[MPlayer-users] -ss in DVD broken ?

[D Richard Felker III]

On Mon, Jan 27, 2003 at 03:45:59PM +0100, Fabien Perdu wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> > OK, -ss does NOT work with NTSC DVD's because of telecine brain damage
> > confusing the framerate. However, what you want to do is brain damaged
> > too. Just cutting at an arbitrary time like 4000 seconds will probably
> > split CD's right during a scene and make watching the movie painful.
> > (Get up, switch CD's, restart player -- right while someone is
> > talking! -- bleh!!)
> 
> Well, that was not my aim.
> Due to the noise of my CD drive, I copy the film on the hard disk before
> watching it. Then mplayer CD1.avi CD2.avi.

If this is your goal, no need to make two avi files. Just make one,
then use the unix split command to split it so it fits on 2 cd's, then
cat it back together when putting it on the HD to watch.

However, cdrom noise should not be a problem. Go grab cdctl
(http://cdctl.sf.net) and run cdctl -b5 to set your cdrom down to 5x
and it should be silent. Note that you normally have to do this every
time you switch media, but it's still VERY nice!

> > Instead, you should use -chapter. For example, encode the first CD
> > with -chapter 1-9 and the second with -chapter 10-18 (assuming 18
> > chapters total). You might tweak the numbers depending on the lengths
> > and amount of action in the chapters.
> 
> OK, I will use this solution. Thank you for your answer.
> 
> Is it the same reason the makes midentify report ID_LENGTH=6720 while the
> real length of the movie is 8660s ? And is there a way of getting this
> length other than reading it on the DVD box ?

Yeah, probably so. I don't know any reliable way of getting the real
length. DVD encoding is very broken/braindamaged... :(

Rich