[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] Seeking to beginning of avi file skips first audio packet

[John Stebbins]

On 05/17/2010 10:56 AM, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 04:31:07PM -0700, John Stebbins wrote:
>   
>> When seeking to the beginning of an avi file with av_seek_frame,
>> avi_read_seek seeks to the correct position for stream index 0, then
>> seeks to the next interleaved packet for all other streams.  
>>     
> no, it does not, there is just 1 seek. The code just initializes
> internal variables for the other streams.
>
>   
I realize that.  My language was imprecise.
>   
>> When
>> seeking to the beginning of the file, this causes packets for other
>> streams to be skipped if these streams start earlier in the file than
>> stream 0.
>>     
> yes thats how the code works, i can see that this may be undesireable
> but instead of hacking around on the old seeking api. I think we should
> look into getting the new api (avformat_seek_file) in shape and implemented.
> otoh if one really wanted to work on the old, a prerequesite of your
> change would be to update the old api to describe this issue and
> preferred behavior otherwise one can be sure that no 2 demuxers would
> behave equal.
>
>   
I didn't know there was a new api being worked on.  If the old is being
deprecated, then by all means, the effort should go into the new.
>   
>> This patch changes the logic only when a backward seek is requested. It
>>     
> yes and maybe this makes sense or maybe not
> so why just for backward seeks?
>
>
>   
To be honest, I wanted to change the behaviour for all cases.  It seems
more correct to adjust to a position that is at or before the desired
timestamp after searching for that timestamp in all stream indexes. But
I was afraid this could cause issues for programs that expected the
current behaviour.   For example, a small forward seek request could
result in a backward seek if the packets of one stream span a much
larger duration than the packets of another stream in the file.  So by
checking the direction flag, I am guaranteeing that the seek will always
result in a movement in the desired direction.