I got ffmpegX because I needed to split a long MPEG-2 stream harvested from my Replay TV into smaller chunks. I tried mpgtxwrap, but it did not cut at the times I specified.

I looked into Missing MPEG Tools. I STILL cant figure out where to go to find the missing MPEG components those tools seem to need to get working. The ffmpegX installer REALLY GETS THIS PART RIGHT!

Anyway, I've got this 3.2GB .mpg file that I want to break up at the commercial breaks. I know the times I want to cut at, but both ffmpegX and mpgtxwrap give me problems. Here are the problems I encountered with ffmpegX 0.0.8. I fear that most of these problems are due to bugs in the mpgtx tool, but that project has had no activity since 11/2002, so I'm hoping the ffmpegX community will be able to get traction on remedies. The most serious problem is #4 below:

1. ffmpegX will only split a file in two.

ffmpegX and mpgtxwrap apparently both call mpgtx to do splitting.
It would be REALLY nice if ffmpegX would support multiple cuts using the full functionality of mpgtx ranges.

2. ffmpegX (mpgtx?) gets the cut points wrong.

If I specify a Split at 10:00. Preview shows me a cut point at 8:59.
If I specify a Split at 20:00. Preview shows me a cut point at 18:15.
This probably means that the mplay is not properly calculating the cut point with the DropFrame standard. The Actual splits show up in a different place from the preview, but STILL not where I specify. (They show up, I believe, one second early per 10 minutes of elapsed time.)

3. ffmpegX splitting cannot be aborted.

When part 1 of a split is done, I look at it to see if it actually cut somewhere I can work with. If not, I have to kill the mpgtx sub-process by hand. mpgtxwrapper does better here, offering a <STOP> button.

4. ffmpegX (mptgx?) has trouble using its own output for input.
I need to cut this file into 9 chunks, at commercials. But I don't want to have to re-process 3.2GB for every split. Since the output of mpgtxwrap did not work, I decided to use ffmpegX, but to split part 2 recursively.
Well,

spliting Big to bigpart1 and bigpart2 works.
splitting bigpart2 into littlepart1, and littlepart2 works.
splitting littlepart2 into tinypart1 and tinypart2 FAILS.

The symptom is that you get the "ffmpegX Finished." alert immediately, and there's a zero-length tinypart1 file, and no tinypart2 file.

Running mpgtx by hand on littlepart2 gives the slightly more helpful error message, "Bus error".

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I'm very intersted in learning more about ffmpegX, and in maybe using it more. The reason why I wanted to split up this 3.2 GB file is that when I take ReplayTV output (harvested with the excellent DV-Archive program) and burn it to DVD using Sizzle I get a cumulative audio/video sync problem that's not noticable until after about 45 minuts of program.
I originally got ffmpegX to cut the big programs down smaller. Alas, whatever sync problem exists, the segments get it too! Perhaps if I learned more about building DVD's with ffmpegX instead of Sizzle, the problem would go away.

My current tool chain is:

RTV->demux->Sizzle
or
RTV->goppler -fix ->ffmpegX->demux->Sizzle

The demux program I use is Jean Luc Vailllant's demux program that quietly throws away stuff until it gets to a real GOP header instead of choking and dying on RTV output that begins in the middle of a GOP, like other demux tools apparently do. As it is, I have to use Dave Coultier's goppler tool to prevent mpgtx from getting WAY confused by an MPEG-2 input file that begins in the middle of a GOP.

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Well, I've given y'all FAR too much to think about.
I've been working this issue from a variety of directions in a variety of forums. Maybe ffmpegX is the proper venue?

Thanks for a heavy duty program, with the BEST installer I've seen (given the MPEG licensing and downloading brain damage we're subjected to). Thanks in advance for help with these problems/bugs.

-wdc