mpeg .idx files stored in separate directory?

[blazini36]

I've never seen a way to do this but it never made sense to me that avidemux creates an idx file in the same directory as the video it opened. This causes 2 issues......

1, you can't open vob files directly on a DVD because it is read only, so you have to copy the files or create an iso in a writeable directory. Sometimes I run into issues with iso files and have to mount them, since an iso mounts read-only you can't work on it with avidemux like this either.

2, I keep most of my stuff on a NAS. The NAS has a beater drive that I just use for downloading torrents and stuff since I don't want better disks or SSDs taking that abuse. The drive is slow to do random writes over the network but it can be read fast enough. If I try to open an mpeg on this drive it gets stuck on "indexing" for a very long time. None of my other network drives have this problem, but realistically this is only a problem on this drive with mpegs that need to be indexed anyway....

So the question is, is there any way to get avidemux to create the index files in a different directory? I use the Linux version BTW.

[eumagga0x2a]

If I try to open an mpeg on this drive

I would strongly discourage from loading not-local files in Avidemux. It is just not designed for that.

you can't open vob files directly on a DVD because it is read only

Keeping index in memory when we don't have write access is on my todo list. Please be aware that this would mean that closing the video and loading it again will invoke the entire indexing process starting from scratch.

Creating index files with random filenames at a fixed location and maintaining a database of matching source videos would be theretically possible, but would require additional overhead like checksum verification as matching based on path is very unreliable. It would also make it impossible to index a video at one location and then move it together with the index to another.

[blazini36]

I would strongly discourage from loading not-local files in Avidemux. It is just not designed for that.

I've been doing this for years, never had a problem other than the one mentioned here with a slower drive with other activity on it. Not sure what issues could arise but these are NFS mounted shares for reference.

Please be aware that this would mean that closing the video and loading it again will invoke the entire indexing process starting from scratch.

That's actually better if it were always the case to be honest. If you have a folder full of VOBs from a DVD and you load the first one it will ask if you want to load the sequential file names. If you forget that idx file is in that folder, you won't get that option next time and it will wind up loading as whatever the idx file did. It's not a big deal as it is, but it doesn't take long to index off of most media so it would just be better I think if that idx file didn't have to exist at all.

Maybe make it an option preferances to index the file in memory or the existing directory, if the media was RO then just popup asking to index in memory if existing directory was set in preferences. Indexing to a different directory would probably be a hassle on your end for the reasons you mentioned.