View Full Version : xvid/Divx and skip not working
I used to be able to skip forward and back when viewing streaming divx/xvid files. The past few months of builds this has ceased to function. An example would be a stream from the dl.tv script. I can skip forward/back on the h.264 feed, but the divx/xvid feed will not skip at all. I can play the same stream in mplayer on windows and skipping works just fine.
elupus (or whatever appropriate dev) isn't this option disabled on purpose?
intriguing....I'd like to hear why. Does it cause some sort of issue?
nothing? Is the ability to skip in streaming divx/xvid files dead forever?
wildonrio
2008-03-12, 01:27
I know that it doesn't allow skipping if the file in incomplete. Several times I have sent over a movie and started playing it before it was done sending. It played fine but no skipping was allowed. Once it had fully transferred I could skip. I don't know how helpful this is, but maybe it has something to do with the files not being completely sent over. Check the file size on your computer with the file size on the xbox and see if there is a difference.
Also, if your divx/xvid files are too large, sometimes past 2gb or 4gb depending on your partition, it will slice the file down. All I'm really saying here is make sure your movies are complete.
They are streaming files, so I guess XBMC doesn't see them as complete. Examples are the divx streams for DL.tv and the feeds from revision3. Many months ago I could skip forward and back thru these streams without issue, so I'm trying to figure out what happened.
Gamester17
2008-03-12, 13:46
The file needs an index (a.k.a. "header") for XBMC to seek or fast-forward/rewind it. The issue can be permanently resolved by RE-MUXING the AVI video-files that have this problem by using a tool like VirtualDub or AVIMux-GUI which recreates the index.
XBMC does support seek/fast-forward/rewind if the file has a proper index.
To use VirtualDub on your Windows computer to re-mux, open the AVI file in VirtualDub then select "Direct-Stream" for both the video and audio which saves a new fixed file. Since VirtualDub creates a new header (internal-index).
In more serious cases this is caused by a very bad/corrupt container/video/audio header or a VBR MP3 Header, in these cases a simple RE-MUXING is not enough, instead you must decode the audio-stream to PCM during a first-pass RE-MUX and then do another second-pass RE-MUX from the new file to encode the audio-stream to MP3 but instead of MP3 VBR as the original probebly was, encode to MP3 CBR, (the AVI container was never designed to hold MP3 VBR which is why you should always use MP3 CBR in AVI files). If the problem is due to a bad/corrupt container/video/audio header or a VBR MP3 Header (which VirtualDub usually give a pop-up message stating when you open the file), then to fix that you must use VirtualDub to first fully uncompress the audio-stream to PCM (only process audio, Direct-Stream the video) saving to a new AVI file, then open that new file and do another RE-MUX to recompress the uncompressed PCM-audio to the MP3 CBR format with the bit-rate of your choise, (again just leave the video as Direct-Stream, to only process the audio), by first uncompressing the audio you will any A/V sync-problem caused by MP3 VBR (MP3 Variable Bit Rate).
I feel like everyone is missing the point of my question. I am referring to STREAMING divx/xvid files. Files being played from the internet as I posted above. Skipping in these streams used to work. My question is; why is it mplayer on the PC skips forward/back just fine, but mplayer in XBMC doesn't?
Well, I just took a different approach and edited the script to use the quicktime streams which allow skipping.
All is well with DIVX skipping again thanks to eplus's new mplayer build in the latest XBMC svn relase.