[MEncoder-users] FPS changed ... -> 0.000

[Brian Szymanski]

Hi,

I'm having a sporatic problem with ty files I grab from my tivo where I
get the following message:
  Warning! FPS changed 29.970 -> 0.000  (29.969999) [15]

This is the last thing mencoder does before getting caught in what appears
to be an infinite loop (it ran for over 48 hours on a p4 at 3GHz with no
further messages).

I think this is happening when a tivo loses its satellite feed
temporarily, resulting in a blank space in the .ty file? Trying to play
the .ty file with mplayer results in a similar problem - the display
garbles and then freezes until one presses an arrow key to seek forward a
bit, when the display returns.

Seems to me the right thing to do is default FPS to 1 when it is set to 0,
which is an impossible value. That way you get some garbled and perhaps
black frames for a few seconds, and the display would hopefully return...

Alternatively, any ideas on how to work around this problem in a
scriptable way?

Cheers,
Brian Szymanski
ski at mediamatters.org