[MEncoder-users] Strange handling of time arguments passed to -ss

[EC]

On Mon, Aug 22, 2005 at 12:07:20AM +0200, Moritz Beller wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> Given an MPEG-2 TS video file which I recirded from my DVB-S TV card,
> mplayer seems to have some huge problems with the time lapse. It says
> the stream starts off at position 08:10:00, which doesn't particularly
> make any sense. Now, that is OK, it's no harm, I could live with it. In
> fact, the problem arises that mencoder again sees the whole issue quite
> differently, by which I mean its handling of the arguments passed to -ss
> is - at best - simply "undefined behaviour".
> If I  give -ss 600s, which should begin the encoding process at postion
> (streamstart+10 min), it begins to record somewhere in the middle of the
> file. If, however, mencoder is being called with "small values" such as
> -ss 2 -endpos 1, it nicely jumps to position streamstart+2s, and then
> records a file of 1s.
> 
> As it stands, the value passed to -ss in this odd example is for sure
> not as defined by the SI (seconds), nor any other unit for the measure
> of time I know of.
> 
> Strangely enough, the value passed to -endpos is interpreted correctly,
> regardless of its size.
> 
> Moritz
> --
> (o_    web	http://www.4momo.de
> //\    mail 	momo at 4momo dot de
> V_/_   gpg	http://gpg.notlong.com
> 
Indexes and seeking through video files is notoriously flaky,
independant of the player used. This will be especially true if you
recorded it from a stream and just C-c'ed it when you wanted to stop.
Rebuilding the index of the file can help:
http://mplayerhq.hu/~diego/DOCS/HTML-single/en/MPlayer.html#id2873868

//Eli