FFmpeg -itsoffset causes visual artifacts and time jumps in WMP and Movies & TV

Question

I'm encountering visual artifacts (screen corruption) and unexpected time jumps when playing a video file generated by FFmpeg in Windows Media Player and Microsoft Movies & TV. The same video plays correctly in PotPlayer, MPV, and VLC.

The command I used to delay the audio by 5 seconds was:

ffmpeg -y -hide_banner -i video.mp4 -itsoffset 5 -i video.mp4 -map 0:v -map 1:a -c copy out.mp4

The output video works as expected in most modern players but exhibits visual corruption and automatically skips to the 00:05 timestamp in Microsoft's players.

I tried removing the -c copy option from the command, or changing the output format to mkv, but neither solved the problem. This is not a problem with the encoding, but with the player's support for MPEG-4 edit list tables.

I aim to produce a video with FFmpeg that will play without issues on any player, including very old ones. Is there a way to tweak FFmpeg parameters or use alternative strategies to ensure the output video is universally compatible across all media players?

Answer 1

Since MS players don't support editlists, you'll have to pad the audio to achieve the offset in a compatible manner.

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -itsoffset 5 -i video.mp4 -map 0:v -map 1:a -c:v copy -af aresample=async=1:first_pts=0 -y out.mp4