[kiboy6]

I really really don't want to come across as ungrateful. XBMC is IMO the single coolest piece of software available on any platform anywhere and the fact that it is worked on for free by all the amazing contributors is almost enough to forever reaffirm one's faith in humanity!

However....

Whilst anyone I show my XBMC setup too is suitably wowed, there is one significant flaw that leaves it with a rough around the edges for any serious movie lover.....it is still (AFAIK) not possible to rewind DVD iso or video_ts files.

I love all the ongoing developments in XBMC (the arrival of DXVA2 support for example is revolutionary) but surely this is something that almost every single user would appreciate before the next release.

If there is some reason why this is extremely difficult/ impossible to code of course everyone would understand but in the almost two years since this issue was first reported I have not heard of anything along those lines.

So does anybody know if any work is planned on this issue?

Thanks so so much to everybody


Here are two of the existing trac tickets about this issue:
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/9000
and
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/5462

and here is another thread mentioning it (one of many!)
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...ght=rewind

[elupus]

why do you need rewind just press the left arrow.

It's unlikely that i'll look at fixing it since i don't really know what is causing it. (plus I don't i ever was able to reproduce it)

[Hitcher]

Rewinding and Fast-forwarding are so VHS; stepping is the modern way to navigate.

[akg4y]

^ I have to agree. I used to hate the fact I couldnt fast forward and rewind but the up arrow moves forward 10 min, down arrow back 10 min, and left and right move in about 30 second increments. I can usually find what I need really fast with those combinations. The only irritating thing is if I want to replay something short (4-5 seconds) over and over, like if I cant understand what someone said then it is impossible.

[kiboy6]

Thanks for the responses guys...

My mistake....as of a few months ago even skipping "short step backwards" did not work on DVD files. When I saw that rewind didn't work I guess I presumed the navigation issues hadn't altered...But, just tried again with the latest SVN and short and long skip backwards does indeed now work on DVD files!

Despite,or perhaps because (!) of it's old school VHS like qualities, I personally do still prefer using rewind and fast forward on most of my video files, but as long as skipping works I agree it's not as big a deal (although still a bit of a pain and not very wife or gf friendly if they are accustomed to using ff/rw on other files).

Now...my one remaining bugbear is lack of support for wmv files...I hate the format as much as the next guy but it is still used quite often and it's a shame that I often have to use external player to navigate properly through them. (Incidentally, don't know if I just got lucky with a few test wmvs, but while certainly not fixed, this issue too seems to be less problematic in recent builds).

Thanks so much....and good luck with the push towards the next release!

PS... @ akg4y : skipping backwards in smaller 5 second chunks is perfectly possible...you just have to change the length of "small step backwards" in advancedsettings.xml

[kiboy6]

The only irritating thing is if I want to replay something short (4-5 seconds) over and over, like if I cant understand what someone said then it is impossible.

Well it appears I didn't test extensively enough....

Tried watching a DVD iso last night using SVN 31938 on Windows.

Big skip backwards still works, but small skip backwards jumps forwards... (and, of course, rewind goes in fast forward ).

So,using this very common media type, if and when a user misses what somebody just said in a movie s/he has to jump back a large distance and then fast forward to the correct moment. (Not to mention the fact that s/he has to have been primed in advance to do this un-intuitive behaviour).

So, going back to my original point- given all the (beautiful) bells and whistles that get added to XBMC with each build I just cant understand why such a basic flaw for a media player has been ignored for so long in the best media center of them all!

----------------
Can post a debug log if required, but this issue has been reported by many users over a long period so didn't think it necessary.

[miregal]

hmm ... ok now i understand why the bug is so old ... you think its not worth fixing it ...

in my opinion fast forwarding and rewinding in different speeds (2,4,8,16,32 ... and slomotion in 0.5, 0.25 and so on) is still the best and fastes method to find a special position in a movie ...

i can't believe that you really think to jump in 10min steps is better

"plus I don't i ever was able to reproduce it"

thats a little bit strange ... i have 4 pcs with 3 different OS ... i have perhaps 400 movies in dvd iso format ... and i tried a lot of dvds ... and i can't rewind not even one of my movies ...

could it be a pal problem?

[elupus]

10 min steps is not what it is.. It's 30 secs..

[miregal]

i couldn't test it at the moment ... but if i believe the postings above than there a two possible steps ... a big one (10 min) and a short one (30secs) ... and the short one doesn't function as well ...

anyway ... i think rewinding and forwarding should be part of any complete movie player ...

ok ... i have no knowledge in coding media software ... but it sounds like a small problem ... the player winds in the wrong direction ... ok there must be something like a false prefix / sign ... or a variable is to small and we must make bigger jumps ... (sorry if that is very dumb) ... but i want to say that it is hard to believe that it is possible to build in gpu hardware acceleration but it is not possible to fix this rewinding bug in two years ...

[Hitcher]

'small skip backwards' works fine for me on an ISO.

[kiboy6]

'small skip backwards' works fine for me on an ISO.

It works fine for me too on some isos, but not on others. (small skips forward instead!) Can provide debug log if it helps.

Where is the 30 seconds figure coming from? Perhaps it's the small "seek" not skip. I don't use a keyboard, and I have my remote set up for skip forwards and backwards big and small as well as fast forward and rewind.

Anyway, 30 seconds back still requires some fast forwarding to achieve the "what did he just say" effect.

Ultimately,unless there is some inherent difficulty in achieving this, which would of course be understandable, it remains hard to understand why the devs would want to leave a bug in XBMC which makes the software seem so shoddy for playback of such a common media type.

Regardless of one's thoughts on the rewind/skipping debate, rewind exists and works very well in XBMC in for all other media types. Thus every one of the many users accustomed to navigating this way have to figure out a way of circumventing this bug whenever they play a DVD image. Even worse, users like me who have a remote with no 30 second seek programmed, will have to skip back in 10 min chunks! Just seems surprising to me given how ridiculously slick XBMC is in every other respect.

Again, just my 2c. Can't tell you how beautiful Dharma is looking in every other respect. (Except that it seems I will always have to use an external player for those infernal wmvs )

[-wde-]

not a pal problem. occurs on ntsc as well. it will start to rewind, albeit slowly, once you start rewinding at fastest (32x?) speed.

[ubuntuf4n]

I can confirm this bug,
though it didn't happen on every iso-image.

However, the devs are only able to fix it, if they can reproduce it.

[Voyager]

@ubuntuf4n: I'm a bit puzzled by your statement "...didn't happen on every iso-image". I'm really curious to know whether you can reproduce one "succesful" rewind at 2x (and perhaps post a debug log).

I've done some investigation in the code and tried to debug it but my conclusion is that the current code can simply not play the video stream backwards (i.e. play at a reverse speed 2x 4x ... ). The way to approach this, is by doing consecutive backward "seeks", and that, the code is currently not doing. As a matter of fact the current code tells the demuxer to keep "reading" from the inputstream (which is always forward direction).

More info at http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/5462#comment:34

[elupus]

It must read from the input stream to get anything on screen.... Then it should seek back from time to time. Biggest problem is knowing to what time to seek since all time variables are reset after the seek finishes.