I Picture error

[andyavi]

Hi,

I try to convert an avi to mkv. codecs will just be copied. When I try to save the file I get an error

The starting picture is not an I-picture. Please move marker A to picture type I.

I am not too sure what they want to tell me. When moving the slider I see at the bottom for each picture what picture type it is, so I tried manually to find a picture of type I. The first one I found was after about 8 seconds, mostly type B and P. So I placed marker A there, that doesn't seem to be enough so I deleted the first 8 seconds (though I would like to keep them....). The first picture is now an I picture, but I still get the same error.

To be honest I don't care about these technical details I just want to be able to cut something out of a video. If for whatever reason the tool thinks it has to do something, like deleting the first 8 seconds then it should ask me to do so and simply do it if there is no other way (though it is hard to imagine....). Anyone an idea what I can do?

Thanks.

[AQUAR]

Video processing is by nature a technical process.
Configurable video editors, like Avidemux, are best if you care about the fundamentals.

To get an idea of what to do, you first need to know what codec is used to store the video inside the avi.
Guessing its probably another case of AVC in AVI.   

[andyavi]

h264 is the codec.

If I frames are the full frames and the rest is only delta, fine avidemux should calculate a new I frame and the needed delta frames until the next I frame. The question remains the same, what can I do to simply cut off a piece of my video file?

what editor would you recommend if I don't care about the fundamentals and just want to do simple cut operations?

[zakk]

Let Avidemux find the I frame itself by using the double arrows at the bottom of the window.
If you want to keep your first 8 sec please upload a sample for Mean to have a look, because obviously the first picture should to be I.

[AQUAR]

First I would remux the streams into an MKV container with MKVtoolnix.
This achieves one of your stated objectives above and might help avidemux with seek functionality as well.

Won't change the orphaned start frames if there are any, but the cut/edit process may work better.

As far as I understand, avidemux 2.6 doesn't have "smart copy" like Avidemux 2.5, because of the way it works.
There are other threads that help explain that if you wish to know more.

Sorrenson sqeeze is an editor that requires very little of the enduser.
Lots of templates to choose from but no idea if it can or will deal with bad video.
Better have a healthy cheque book as well!