Cannot play AVIs with low framerate

[andreag]

VLC is unable to play an AVI file if the framerate is 3 fps or lower.
I have made tests on Linux (version 0.8.6) and Windows (latest version 0.8.6c) and the bug is present on both platforms.
The bug has been present for some time.

I have captured about 30 seconds of video and transcoded it to different frame rates. The video plays fine if encoded to a framerate of 4 fps or more, it won't play if the framerate is 3 fps or less.

If the framerate is 3 fps or less, VLC shows the first frame and nothing more, while the progress bar will go on normally.
On the console, this error message is shown repeatedly:

Code: Select all

[00000301] ffmpeg decoder error: more than 5 seconds of late video -> dropping frame (computer too slow ?)

If the video is played faster (x2, x4) so that the effective framerate is 4 or more, the video plays correctly.
The reverse is also true: if a video is played slower (x0.5, x0.25) so that the effective frame rate is 3 or less, it won't play.

Additional information:
I have tried different codecs, the results are the same as long as one uses AVI as a container.
I have tried to remux the same (3fps) video into a different container format (MOV) and it plays fine.
Other players based on libavcodec/libavformat (ffplay, MPlayer) have no problem with the same videos.

[cirosantilli]

I reproduce on VLC 2.2.2 , Ubuntu 16.04, for FPSs lower than 4, video generated with:

ffmpeg -framerate 4 -pattern_type glob -i '*.jpeg' -c:v libx264 out.mp4

Both Totem and ffplay play the video just fine.

There is also an ancient bug report at: https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/214

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Known issue, patch welcome.