[MPlayer-users] disagreement between mplayer displayed timecode and -ss flag

[Dean S. Messing]

Note: I've moved followup to the bottom in keeping with Mail List "Netiquette"

Giacomo Comes wrote:
 :: On Mon, Aug 30, 2004 at 11:32:03AM -0700, Dean S. Messing wrote:
 :: > 
 :: > Running mplayer-1.0-0.pre5.3plf
 :: > 
 :: > I'm trying to extract a small swath of frames from the _Titanic_ DVD
 :: > in order to test some video processing algorithms.  I find the
 :: > approximate beginning of where I want to extract by viewig the DVD and
 :: > watching the "V: xxx.x" timecodes go by on the text output of the
 :: > commandline:
 :: > 
 :: >      mplayer dvd://1  -nosound  -monitoraspect 16:9 
 :: > 
 :: > I find that what I want starts at about "V: 265.0"
 :: > 
 :: > But when I then do 
 :: > 
 :: > 
 :: > mplayer dvd://1  -nosound  -ss 265 -frames 200 -monitoraspect 16:9 
 :: > 
 :: > what gets played is somewhere around 435 seconds.
 :: > 
 :: > By cut and try I found that -ss 175 starts playing at 265.
 :: > 
 :: > Near the beginning of the film (first minute or so) there is not much
 :: > discrepancy.  Then it seems to jump to something pretty big after
 :: > couple minutes.
 :: > 
 :: > Any ideas on what is happening?  Maybe it has something to do with
 :: > switching between telecine and no telecine within the movie.  But I've
 :: > tried using -fps 29.970 to inhibit the auto-switching and it does not
 :: > solve the problem
 :: 
 :: You need to use -ss 4:25
 :: 4 minutes 25 seconds = 265 seconds

Thanks for the attempt at helping, but -ss 4:25 does precisely the
same thing as -ss 265.  I checked.  A positive integer is evidently
interpreted, correctly, as "number of seconds".  In both cases it
lands me at about 435 seconds into the movie.  The apparent "closeness"
of "4:25" and 435 is just a coincidence, I think.

Any other ideas?