[Libav-user] Seeking in a video with interframes

[Jaymie Strecker]

If you want to seek to an arbitrary frame in a video with interframes, what are your options? 

As I understand it, you should be able to: 
(1) seek to the previous keyframe and then enter a read/decode loop until you reach the frame you want, or 
(2) pass AVSEEK_FLAG_ANY to the seek function (av_seek_frame or avformat_seek_file). 

Does (2) work? I've tried it with both seek functions, and with various configurations of avcodec_flush_buffers (flush before seeking, after seeking, or not at all) -- but, at best, it results in frames with artifacts. If it makes a difference, I'm working with H.264 videos. 

So, right now I'm using (1) but the read/decode loop is slow. Is there a faster way to seek? 

-Jaymie