[FFmpeg-devel] invalid timestamps in FLV -> invalid argument

[Mike Brown]

Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 05:48:07PM -0700, Mike Brown wrote:
> > Greetings. Not sure if this is the best place to ask, but a recent (Feb. 15) 
> > build of ffmpeg is giving me grief about timestamps in a .flv file I'm trying 
> > to read via the CLI.
> > 
> > An example command is:
> > ffmpeg.exe -i "2011 hearing.flv" -ss 1178 -t 550 -c:v copy -c:a copy out.flv
> > 
> > As it reads the file, I get a gajillion messages like this:
> > 
> > DTS 1169265, next:1178010980 st:1 invalid droping
> > 
> > (that's the very last one)...and then I get:
> > 
> > [flv @ 0000000001C78C80] pts < dts in stream 1 
> > av_interleaved_write_frame(): Invalid argument
> > 
> > The output file is 0 bytes.
> > 
> > The input file plays fine in VLC, but I can't do anything with it in ffmpeg 
> > because of this error. It seems to be related to a ffmpeg.c patch from Feb. 7.
> 
> If the issue is a regression please find out which change exactly
> caused it. (see git bisect)
> 
> 
> > I am wondering if the timestamps are actually being parsed correctly, and/or 
> > if there's a way to get around this.
> > 
> > Console output here (edited to remove the middle of the long list of frames): 
> > http://pastebin.com/kVdcPpes
> > 
> > Let me know if more info is needed. The file is 421 MB, so I can't easily post 
> > it in full somewhere. If you want to capture it yourself, I can send you the 
> > URL (it's public domain content, don't worry), but it streams in real time for 
> > about 3 hours, so it'll be a nice long wait.
> 
> please send the url
> 
> 
> [...]
> > (Also, maybe do a code sweep for "droped" and "droping" ... correct spelling 
> > is "dropped" and "dropping". Instead of "invalid droping", I would write 
> > "invalid; dropping")
> 
> patch welcome!
> 
> [...]

I will work on a patch for typos, but in the meantime, here's the URL so you 
can check to see if the timestamp sequence really is bad:
<http://senate.gov/fplayers/jw57/urlMP4Player.cfm?fn=judiciary101311p&st=1140&dur=9486>

That's HTML which loads a little Flash-based player. If you view source, 
you'll see the parameters to the player mention 
/vCommMP4Files/judiciary101311p.mp4, but that doesn't seem to be downloadable 
directly, so I used a stream grabber to save it as it played.

The issue is probably not a regression...the Sep. 19 2011 and Feb. 6 2012 
builds just bail at the first sign of trouble with a different message (easier 
to understand):

Application provided invalid, non monotonically increasing dts to muxer in stream 1: 21130 >= 21121
av_interleaved_write_frame(): Invalid argument

Thanks,
Mike