The VideoLAN Forums

I often see "glitches" when using the keyboard shortcuts to skip backward or forward while watching a video. I believe it's only happened while watching a file which is still being recorded. I'm recording TV using Hauppauge WinTV v10 (on Windows 11), which creates files with a .TS extension. VLC will play the beginning of these while more video is being added to the end of the file. The timeline initially reflects the amount of video when VLS starts playing, but the end time point will move out as the player gets to the end (by playing or forward skip). But sometimes, instead of a 10s jump (forward or backward), the time point jumps ahead several minutes (or, I think, sometimes backward). I believe I've seen a back skip (Left Arrow) jump forward by a big chunk, and I believe I've seen a skip forward (Right Arrow) sometimes jump back a big chunk.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think this happens mostly when the current play time point is close to the original (and displayed) end point, even if the file has accumulated a lot more time since beginning play. When just playing forward past the original end point (and extending it as it goes) nothing odd happens. But when I try a skip (over commercials or between plays in a football game) I sometimes see the behavior. I should also mention that I'm almost always playing at a speed other than 1.0; I typically use 1.2 for most regular programs and 1.7 for sports (and a few other) programs.

Does no one have any info or thoughts on this?

Please open Tools -> Messages (set Verbosity to 2) before you start the playback, and then paste the full resulting log here or on Pastebin.com or on Justpaste.it if it's too long.

Also upload a short sample of your original problematic file to Zippyshare.com or to WeTransfer.com and then post the link to the file here.
https://www.zippyshare.com
https://wetransfer.com

The files I'm playing are .TS files created by the Hauppauge video recorder (Win TV v 10.0.40143). How would I create "a short sample of" one of the recorded files which I see a skip error in?

Record a short one.

OK, I can record a five minute (let's say; what would be the maximum file size you'd want to see?) recording, but it may not necessarily exhibit the skip glitch issue. (To be honest, I don't really know if the glitches occur because of something about the file itself or just in general; I tend to mostly see it in large files played while still recording, though it has occasionally occurred with completed videos.)

Can you try and check with various file sizes ?

This is a problem with .TS files I have too (the type that would be ripped from a website or something). They don't skip correctly, and when they do skip sometimes the video will stay frozen for a few seconds while the audio plays and the timeline moves.

To joshmdmd: Yes! This tracks with my experiences as well. I don't recall ever seeing this with files I used to record with Windows Media Center: ms-dvr and wmv formats.

To Lotesdelere: I've been trying to capture the problem, to upload problem files/logs, but the problem almost never happens with shorter videos (<1hr). It also rarely (though not never) occurs when playing files that have fully recorded before playing. The most common occurrence is when I record something for (say) three hours and start playing after it's been recording for an hour and a half or more. Playing at higher speeds (like football at 1.7X) and skipping commercials and huddles, I get caught up to where the end was when I started watching, though the true end by then is later (VLC doesn't update its displayed end time until playing past where the end originally was). Then a skip often jumps way forward to near the new end time.

When I do still see the problem now, the files would be multi-gigabyte, presumably too large to post as suggested above. I haven't noticed the problem with short files, though I don't often play them until well after they've finished recording. I'll also mention one other thing, though I don't know if it has a bearing or not: I leave multiple VLC players on screen, reusing them over and over (with desired speed changes already set) rather than ending them and starting a new VLC each time. (As a different problem, the one I set to 2.4X speed for playing national and local news programs dies after I've used it multiple times, when I select and start playing new recordings.)

David