Can't Seek Specific Time In WMV Video

[imdaman]

I have this WMV that would not allow me too seek a specific time. When using WMP or VLC to seek a specific time, the video jumps several seconds before or after the time I wanted to seek. For example, if I seek at 1:00 it will jump to 0:50 instead. If I wanted to seek 14:00, it would jump to 14:20 instead. I thought the video was corrupted but I can play the video all the way to the end. I reencoded the video using Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 Pro using "Apply Source Encoding Settings" to keep everything the same. However even the new video jumps too but a lot less. Before it might jump up to about 15 seconds but now it only jumps as much as 5 seconds. Does anyone know what I can do to fix this? The source of the video was downloaded online (legally of course). I tried redownloading the video to see maybe it was corrupted while downloading but it was the same. Maybe the content provider did a bad encoding job...

Here is the MediaInfo details:
Format : Windows Media
File size : 623 MiB
Duration : 30mn 19s
Overall bit rate : 2 872 Kbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 2 828 Kbps

Video
ID : 1
Format : VC-1
Format profile : Main
Codec ID : WMV3
Codec ID/Info : Windows Media Video 9
Codec ID/Hint : WMV3
Description of the codec : Windows Media Video 9 - 2-pass CBR
Duration : 30mn 19s
Bit rate : 2 700 Kbps
Width : 960 pixels
Height : 540 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.217
Stream size : 586 MiB (94%)

Audio
ID : 2
Format : WMA
Format version : Version 2
Codec ID : 161
Codec ID/Info : Windows Media Audio
Description of the codec : Windows Media Audio 9 - 128 kbps, 44 kHz, stereo CBR
Duration : 30mn 19s
Bit rate : 128 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 27.8 MiB (4%)

[El Heggunte]

Just a wild guess --- that file was somehow muxed incorrectly. Perhaps it was not indexed as it should have been, and so all of its video frames were marked as keyframes (you can verify this with VirtualDub and the WMV input plugin). If you could cut a small segment of it and upload to here, probably we could help you more.

As for Expression Encoder.... well, "je le regrette beaucoup" Only very recently I confirmed what I had always suspected --- its ASF muxer is so b0rked, that even VirtualDub creates unplayable AVI remuxes via direct stream copy.

[imdaman]

Not sure how to install the plugin. Downloaded from http://codecpack.co/download/FFInputDriver.html and I place the items in the plugin folder but vdub still doesnt allow me to open the asf

[AlanHK]

Try opening with AVIDemux.

It can't save to WMV, but you can set "Video" and "Audio" to "Copy" and then save as "AVI" format.
That should give you a playable AVI file with no reencoding quality loss, as it just uses the original video and audio data.

I tried this with a random WMV and it worked for me.

[El Heggunte]

Not sure how to install the plugin. Downloaded from http://codecpack.co/download/FFInputDriver.html and I place the items in the plugin folder but vdub still doesnt allow me to open the asf

As I said, WMV input plugin:

http://gral.y0.pl/~fcchandler/Plugins/WMV/index.html

[imdaman]

Did you want the file info from vdub or a snippet of the vid? I'm getting a missing codec on the vdub screen. I cut a keyframe section out (5 secs) and it was 178mb. It's going to take forever for me to upload that and plus it might be a copyright issue.

AlanHK, I tried with 2.5.6 with a/v to copy and format to avi but when playing it, the video is playing as if it is being fast foward skipping every 3 secs

[Ai Haibara]

You might also see if asfbin can 'fix' the seeking in the WMV.

[El Heggunte]

If uploading a sample segment is a no-no, then you'd better not do that,
it's not my intention to give you new problems.

Ai Haibara is right, I had forgotten about AsfBin However I must warn you that AsfBin sometimes does not work as it should. To begin with, there are certain limitations that are present in the GUI, but not in the command-line executable. Secondly, the "Time Ranges" slider is not very precise, and maybe you need to tweak the "End" value in its text box --- otherwise, the output remux may lack one or more frames. Lastly, AsfBin often refuses to open files in which the "principal" stream is the audio one.

Another option: SolveigMM ASF Multiplexer --- which, again, not always produces good results.

Yet another option: ffmpeg.

[jagabo]

Your player is set to "fast seek" -- when seeking it starts playing at the nearest key frame, not the actual seeked position. As the name implies it is to reduce the time it takes to seek. Otherwise the player has to seek to the key frame before the seeked position and decompress every frame from there to the seeked position. Depending on the codec, GOP size, seek position, and speed of the computer that can take as long as several seconds. You can either reencode with shorter GOPs, or turn off fast seek.

[imdaman]

Tried asf but no luck. I will give SolveigMM and ffmpeg a try.

jagabo, dont think wmp has that option but I have it disabled by default in vlc and the problem still exist.