Skip Ahead only works on some files?

[redlemon]

Some of the video files that I download will play just fine, but if I try to skip ahead using either the arrow key or by clicking on the progress bar, the video freezes on the current frame. The only way to restart it is to hit stop and play, which puts me back at the beginning of the file.

Is this a known issue? Are there certain files that block skipping ahead, or certain codecs that don't allow it?

Yes, I'm a noob, but I did search the board for an answer using several different keywords. Sorry if it is a repeat.

[Quietseb]

I've seen this before with movie files that had not much keyframes

bsplayer is not really frozen but it takes him/the codec a looonng time to decode the video to the place you switch to, much more than if the file had a decent keyframes/deltaframes ratio; that's normal (for a quick explanation about keyframes and deltaframes, see this page on divx.com)

1. Have you tried to play these movie files with different players, were the results the same ?

2. I think many tools exist to check the keyframes amount (amongst other parameters) but I don't remember the names right now.
I know virtualDub does it (file->avi information I think)
usually you should have at least one keyframe every 10 seconds. If you find the video has only 3 keyframes in 40mns, there is definitely a problem with the file (corrupt/badly encoded)