[MPlayer-users] ss and endpos

[Adam Nielsen]

> $ mencoder -ovc copy -oac copy -ss 01:10 -endpos 02:27

That is the purpose of -endpos...

> calculating all the time 02:27-01:10=01:17 and thus typing
> afterwards:
> $ mencoder -ovc copy -oac copy -ss 01:10 -endpos 01:17

If you type that, you'll end up with a seven second file, from 1min 10s -> 1 
min 17s.

The -endpos option tells mencoder what the playback time (from the beginning 
of the *file*, not the encode) should be when it stops encoding, e.g. -endpos 
03:05 will stop encoding three minutes and five seconds into the file 
(regardless of where you started encoding.)  If you use -ss 01:40 -endpos 
03:05, you will end up with a clip going for two minutes and 25 seconds (from 
01:40 to 03:05.)

The problem was that -endpos wasn't stopping the encode properly, hence the 
-frames option which appears to work.  If -endpos still doesn't work in the 
latest CVS of mplayer, it should be reported as a bug.

As an aside though, the calculations you need to do to use -frames are not 
terribly difficult, and if you're using them all the time (like me) you only 
need to write a shell script once ;-)

Cheers,
Adam.