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I've got a 10-minute long mp4 file which plays just fine with VLC. Apple Quicktime however plays only the first 6.5 seconds, stops and can't be convinced to jump past that.

Similarly, when I try transcoding it with ffmpeg, it stops at precisely frame 336.

I have figured out the following: when I run ffmpeg with 'loglevel 48' it tells me that there's something called an 'EDIT LIST' inside the file which tells it to drop all frames beyond 336:

ffmpeg -i VIDEO.mp4 -t 20 -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:v rawvideo -loglevel 48 output.avi  
(...) 
[mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0x5617d7c1a880] Processing st: 0, edit list 0 - media time: 0, duration: 6719
[mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0x5617d7c1a880] drop a frame at curr_cts: 6727 @ 336
[mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0x5617d7c1a880] drop a frame at curr_cts: 6747 @ 337
[mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0x5617d7c1a880] drop a frame at curr_cts: 6763 @ 338
[mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0x5617d7c1a880] drop a frame at curr_cts: 6786 @ 339
[mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0x5617d7c1a880] drop a frame at curr_cts: 6803 @ 340
[mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0x5617d7c1a880] drop a frame at curr_cts: 6816 @ 341
[mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0x5617d7c1a880] drop a frame at curr_cts: 6847 @ 342
[mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0x5617d7c1a880] drop a frame at curr_cts: 6863 @ 343
[mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0x5617d7c1a880] drop a frame at curr_cts: 6884 @ 344
(...)

Question: is there a way to tell ffmpeg to ignore this EDIT LIST and carry on regardless?

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Yes, there's a private option for the MOV demuxer.

ffmpeg -ignore_editlist 1 -i VIDEO.mp4 ...
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  • Thanks! I was looking into why ffmpeg would not cut (-ss -to) from I-frame to I-frame, the 1st one would be skipped, playback image would freeze (but playback bar would scroll) until the 2nd one came, but not start from the point I would want it to. With ignore_editlist it plays right away from the right point. Really weird this one, it's as if if ss is a keyframe, it will ignore it and edit list in the next keyframe. Tested on multiple clips and I-frame time points, same thing on ALL of them. Must be a bug. – JasonXA Nov 18 '19 at 0:13
  • Which ffmpeg version are you using? – Gyan Nov 18 '19 at 5:45
  • N-94664-g0821bc4eee @ 20190807, zeranoe builds – JasonXA Nov 19 '19 at 14:39
  • Well, I found something odd... been using pkt_pts_time to get time for mp4, but on wmv it was missing, found out it's pkt_dts_time but I ended up at some improper output. When digging further, I got varying outputs for when using skip_frame nokey vs just listing and filtering frame,1. Shouldn't skip_frame nokey match only the frame,1? In my case it matches only the preceding P frame. – JasonXA Nov 21 '19 at 4:51

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