The VideoLAN Forums

When I play this movie with VLC:

http://thejuggalo.co.cc/temp/test.zip (26 MB, contains a .asf file)

I can't seek forward or backward! Very strange, I do see the seekbar, when I click on it or drag the position marker, it wais for a fraction of a sec, and then continues where it was..?
Can't even see how long the movie is. Note that it's not a stream or something, I'm watching it locally (even without internet unplugged).

At first I thought this may be a shortcoming on my end (outdated codec or whatever) but I can play the movie normally, just no seeking / timing / etc. And I asked a few guys around (who are very keen on updating and having the latest version of everything) and they experience the same problem.

Bug in VLC??

Video File is missing length info.

You might want to try remux the file. It should hopefully fix the seeking.

Tnx for your replies.

Video File is missing length info.

I don't know much about video file formats, I would have thought that information was mandatory for a movie.

But if the length is unknown, how does VLC know when to stop playing?

You might want to try remux the file. It should hopefully fix the seeking.

I have no clue whatsoever what 'remux' is. Can you elaborate, is there an easy way for a beginner to do this?
And would it be an idea to let VLC 'remux' files automatically if they're messed up?

Just to be clear: I didn't produce this movie, just found it somewhere.

Still, I'm wondering.. since VLC can play this movie, why would it not be able to seek back to positions it already played earlier?

Still, I'm wondering.. since VLC can play this movie, why would it not be able to seek back to positions it already played earlier?

VLC doesn't keep earlier played stuff in memory. So once VLC has passed the certain spot, you have to decode the earlier part again if you want to see it.

And would it be an idea to let VLC 'remux' files automatically if they're messed up?

There is fixing operation for AVI files, but IMHO it just causes more confusion. And most devs aren't very interested about ASF. Tool called AsfBin should fix those broken ASF files.

VLC doesn't keep earlier played stuff in memory. So once VLC has passed the certain spot, you have to decode the earlier part again if you want to see it.

No, I understand, I guess that wouldn't be even possible for very large movies. But possibly it may remember some 'key' points, i.e. not entire frames or movie content, but just some decoding statistics to quickly continue playing from earlier positions.

Anyway, my problem has been solved for this particular movie:

There is fixing operation for AVI files, but IMHO it just causes more confusion. And most devs aren't very interested about ASF. Tool called AsfBin should fix those broken ASF files.

I downloaded that and it worked perfectly!

Thanks a lot!!