Seeking/jumping forward/backward in a video

[[ss]vegeta]

Hello
As always, I'm really not sure if this is the proper sub-forum. My apologies if it isn't.

Seeking/jumping through the videos I'm watching is an option that I use a lot.
I've noticed that the speed depends from the media player and or/codec used, whether it's seeking to keyframes and probably other stuff.
For example, seeking in a wmv video is reaaaally slow, like the picture freezes and it needs like 3-4 seconds to start playing again.
In other videos it's pretty fast but sometimes still lags for a second or so. Does it also depend on the bitrate of the video and/or resolution?
I'm also wondering which hardware parts are controlling this the most? Is it the hard drive, processor or the graphic card?
I'm hinting into the hard drive. Will buying an SSD make my seeking through videos almost instantaneous?
Thanks!

[Krispy Kritter]

The media player, codec, how it's encoded, and the file size, to name just a few. The actual "problem" with each file will likely have a different solution.

[[ss]vegeta]

The media player, codec, how it's encoded, and the file size, to name just a few. The actual "problem" with each file will likely have a different solution.

Yeah I was kinda expecting that but I was also kinda hoping that an SSD will resolve all the different problems?

[Cornucopia]

Seeking depends primarily on the GOP length (actually Keyframe interval) and indexing. Decoding complexity (via codec & settings choices, and to a minor extent resolution) can also affect the total "seek time". Bitrate has little to do with it, AFAIK.

WMV, older Flash, divx & Real streams are notorious for having very long Keyint (e.g. ~10 seconds at 30fps = 300). This can make seeking take as long as the 3-4 seconds of delay that the OP has encountered.

Of course, if you have slow storage media then it could be possible that THAT is the weakest link in the chain for displaying certain kinds of footage (2k/4k, HFR, RAW/Uncompressed), but HDD access times aren't "3-4 seconds"!

Scott

[[ss]vegeta]

WMV, older Flash, divx & Real streams are notorious for having very long Keyint (e.g. ~10 seconds at 30fps = 300). This can make seeking take as long as the 3-4 seconds of delay that the OP has encountered.

But, but, I've checked videos that(mp4/mkv) I'm seeking fast and most of them also have keyframes on every 300 frame approximately.

[katipo]

Seeking/jumping through the videos I'm watching is an option that I use a lot. I've noticed that the speed depends from the media player and or/codec used, whether it's seeking to keyframes and probably other stuff.

I assume you are playing media on a Windows PC? If so, then just switching media players can make a big difference in seek or skip times. The #1 benefit switching to PotPlayer for me (from MPC-HC, VLC and others) was the marked improvement in seek times. I first ensured that the "Time Jump" settings were set to "Move by KeyFrame" which definitely helps. In PotPlayer you use the arrow keys and a combination of either Ctl, Shift, or Ctl+Alt to change the jump interval size. Direct mouse clicks on the time/scrub bar of course work great too. For me it's still the fastest seeking software player I've tried to date. Of course other players may have caught up by now, but give it a try.

[[ss]vegeta]

Seeking/jumping through the videos I'm watching is an option that I use a lot. I've noticed that the speed depends from the media player and or/codec used, whether it's seeking to keyframes and probably other stuff.

I assume you are playing media on a Windows PC? If so, then just switching media players can make a big difference in seek or skip times. The #1 benefit switching to PotPlayer for me (from MPC-HC, VLC and others) was the marked improvement in seek times. I first ensured that the "Time Jump" settings were set to "Move by KeyFrame" which definitely helps. In PotPlayer you use the arrow keys and a combination of either Ctl, Shift, or Ctl+Alt to change the jump interval size. Direct mouse clicks on the time/scrub bar of course work great too. For me it's still the fastest seeking software player I've tried to date. Of course other players may have caught up by now, but give it a try.

Thanks.
In my history of video watching, only 2 media players were used the most.
KMPlayer and MPC-HC. I've used KM Player for years without updating and it worked great, but suddenly with some videos problems started arising and then I saw that the newest version of KMPlayer was bundled with pounds of unnecessary software add-ins and I had to switch to another media player - MPC-HC. I've been using MPC-HC for a year now with LAV filters and madVR and it's great. The switch to another media player might intimidate me but I've seen PotPlayer suggested on various video guides/discussion sites so I'll certainly give it a try though I doubt it will give better performance than MPC-HC.

[EDIT] I was wrong. potplayer's seeking is really smooth. But on the second video I tried there seems to be no sound
[EDIT2] Installing the 32 bit version fixed the problem. Time to configure potplayer!

[hello_hello]

Potplayer is probably really smooth because by default fast seek is enabled and hardware decoding is disabled (the default settings might depend a little on the version of Windows you're using). If you disable fast seek and enable hardware decoding I'm sure you'll find it's no different to MPC-HC. It may depend on the video card you have but for me hardware decoding slows seeking compared to CPU decoding even though my video card has no trouble decoding 1080p. It just slows seeking down, but my card's pretty old.

Mind you I don't really understand the fuss. At worst when I jump to a new location using the navigation bar it might take a couple of seconds to resume playback, but that's as bad as it gets. Usually it's faster, and for resolutions lower than 1080p it's faster again. For standard definition, it's virtually instantaneous.

[Potfanboy]

I found this thread trying to find out what was wrong with my VLC setup (CHOPPY seeking/fast forward).
Tried PotPlayer as adviced above with the same video file and it seeks perfectly.

BTW, I tried activating fast seek on VLC. Made no noticeable difference.
Thanks for the tip.
(replied to necro post to help others in future).