[MEncoder-users] Problem with EDL

[The Wanderer]

Fluxid wrote:

>> If you are trying to cut out a single segment from the middle of
>> the file, why do you not use -ss and -endpos rather than doing
>> complicated things with EDLs?
> 
> -endpos is not working at all, i wrote about it in my post

I'm sorry, I missed that part.

-endpos certainly *should* work - if it doesn't, something has been
severely broken.

>> The fact that your reply (and for that matter your original
>> message) contained lines something like 130 characters long, vs.
>> the accepted standard maximum of 80 if not fewer, is considerably
>> more annoying. The fact of replying to your own message, so long as
>> you actually have something more to say and there is no immediately
>> better place to say it, is not bothersome at all.
> 
> Sorry for that, i configured my mail client this way... I'll remember
> to wrap lines manually ;)

Much appreciated. (I re-wrap every message partly by hand, because my
mail client's auto-rewrap is partly broken. In most cases, it's less of
a pain than you might think.)

>> Unfortunately, the only completely reliable way to determine the
>> length of a file - either in frames or in seconds - is to parse the
>> file through from beginning to end. There are some containers which
>> have the length information stored in file metadata, but not all
>> do.
>> 
>> Without knowing how long the file is, MEncoder obviously cannot
>> perform the test you describe.
> 
> Yes, but i'm sure that IT KNOWS the length, because mplayer knows it
> too (it shows length of movie in OSD... without decoding all frames
> ;)

Yes, the OSD does show a progress bar based on total file length.
However, there are two limitations to that.

The more relevant is that, while with most files MPlayer can get some
idea of how long the file is, it can easily be *wrong* - particularly if
the container lies about the file's length (which can happen more easily
than you might think). It seems entirely possible that the length
MPlayer thinks the file has is different from the actual length of the
file. (As I posted somewhere recently, I've had 3-minute files reported
as 17 minutes and unknown-but-much-longer files reported as 10 minutes.)

Less relevant to the point at hand is that you may notice that on some
files, the OSD "progress bar" is empty at all times and never progresses
towards full; on those files, MPlayer simply has no idea of what the
total time is.


Whether or not this has direct bearing on your problem I don't know, but
I would expect it to be the case.

-- 
       The Wanderer

Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.