I posted the question to both transcode and mplayer list re how to get mplayer/gmplayer (or any player for that matter) to position accurately in a mpg2 file using -ss. For some reason, g/mplayer does this quite fine if you encode with the transcode dvtodvd.sh script that is posted on their site. I don't have the time to sort out why my transcode/mplayer combo instead did the traditional overshoot, while the transcode dvtodvd.sh script that does mostly the same encoding works great. In case someone else wants to sort it out, my transcode/mplex combo that does not -ss accurately (with matrix.txt taken from transcode site): transcode -i x.dv -o x -x dv,dv -y mpeg2enc,mp2enc \ -N 0x50 -b 224 --export_prof dvd-ntsc \ -w 7500 --export_asr 2 --encode_fields b -j 0,8,0,8 \ -F '8,-c -q 6 -4 2 -2 1 -K file=matrix.txt -R 2' mplex -v 0 -V -f 8 -o x.m2v x.mpa -o x.mpg Anyway, I'm mentioning because it is common to see the remark that mplayer does not correctly work with -ss, but the truth is more that mplayer only handles some file formats correctly with -ss. Other experiments I ran were ... With mplayer and ogg-vorbis-theora mplayer does not do -ss correctly. Ogg-vorbis-theora libraries do not appear to be optimized as well as common mpeg2 libraries, and CPU usage for a high quality compression seemed to be about 3 times higher than for equivalent quality mpeg2 file. Net effect was my gentoo/athlon 2200+ with 1.5G of RAM could not play back an ogg-vorbis-theora compressed video of a marching band, hand held, etc. (so lots of jitter). Same jittery video compressed mpeg2 displayed fine on my box with vlc, xine, mplayer with slightly fatter (larger file, higher quality) compression. Helix Player may be a lot of folks' favorite little open source player, but Helix Player could not play back my high quality test DV file (see above) without essentially freezing up for most of the video. I tried taking a mpeg2 file that mplayer had trouble with accurate seeking into with -ss and turned it into a DVD iso image, then tried playing the DVD iso with mplayer. That did not help. It was a good experiment, the theory being perhaps the additional info provided by a full DVD iso image might help mplayer accurately track into the file. But, no. Still highly inaccurate -ss seeking in that case. But for all of the above problems I encountered, I want to stress that g/mplayer can accurately -ss into a VBR mpeg2 file if the VBR mpeg2 file is built the right way (and refer to the dvtodvd.sh script on the transcode site for clues re what might be the right way). I want to thank everyone who pitched in with suggestions. Heitzso