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[RhinoBanga]

Hi Folks,

I have converted a load of my DVDs to .MP4's for transferring to my iPod's (5.5g and 6g).

The movies play fine on my PC and show the correct duration, e.g. 2:10:05.  However when they are transferred to the iPod via MC they show up as 1 second long.   They play fine (with the exception of being unable to seek which I suspect is due to the time issue).

Has anyone else experienced this?

[RhinoBanga]

Interesting ... I did some more testing.

I originally installed the movies from a remote MC server.

I checked the MC database on the server and the duration is blank for all the movies imported.   As a test I deleted a movie from the database (Transformers) and reimported it.   Again the duration was blank.   I deleted the movie again and drag'n'dropped it into the database.   Again it was blank.

Now on the client machine I connected my iPod and drag'n'dropped the movie from it's location on the fileserver directly onto the drop box in MC and it showed the correct duration.   When transferred I was able to seek successfully.   I did also notice however that the duration was being reported at 1 second:

http://s5.largeimagehost.com/img/untilted/UsQtQhX/mc_movies.jpg.html


Initially I thought it was a codec issue (I use the k-lite codec pack b3.85.5) but I am able to play the tracks just fine on the fileserver (with Media Player Classic and Windows Media player) and they show the correct duration.

[bspachman]

I have this trouble occasionally (without the iPod issues) on my mp4 video files. I'm using ffdshow to decode, and sometimes the duration is blank and the bitrate is '1'. Doing an "Update Properties (from tags)" usually corrects the situation for me....

I wonder if the issues are related?
brad

[Umberto21]

I suspect your MP4 header is not filled-in properly.
In the header there must be some spot where the total duration is "stamped" .. when the conversion is finished.
Some software don't finish & close the file properly, thus creating files that do work but that are not "seekable".  you can do this to an FLV file too , just open it in hexEditor and look for something like "duration" and scramble with the 8 bytes following.
Personally I use ConvertHQ Premium for my conversions to iPod, it's neat & simple. but there are plenty others around.
look at this file for the MP4 structure:
http://www.geocities.com/xhelmboyx/quicktime/formats/mp4-layout.txt

[RhinoBanga]

It can't be the header as dragging/dropping from the remote machine picks up the duration/bitrate just fine.

[RhinoBanga]

*bump*