[MPlayer-users] Strange timecode behavior with FLAC files

[Uoti Urpala]

On Wed, 2010-11-24 at 23:46 +0100, Ilja Sekler wrote:
> On 13.05.2010 11:01, Daniel Dawson wrote:
> 
> > I've noticed that MPlayer's idea of the current time in FLAC files is
> > strange. It tends to be inaccurate, at least for me. What I have
> > observed:
> > 
> > * The timecode starts out stuck at some non-zero value and "flickers"
> >   around very close to it. Once the playback gets to that time, the
> >   timecode starts moving forward in almost a normal way. If I seek back
> >   to the beginning, it does the same thing over again.
> 
> This issue sours the usage of MPlayer for FLAC since quite a long time,
> but it wasn't that bad before. The initial timecode value was usually
> zero, flickering around for about 10 seconds, when it started to work
> normally. Now (r32642) this value is usually between 30 and 50 seconds.

The biggest cause of problems is that the FFmpeg FLAC decoder behaves
badly. It internally buffers packets in a way that makes it impossible
to know what part of its output corresponds to which input packet (and
thus to which timecode). I think this should get fixed after the FLAC
parser patches are applied in FFmpeg. The parser itself isn't needed,
but the patches remove the current badly done buffering implementation.