[MPlayer-users] seek in millisecond position

[Oliver Seitz]

On 02.07.2012 14:03, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On 07/02/2012 06:03 AM, Oliver Seitz wrote:
>>
>>> how can i seek in millisecond position instead of second.
>>
>> This can only be useful if you have a keyframe-only file. Otherwise,
>> every seek would land on a near keyframe, which leads to a granularity
>> usually bigger than one second. Therefore, seek positions with higher
>> accuracy are quite rarely needed.
>>
>
> Isn't the upper limit in millisecond granularity defined by the formula
> 1000/fps? 29.97 fps video would thus be limited to a 33.3667 ms resolution.
>
> Anyway, what about MJPEG? It's files are huge, but that *should* let you
> easily step frame by frame.

Right. MJPEG is keyframe-only, so mplayer could jump to any desired 
frame. MJPEG is often used for editing, but rarely for distributing and 
playing of videos. You said it, files are quite big.

MPlayer is made for playing, not for editing. So it aims mainly at 
codecs which are mostly used for playing, and these codecs use P- and/or 
B-frames. So, codecs which are mostly played do not support simple seeks 
to each frame. Then, a software which is mostly used for playing does 
not need to support a seek to each frame.

Well, ok, it wouldn't hurt either ;-) I'd prefer a means to seek to a 
certain frame number, not fractions of a second.

By the way, slave.txt does not state that fractions of a second were not 
supported. Did anyone actually try seeking to fractions of a second in a 
keyframe-only file?

Greets,
Kiste