playback was verified. See Repair & salvage.

Dead (dimmed, red dot), Issues (amber dot), Cured (purple dot) and Healthy (green dot) cards

Top row: Dead, Issues. Bottom row: Cured, Healthy.

Where you see health

On the card

A small coloured dot in the top-right corner of every ClipCard. Dead cards are also dimmed.

In the player header

When a clip is open, the header shows a tinted health button with an icon and label (Healthy, Issues, Dead, Cured). Hover it for a one-line summary; click it for the full list of problems.

For Dead clips the menu also offers:

Health menu of a Dead clip

  • ▶️ Force play (salvage) — see Repair & salvage;
  • 🗑️ Delete clip;
  • 🗑️ Delete ALL dead clips (N) — asks first; Cured clips are never included.

In Filters and Sorting

  • Filters → 💚 Health has chips for Healthy, Issues, Dead and Cured.
  • Sorting → Bad health first / Good health first puts the worst (or best) clips on top.

What Steempeg checks

Checks run on the files in the clip folder, in this order.

Dead

A clip is Dead when any of these is true:

Problem Shown as
The video init segment (the decoder header, init-stream0.m4s) is missing or empty Missing or corrupt video init segment (init-stream0.m4s)
No video chunks left on disk (empty chunk files do not count) No video chunks on disk
The manifest exists but cannot be read Cannot read manifest
The manifest fails a real open test (see ffprobe below) Manifest cannot be opened (unplayable)
Video chunks exist but there is no manifest at all Video chunks present but no playable manifest
The folder is empty or unreadable Empty or unreadable folder

Issues

A clip has Issues when it plays but any of these is found:

Problem Shown as
No audio track (no audio header or no audio chunks) No audio track on disk
Steam's manifest was lost and Steempeg rebuilt one from the chunks Reconstructed manifest only (no original session.mpd)
The manifest claims a much longer clip than survives on disk (less than 30 s left and the claim is more than 5× that) Manifest claims Ns but only K video chunk(s) survive (~Ss on disk)
Audio and video start 1 second or more apart Audio/video start offset …
A jump of more than 30 seconds between the first video fragments Corrupt decode timeline jump: …

Anything else is Healthy.

ffprobe open test

For suspicious clips — rebuilt manifest, no audio, two or fewer video chunks, a timeline jump, or a length mismatch — Steempeg also asks ffprobe to open the manifest (6-second limit). If ffprobe cannot open it, the clip is Dead. This test runs only in Full checks, not in quick ones.

Clips with several recordings inside

Some Steam clips contain more than one recording folder. Steempeg checks each one and shows the worst result.

When health is checked

Results are cached in clip_health_cache.json and reused while the clip folder is unchanged.

Situation Check
Progressive startup (default) Cache, or a quick file check without ffprobe.
Quick startup Cache, or a quick file check.
Full startup Full check with ffprobe (cache still used when the folder is unchanged).
Skip startup No check — shows last session's labels.
Adding / choosing a clips folder, Steam auto-discovery Full check of the new clips.
Refresh Full scan.

Re-checking health

Refresh ▾ → 🩺 Re-check clip health (ffprobe)… ignores the cache and runs the full check (with ffprobe) on every clip. The status bar shows progress (Re-checking clip health (done/total)…), and a summary dialog lists how many clips are Healthy, Issues and Dead.

Use it after you moved, restored or edited clip folders by hand, or when a label looks wrong.

What each state allows

Healthy Issues Dead Cured
Play in the player ✅ ✅ ❌ offers salvage ✅ via salvage
Add to Render Queue ✅ ✅ ❌ skipped ✅
Render (any preset, incl. Original) ✅ ✅ ❌ ✅
Delete ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅

When you open a Dead clip, the player does not start. Instead a Dead Clip dialog lists the problems and offers Try to recover. A Dead clip already in the queue fails with Source clip is Dead and cannot be rendered.

Dead Clip dialog

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