SMPlayer Support Forum

I'm running 0.8.6 (64-bit) in Windows 7. I can play m2ts files just fine, but the video length listed in the bottom right displays as 00:00:00. These are videos taken with my Sony CyberShot DSC-HX10V. I don't if m2ts files from a different source would manifest the same problem. Here's what I know:

- I don't have this problem with AVI or MP4 files.

- When I highlight the m2ts file in Windows Explorer, it gives me the Length as one of the stats. I can also see the length by right-clicking and selecting Properties. It's listed in the same place I'd find that info for an AVI or MP4 file--in the "Video" section under "Length".

- VLC displays the length just fine when I play the files (but I think smplayer does a better job and I prefer smplayer's interface, so just giving up and associating m2ts files with VLC is not an ideal solution).

- SMPlayer displays the time elapsed as it plays, just not the total playing time. So it'll tell me I'm at 00:03:27/00:00:00.

- When I close the video, smplayer doesn't accurately record where I was. E.g. just now I closed a video at the 4:28 mark. When I re-opened it, it started up at 00:00:35.

- The Seek function works. I can jump forward or backward in the video, move the slider, etc. SMPlayer will accurately (I think) tell me how many minutes into the video I am each time.

I didn't see anything obvious in the Preferences, but maybe I could change something there to fix this? Or is there some other tweak I could apply? The information's available in the file properties. It's just a question of getting smplayer to display it.

Probably mplayer is not reporting the length for that file. Could you send the mplayer log? (Options -> View logs)

Sometimes the lavf demuxer works better. You can use it by adding -demuxer lavf in preferences -> advanced -> options for mplayer -> options.

Follow-up number 2: Adding -demuxer lavf did not prove to be a total solution. It seemed to work with most of my .m2ts files. But a few would reliably fail. A popup would tell me, "Oops, something wrong happened. MPlayer has finished unexpectedly. Exit Code: 1". I gave up for a while on nailing down the difference between the files that played and those that crashed.

This was originally a much longer post. But in the process of detailing the parameters of the problem, I stumbled on the solution. The basic problem was this. Files first played without the -demuxer lavf option would crash when that option was set. Files first played without that option would not play at all or play only sound when that option was UNset.

SOLUTION: I went into C:\Users\[User Name]\.smplayer\file_settings and deleted all the folders. (Well, I moved them to a temp folder first, but that's beside the point.) There does not appear to be an option within SMPlayer to clear these settings. You can uncheck the box in the General tab for "Remember settings for all files." That works if you don't like that feature anyway. But it won't get rid of settings already created. It will just tell SMPlayer to ignore them. Once you re-check the box, all the old settings (and the problem described in this post) will reappear.

This explains why a complete uninstall and reinstall appeared to solve my problem. All those settings were gone. But as I experimented further with the lavf demuxer option, I created file settings that either depended on it or couldn't live with it. Sigh. I wonder if, on balance, I'd cause myself less trouble by learning to leave things alone once they appear to work. Nah.

Oh, for anyone interested, there's a check-box in Preferences > Advanced > Advanced to "Use the lavf demuxer by default". This seems to work the same as setting the -demuxer lavf option in the Options for MPlayer tab, so I've switched to that.

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