VLC 3.x and newer always tends to fall backward after a time jump. Very short jump forward jumps to current time.

[leftdisconnected]

All of my current video files are either MKV or MP4 and either format shows the exact same behavior. I assume the behavior might be different with a DVD, but I don't have an easy way to test DVD playback at the moment.

I'm on a Win7-64 machine that has not had hardware changes and I've observed no correlation between this issue and other software. I cannot rule out conflicts, but this issue began immediately after upgrading to VLC 3.0.0. I do not run third-party antivirus/security software or anything else that seems likely to conflict. Also, I have tested the MPV player and it does NOT show this behavior at all.

Like many, I've used VLC for many years, but the upgrade to version 3.0.0 and newer somehow "broke" the jump backward/forward feature so that using the "Very short jump forward" feature "jumps" to the current start position perhaps 95% of the time and only rarely jumps forward. I get a repetitious "sampling" sort of effect rather than a forward jump. To achieve a very short jump forward, you need to very rapidly double-tap the hotkey (default Shift+Right). Doing two jumps very quickly will resume playback approximately one jump forward, but the timeline will still show the expected double jump for some number of milliseconds before falling back a few seconds to resume playback.

The issue occurs regardless of what the "Very short jump length" is set to, though a large enough jump will cause forward movement. What happens is that the timeline immediately jumps forward the desired amount of time, but then "falls back" a few seconds (more fallback with larger Very short jump lengths, but no more than 4 seconds), though it never seems to jump back further than when you started.

Example if Very short jump length (VSJL) is set to 3 seconds:

1:00 --> [Shift+Right] --> timeline shows 1:03 --> video glitches for a moment (? milliseconds) and then playback resumes at 1:00

If Very short jump length is set to 5 seconds:

1:00 --> [Shift+Right] --> timeline shows 1:05 --> video glitches for a moment and then playback resumes at 1:04

If Very short jump length is set to 10 seconds:

1:00 --> [Shift+Right] --> timeline shows 1:10 --> video glitches for a moment and then playback resumes at 1:07

It appears that since 3 seconds is very close to or less than the inherent "backward" travel before playback actually resumes, that jump length actually travels backward to your starting position rather than forward. I have NEVER observed the playback actually moving backward in time due to a forward jump, even if VSJL is set to only 1 second, so some logic must prevent this from occurring.

Note that this issue ALSO affects the time toolbar, so that clicking on the bar at a particular position might show 1:00 for just a moment, but then playback resumes at 0:58. It appears that the playback ALWAYS falls backward slightly whether a hotkey OR the time toolbar was used to make the jump.

This issue does not immediately occur while a video is paused and both hotkey jumps and the time toolbar appear to go to the exact position desired. However, resuming playback immediately "falls" backward slightly, just like when jumping forward or backward during playback.

The time ALSO falls backward slightly when jumping backward via hotkeys or the time toolbar, but this is less frustrating to the user since they intended to go backward anyway. Yes, I always get slightly more of a jump backward than I expected, but it's still more bearable.

I am confident that this behavior did (does) NOT occur with VLC 2.x or older. It could be coincidence, but it seems unlikely.

Thanks very much for your time.

[leftdisconnected]

Well, I apologize if the OP was too long to digest, but I wanted to provide all of the details I could .

Even the default very short jump time causes the video to stutter at the same time rather than move forward. That's about as simple as I can state it.

My only "solution" has been to increase the very short jump time until the "fallback" is still forward of the present time.

[niky666_2004]

I have the same problem in recent time.
When very short forward jump, for some short movies part time works, for long movies never works.
I was using this method to skip uninteresting parts of movies.
Ofc I tried to update but I am using the newest VLC it seems 3.0.8 Vetinari
Any news?

[niky666_2004]

Nobody has this issues? I noticed recently that any seek you make on a movie played in VLC is not precise. It does not matter keyboard, mouse, forward, reverse. All seek operations are imprecise. I see it as an important function to a movie player, really nobody but nobody else noticed? Thank you

[leftdisconnected]

I've also noticed that seeking on the Android version of VLC, which I love, also has similar issues and is not accurate, but I suspect that there's no direct correlation between the Android and PC applications.

I'll note that MPV, which is not even a full-featured player, has none of these seek problems and behaves as expected. Not only is it predictable, but seeking in MPV is also much faster than in VLC. VLC often freezes for a moment before resuming playback at the new position.

As I've said previously, I never had seek problems in versions prior to 3.0.0. I love VLC, but the strange seek behavior is very frustrating when you use the program as much as I do.

[niky666_2004]

Anyway, I could'nt stand it anymore and downgraded. I wrote in google vlc 2 and chose vlc2.28, seemed the most recent. I downloaded (download did not even start automatically) and downgraded. Sorry VLC, It just didn't work out for me.

[meameamea]

This issue does not immediately occur while a video is paused

I have a similar issue and this thread seemed closest, when I searched the forum for seeking problems.

I have trouble seeking through videos. I use my wheel and play mostly .ts recorded from my tv adapter. When scrolling forward it often jumps several minutes back. Sometimes up to 7 minutes. This is very frustrating when fast forwarding through comercial breaks or when trying to find the beginning of a show.

(And that the wheel has the opposite direction when hovering over the scrollbar is rather bogus as well)

Anyways, when pausing the video before seeking, the timeline seems to not jump wildly around.

So I was hoping that my issue would get solved the same way. Was this issue ever solved? Is there a workaround? Ways to improve reliability of seeking?

Most of my files have mpeg2 in it. Does not seem to happen in HD files a lot if ever. Win 10 32GB Ram, Ryzen 7, vlc 3011 64 bit.