Indexing progress?

[thany]

I've got a few MP4 files, all around 850MB, all encoded H264 1280x720 30fps, AAC stereo 128Kbps. When I load one, Avidemux appears to have frozen. The Indexing dialog does appear, but the GUI is frozen. After a couple of minutes, it gets un-frozen and the video is loaded.

Can it be made so that the progress of this indexing thing can be tracked just like with other files?

This is Avidemux r9034 on Windows XP SP3.

[AQUAR]

!!A faster PC!!

[thany]

That means indexing a file seemingly instantaneously. In UX-land that means within 300ms. So I challenge you to build a computer that can index an 850MB MP4 file within 300ms

Seriously though, a GUI that becomes frozen for even a few seconds is not great. To a user it looks as if the application is frozen, because Windows even says so. It's a UX-thing I know, and Avidemux doesn't have UX very highly (and doesn't really need to), but still. Some progress indication is nice. So that we can see if it's gonna take a few seconds or a few hours, so to speak.

(in fairness, the computer that it's running on, is not very fast - but there isn't much I can do about that right now)

[AQUAR]

Firstly - nothing wrong with using older equipment for jobs that can be capably performed on it.
I do it myself - ie my media player is old but plays Xvid very well - so MP4 with AVC gets recoded with Xvid into MKV.
And I use avidemux 2.6 for that task.

IMHO - Your PC is toooo OLD if it takes a long time to parse an MP4 file with AVC.

Your reasoning for how this program should behave is seriously flawed as mentioned in earlier posts.

Take this request for an indexing dialog with progress indicators:   
Lets start with the fact that the life span of a PC is generally considered to be 3 Years.
My core2duo is almost 9 years old (3 life spans) and it lets avidemux load a 1GB MP4 file with AVC video in a fraction of a second.
The parsing/indexing dialog flashes a mere instant - meeting your UX-land criteria.
Therefore almost no avidemux user would ever see the improved dialog that you are asking for.
And so the effort to satisfy thany's requests here/there simply isn't/aren't warranted.

You are not alone in this.
I would like to see certain features in 2.6 wrt xvid - but I ain't getting them either.
As the orange lady once said 'tough xxxxx'. 

Put your effort into "overclock your PC - prioritise avidemux - buy a 50$ 2nd hand Mobo cw core2duo cpu"
Same advice in kind to me as someone in this forum told me to throw away my old media player and buy a cheap current media player.

[thany]

I know this thread is old, but this problem still happens from time to time. Most MP4's are opened sort-of instantly, but some seem to require indexing... Which is not acompanied by a progress dialog. Indexing a WMV does have its progress dialog, so the least thing I'm seeing is inconsistency.

IMHO - Your PC is toooo OLD if it takes a long time to parse an MP4 file with AVC.

To clarify - I'm talking about indexing, not parsing.

I'm using r9050 by now.

[bernd_b]

By the way, I use a Pentium III to index my vdr-recordings (via script using avidemux-cli). So I would dare to say that this isn't a problem of a pc beeing too old for this job for showing a proper progress status.

[AQUAR]

As far as I know, you need to parse a media file to find/create an index for its video.

How does windows XP, on a P3 vintage PC, doing CPU based decoding / indexing, fare with AVC compressed video in MP4?
I have P3 PC's and I can tell you this - you need a better PC for editing those video's.

[bernd_b]

Now I am lost. Wasn't this about avidemux not responding during(!) the indexing for about a minute in certain cases? And did someone suggest that this could be because of a slow PC? All I wanted to add is that even a PIII_PC is capable of indexing a h264-based TV recording in a reasonable time without getting unresponsive.

Yes, I would say you would need more than a PIII to edit a video having at least some comfort. I didn't try though.

[AQUAR]

The point is that if you use an old PC, then expect everything to react in a delayed manner.
So refreshing the indexing dialog on a single core PIII (running @ 600 Mhz!) is going to be delayed.
The impact of a multi threading program might mean that the index dialog doesn't even get any attention on older PC's.

I am sure Mean can change things like the refresh rate to suit old PC's, but is it warranted?
IMHO - No because this is a program intended for working with h264 (ie not well suited for old PC's!).

Anyway - that is just my opinion.

[thany]

The point is that INDEXING, not opening/parsing, makes avidemux unresponsive. All the while, indexing a wmv file shows a progress indicator that smoothly runs from 0% to 100%.

This has nothing to do with slow pc's. When indexing a 4GB file, no matter how you twist and turn things, those 4GB need to be read from disk (which can easily take a minute even on today's modern pc's!!), if and when indexing the file is required. If indexing is not required, then sure enough, it'll open in an instant, but when indexing is required, it should display a progress indicator, just like when opening a wmv.

I hope that clears up that.