[MPlayer-users] mplayer, mencoder - timecode/control on mjpg/mpeg-4 streams?

[boycat]

Hello all,
I've got a couple sources that can stream mpeg-4 or mjpg data, and mplayer can view them just fine in real-time.

If i record to a file, however, and play back, things play back VERY fast.

For instance, if I record 10 minutes of this video, and play it back with mplayer, it might all play back in under 2 minutes! 

although it's funny to see how ridiculous i look in high-speed, i have found i can get around this by specifying fps=24 or fps=30, depending on how i set the source, and as long as i use it on both the recording and playback mplayer sessions.

Then the problem I had was... what if I wanted to seek to a specific point in the file... say... 7 minutes 32 seconds, frame 20. 

Is there a way to generate a timecode, can mplayer internally do this somehow? 

or... can mencoder do it, and here's why I ask:

eventually, I want to take these two sources and "flip" between them on-demand and have the resultant "mixed" video (camera 1, camera 2, camera 1, etc..) streamed back out to another application. if mencoder can add this after the initial stream has been received and when it encodes it, that's another viable option. 

the reasons i want to do this are we're using the cameras to track the movement of an object in a fixed zone, and want to record when certain 'events' occur within our experimental object, and how frequently (could be several hundred times per hour) they occur. we'd like to get a two-angle perspective on the object when the events occur, which can actually be measured by a probe (we have a trigger set up to record them in a labview computer, etc..) and we'd like to jump to the specific times in the video feeds where these events occurred... hopefully in both the files that mplayer can record, and if we can get a 'switchable' output stream, that video feed as well...

so i think a timecode on the video is what i'm looking for.. that or some sort of 'encapsulated' data stream describing the video feed's frame status relevant to real-time...

i hope all of that made sense... does anyone have any suggestions on what to read, etc?

thank you all in advance-

-jre