[MPlayer-users] Counter resets while playing DVD

[Arpi]

Hi,

> I have noticed that the OSD counter is sometimes reset during DVD 
> playback. This is also the reason for my subtitle file problem I have 
> posted here before, and it seems to be related to a posting made by 
> Joshua Rothenberg back in July [1].
> 
> This problem is really annoying me, so I have tested all my DVDs in 
> order to find more details about it. The results are:
> 
>   * A few DVDs don't reset the counter at all.
> 
>   * The other DVDs reset the counter just once, at about one hour
>     and a couple of minutes playing time. There was never a second
>     reset at some other timestamp.
> 
>   * The position of the reset is always the same at the appropriate
>     DVD. It is not bound to a chapter, but is often happening between
>     two movie scenes.

the 'counter' (it's called PTS timestamp) is stored in the mpeg stream
(.VOB files) for every single video frame. if it resets somewhere, it's a
DVD mastering bug. we can do nothing with it... (mplayer just reads out
the timestamp from the VOB and displays it / uses it for ascii SUBs)
anyway i also saw lots or DVDs resetting counter, some even after every
few minutes...

anyway it's not really usable. think of multiangle movies, or movies
with optional scenes (ie you can play the 'cinema edit' and 'directors long
cut' versions for example, it's still playing the same .VOBs but in one case
it skips some parts of it -> counter will jump/reset there)

> A'rpi, what do you think about it?

the IFO files contain some timestamps for chapters (so it's known what time
position a given chapter starts relative to the whole film).
maybe we should mix a 'real' timestamp from the chapter info start time and
the stream's timer relative to the value at the start of the chapter...
but if it resets/jumps in the middle of a chapter then nothing helps. :(

i wonder how the real dvd players handle it... maybe they assume a constant
bitrate and uses the byte position for base... or there is another
timestamp-like thing in the NAVI blocks (but unfortunatelly no one has the
NAVI specs, just some partal rev. engineered docs are out there, used for
dvdnav/dvdread libs too)

>    * German edition (RC2) of "Contact" at 01:14:33.
same in the hungarian edition too :(


A'rpi / Astral & ESP-team

--
Developer of MPlayer, the Movie Player for Linux - http://www.MPlayerHQ.hu