Problems with long videos?

[Slovak-MU Brno]

Hi,

I've recetly started using Advene and found it great! Unfortunately, in my setup it seems that it cannot play videos longer that approx 00:14:35 (that is, just below 15 minutes). Or, more precisely, it continues playing even after this time, but the Timeline for these times is not available anymore (thus, you can't post annotations etc.)

I use Ubuntu 8.04 (yeah, its old, I know;)) and slightly outdated version of Advene (0.38) as the new one does not like my current Python libraries. Did you get any other reports about it, or is it just me? In particular, any ideas on how to make it better (apart from updating Ubuntu kernel and trying the new Advene)?

Thanks,

Petr

[oaubert]

Hello

This looks like a duration update issue: the duration of the movie is not known initially, so the timeline view is initialized with an arbitrary value. After starting the movie play, the duration value should be known and the timeline updated accordingly. It can sometimes happen (with some broken videos) that the duration cannot be evaluated by the player.

In this case, you can set the default duration in the package properties: menu Edit/Package properties, and enter the duration (in ms). Save the package and reopen it (the modification is not taken into account immediately). The timeline view will then use this value as upper bound.

To help better fix the problem, could you send (to advene@liris.cnrs.fr ) some information about the video file that causes this issue (type, maybe video codec), and also send the output of the menu command View/Mediainformation, which will display movie information in the text zone below the timeline?

Just for the record, we have users using Advene to annotate 24-hour long videos, so it is definitely not a generic Advene limitation.

Regards,
Olivier

[Slovak-MU Brno]

Hi,
thanks for the quick reply and helpful advice -- the steps you suggested work well. In my case, Advene does this with all videos (which actually seem to have their index ok); but the problem is obviously somewhere in my system. I will send more info to the email adress you specified.

Thanks again,
Petr