VLC 2.1.1 hung up over MPEG file length

[Moxim]

I can't get VLC to report a particular size of MPEG file correctly. I don't think this is an O/S issue, so I'm airing it in General Troubleshooting, but in case it is I'm running VLC 2.1.1 on a 19TB non-RAID film archive in W8v1 on an AMD Trinity desktop.

I have a lot of 1024Mb MPEG files in the archive captured on a Winfast PVR analog TV card at a fixed bitrate of 6000 automatically split at 1024Mb - about 22m42s in duration.

VLC will report the length of most of these correctly and allow me to specify start and stop times in XSPF playlists, but every so often it insists on calling the length 37 seconds. It plays the file completely but with the seconds counter turning over once every 45 seconds.

MS Media Player, Media Player Classic and PowerDVD - and Windows Explorer were all able to read the length of these files correctly.

I carried out two tests on this behaviour to see what was happening.

In the first test I played a XSPF playlist with start and stop times specified on a 22m42s file that VLC recognized.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<playlist xmlns="http://xspf.org/ns/0/" xmlns:vlc="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/playlist/ns/0/" version="1">
<title>Playlist</title>
<trackList>
<track>
<location>file:///I:/H22/D2292/LaBohemeP2x5.mpg</location>
<duration>1360207</duration>
<extension application="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/playlist/0">
<vlc:id>0</vlc:id>
<vlc:option>file-caching=300</vlc:option>
<vlc:option>start-time=66.000</vlc:option>
<vlc:option>stop-time=300.000</vlc:option>
</extension>
</track>
</trackList>
<extension application="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/playlist/0">
<vlc:item tid="0"/>
</extens11024,,
</playlist>

VLC had no trouble with this, starting and finishing the track as speciifed, but when the <location> tag was pointed to LaBohemeP1x5.mpg, whose length VLC doesn't recognize, the track completed before getting to the 66th second.

In the second test I used DVTool.exe to truncate LaBohemeP1x5.mpg by 1024 bytes from 107069968b to 107068944b, after which VLC was able to recognize its length and play the specified clip.

This looks to me like a maths foulup.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

1073741824 is 2^30 It could be related...

You need to share a file for us to fix it.

[Moxim]

Thanks for your response. As a result I've had another look at the issue with the following results.

Items in the lists are the VLC time reading of each file followed by its entry in the Archive manifest with times raised to the nearest second. The first two lists from 2006 and 2011 are of files recorded with Winfast PVR from a Leadtek analog card at a fixed nominal bitrate of 6000bps the third list from 2013 was recorded with Winfast PVR2 from a digital Leadtek DTV100S at variable bitrate. The file, TitlecP2x6.mpg, in the first list plays for its 11 seconds but no length is registered.

Notice how the same problem is occurring with fixed bitrate whatever the file size at which the PVR is stopping the recording, while the variable bitrate recordings by PVR2 have only the one occurrence where TitlejP1x3.mpg has been stopped at the 1024Mb limit.

I'm not sure what process you mean when you say 'share a file'.

=================211106
[22.41]TitleaP1x4.mpg 1,071,630,336 bytes 22m 41s
[00:37]TitleaP2x4.mpg 1,071,726,592 bytes 22m 42s
[00:37]TitleaP3x4.mpg 1,071,728,640 bytes 22m 42s
[00:29]TitleaP4x4.mpg 863,215,616 bytes 18m 17s
[22.42]TitlebP1x4.mpg 1,071,620,096 bytes 22m 42s
[22:42]TitlebP2x4.mpg 1,071,669,248 bytes 22m 42s
[00:37]TitlebP3x4.mpg 1,071,689,728 bytes 22m 42s
[00:29]TitlebP4x4.mpg 854,677,504 bytes 18m 6s
[22:41]TitlecP1x6.mpg 1,071,656,960 bytes 22m 42s
[ ]TitlecP2x6.mpg 8,699,904 bytes 0m 11s
[00:37]TitlecP3x6.mpg 1,071,601,664 bytes 22m 41s
[00:17]TitlecP4x6.mpg 494,288,896 bytes 10m 28s
[22:41]TitlecP5x6.mpg 1,071,663,104 bytes 22m 41s
[00:15]TitlecP6x6.mpg 450,977,792 bytes 9m 33s
=================190611
[14:27]TitledP1x6.mpg 682,801,152 bytes 14m 27s
[16:16]TitledP2x6.mpg 768,434,176 bytes 16m 16s
[14:49]TitledP3x6.mpg 700,553,216 bytes 14m 50s
[15:07]TitledP4x6.mpg 714,039,296 bytes 15m 7s
[22:41]TitledP5x6.mpg 1,071,611,904 bytes 22m 41s
[08:08]TitledP6x6.mpg 384,845,824 bytes 8m 8s
[22:41]TitleeP1x6.mpg 1,071,710,208 bytes 22m 41s
[00:37]TitleeP2x6.mpg 1,071,730,688 bytes 22m 41s
[00:37]TitleeP3x6.mpg 1,071,640,576 bytes 22m 41s
[22:41]TitleeP4x6.mpg 1,071,665,152 bytes 22m 41s
[08:47]TitleeP5x6.mpg 415,322,112 bytes 8m 47s
[00:37]TitlefP1x4.mpg 1,071,699,968 bytes 22m 41s
[22:41]TitlefP2x4.mpg 1,071,638,528 bytes 22m 41s
[22:41]TitlefP3x4.mpg 1,071,755,264 bytes 22m 42s
[14:39]TitlefP4x4.mpg 691,496,960 bytes 14m 39s
[12:10]TitleeP6x6.mpg 575,053,824 bytes 12m 11s
[00:37]TitlegP1x8.mpg 1,071,663,104 bytes 22m 42s
[06:56]TitlegP2x8.mpg 327,579,648 bytes 6m 56s
[00:33]TitlegP3x8.mpg 957,757,440 bytes 20m 17s
[19:36]TitlegP4x8.mpg 925,548,544 bytes 19m 36s
[21:58]TitlegP5x8.mpg 1,037,895,680 bytes 21m 59s
[07:03]TitlegP6x8.mpg 332,980,224 bytes 7m 3s
===================090913
[42:28]TitlehP1x3.mpg 1,072,758,784 bytes 42m 28s
[35:40]TitlehP2x3.mpg 1,072,824,320 bytes 35m 40s
[39:22]TitlehP3x3.mpg 1,023,868,928 bytes 39m 22s
[18:26]TitleiP1x7.mpg 218,802,180 bytes 18m 26s
[15:04]TitleiP2x7.mpg 184,309,764 bytes 15m 5s
[16:58]TitleiP3x7.mpg 201,357,316 bytes 16m 59s
[15:00]TitleiP4x7.mpg 193,417,220 bytes 15m 1s
[20:45]TitleiP5x7.mpg 260,087,808 bytes 20m 45s
[19:13]TitleiP6x7.mpg 230,084,612 bytes 19m 13s
[15:57]TitleiP7x7.mpg 215,310,340 bytes 15m 57s
[08:59]TitlejP1x3.mpg 1,072,758,784 bytes 40m 10s
[38:55]TitlejP2x3.mpg 1,073,020,928 bytes 38m 54s
[29:20]TitlejP3x3.mpg 805,502,976 bytes 29m 20s
[17:15]TitlekP1x7.mpg 249,700,356 bytes 17m 16s
[17:09]TitlekP2x7.mpg 231,712,772 bytes 17m 10s
[18:55]TitlekP3x7.mpg 247,588,864 bytes 18m 55s
[15:59]TitlekP4x7.mpg 202,606,596 bytes 16m 0s
[15:06]TitlekP5x7.mpg 208,322,564 bytes 15m 7s
[15:36]TitlekP6x7.mpg 225,245,188 bytes 15m 37s
[19:48]TitlekP7x7.mpg 264,509,440 bytes 19m 48s
[1:06:16]TitlelP1x2.mpg 1,578,334,208 bytes 66m 19s
[39:46]TitlelP2x2.mpg 892,942,340 bytes 39m 46s
[09:10]TitlemP1x6.mpg 172,492,800 bytes 9m 11s
[20:12]TitlemP2x6.mpg 329,515,012 bytes 20m 13s
[20:56]TitlemP3x6.mpg 340,957,184 bytes 20m 57s
[22:35]TitlemP4x6.mpg 327,231,488 bytes 22m 35s
[19:58]TitlemP5x6.mpg 341,299,200 bytes 19m 58s
[20:09]TitlemP6x6.mpg 319,905,792 bytes 20m 11s

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Share any that is very bogus (like 2mins vs 22min)

[Moxim]

Looking at the three lists above shows that while Winfast PVR2 no longer produces the problem code when it stops a recording session it is still behaving like Winfast PVR when it splits a capture, as with TitlejP1x3.mpg - the only item in the 3rd list where the problem occurs. It is also apparent that this change occurred before PVR2 because the problem doesn't show in stopped files in the second list.

Therefore I've chosen TitleaP3x4.mpg as the sample to upload - now that I've finally found the uploader at http://streams.videolan.org/upload/.

I have uploaded it with the following description:
=QUOTE=
Uploaded for Jean-Baptiste Kempf in thread:
https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=115653

Regarding misreporting of MPEG file lengths.
=ENDQUOTE=
...and hope you have found the file from the first list as follows:
[00:37]TitleaP3x4.mpg 1,071,728,640 bytes 22m 42s

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/10123