[Ffmpeg-devel] Re: [PATCH] file length handling

[Rich Felker]

On Tue, Dec 26, 2006 at 11:25:01AM -0500, Ronald S. Bultje wrote:
> of your binary seek. So depending on is_seek, you may want to adapt the
> behaviour of the demuxer at least a bit, although the effect on the user
> experience will be small.

Then there should be separate "seek based on a guess and a single
media seek" and "actually seek to timestamp" functions. The former is
probably acceptable for an interactive application with "user
experience" but the latter is absolutely required for any kind of
precision work. Lavf is not just for media players but for any type of
application including scripted editing and movie composition. Such use
needs a seek function that either does what it's asked or outright
fails (and reports failure), not a seek function that silently does
the wrong thing on certain types of streams.

Rich