[MPlayer-users] How to tell how far through you are

[Raphael]

Kichigai Mentat wrote:
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> On Apr 2, 2006, at 12.45, Raphael wrote:
>
>> Kichigai Mentat wrote:
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>>> On Apr 1, 2006, at 08.00, Raphael wrote:
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>>>> Sorry I am clearly not explaining myself well. I don't know where 
>>>> in the file I want to chop it. I want to browse through it by 
>>>> skipping along and then note down the position. The file is 13 
>>>> hours long so I really don't want to sit there fore 13 hours 
>>>> listening to it. I can then use that information to do the 
>>>> chopping. -ss and -sb don't help me solve this problem unless I use 
>>>> them as part of  some sort of binary search procedure.
>>>>
>>>> What mplayer could do for me is correctly keep track of the 
>>>> position as I skip through it with the right arrow. Sadly it 
>>>> doesn't at present even with -idx.
>>>
>>> Odd, because I thought that the progress meter worked fine. Could 
>>> you upload a sample file for us to work from?
>>>
>>>>
>>
>> http://www.lesshaste.plus.com/test.dump
>
> Well, I looked at your file, and I discovered some interesting things 
> about it. First off: the sample you dumped was indeed a RealMedia 
> muxed file, not just a stream dump of the audio. However, it's done 
> weirdly. MPlayer will play it, but, as you said, seeking is totally 
> b0rk'd. It wouldn't give me the proper seek in seconds, but I was able 
> to get the percentage to work with -idx (not what you're looking for, 
> but it gives us something to start from).
>
> However, when I tried playing it in VLC, it simply started to fill up 
> the playlist with gibberish, and spat back enough errors to crash the 
> player. I took a stab at it with the RealPlayer (yeah, I have that...) 
> but it refused to play the file. It gave a nod to RealAudio 8, but 
> that's about it. ffplay just locks up when I try to play it.
>
> I also tried my solution: remux it with Matroska. MKVMerge recognizes 
> the RealMedia muxing, but it can't find an audio stream. Try as I 
> might, I can't get anything out of it. I also tried dumping the raw 
> audio data to a file using -dumpaudio. The dump is successful, but the 
> binary data is worthless. MPlayer/MEncoder don't recognize it, and 
> neither does MKVMerge.
>
> How did you come across this file? Is it a download? A stream dump? I 
> think that the problem isn't completely with MPlayer any more, but 
> also with the source. Do YOU have any other players that recognize the 
> file? As an OS X user, I have a different library of tools available 
> (No win32 codecs...) so perhaps you can dig up something I can't.
The file was created with

mplayer -dumpstream 
rtsp://rmlivev8.bbc.net.uk/farm/*/ev7/live24/radio1/live/r1_dsat_g2.ra

I did manage to convert it to mp3 by making a fifo and doing

mplayer stream.dump -ao pcm:file=audio.fifo:fast


and then using lame on that fifo (strangely it encoded only the first 3 
hours but that is a different matter probably related to fifos)

Raphael