[FFmpeg-user] AVCHD from a Canon HF G10: 'non monotonically increasing dts' + dts mess

[sean darcy]

On 08/21/2011 03:24 PM, Damian Stewart wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm trying to convert a number of AVCHD 1080i 50fps videos from a Canon HF G10 to mp4/mov container format, but ffmpeg is failing with a 'non monotonically increasing dts' error message at the start of each one. I'm on Mac OSX 10.6, I've tried both ffmpeg 0.8.0 (compiled by Homebrew) and 0.8.2 (compiled by ./configure&&  make).
>
> Here's the commandline. The file is here: http://frey.co.nz/share/00167.MTS (2.2MB)
>
> $ ffmpeg -i 00167.MTS -vcodec copy -acodec copy out/00167.mp4
>
> Output fails with:
>
> Input #0, mpegts, from '00167.MTS':
>    Duration: 00:00:01.44, start: 0.483578, bitrate: 12967 kb/s
>    Program 1
>      Stream #0.0[0x1011]: Video: h264 (High), yuv420p, 1920x1080 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 50 fps, 50 tbr, 90k tbn, 50 tbc
>      Stream #0.1[0x1100]: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 256 kb/s
> ...
> [mp4 @ 0x101071200] Application provided invalid, non monotonically increasing dts to muxer in stream 0: 1>= 1
>
> If I run ffprobe, the timestamps seem to be scrambled:
>
> $ ffprobe -show_packets 00167.MTS | grep dts
>
> ...
> dts=47119
> dts_time=0.523544
> dts=49999
> dts_time=0.555544
> dts=52879
> dts_time=0.587544
> dts=55759
> dts_time=0.619544
> dts=43519
> dts_time=0.483544
> dts=45319
> dts_time=0.503544
> dts=47119
> dts_time=0.523544
> dts=48919
> dts_time=0.543544
> dts=50719
> dts_time=0.563544
> dts=58639
> dts_time=0.651544
> dts=52519
> dts_time=0.583544
> ...
> dts=75919
> dts_time=0.843544
> dts=75919
> dts_time=0.843544
> dts=78799
> dts_time=0.875544
> dts=77719
> dts_time=0.863544
> dts=79519
> dts_time=0.883544
> dts=81679
> dts_time=0.907544
> dts=81319
> dts_time=0.903544
> dts=83119
> dts_time=0.9
>
>
> What's going on here? Is my camera really putting out such scrambled timestamps? Is there anything I can do about it?
>
> Any help appreciated.
>
> Cheers,
> Damian
>
> --
> damian stewart . @damian0815 .  damian at frey.co.nz
> frey . contemporary art . http://www.frey.co.nz

This is a common problem for me. Sometimes this works when ffmpeg fails:

mplayer -nosound -benchmark -vo yuv4mpeg:file=>(x264 --demuxer y4m --crf 
20 --threads auto --output output.264 - 2>x264.log) input.mts

See: https://sites.google.com/site/linuxencoding/x264-encoding-guide

I can't imagine why mplayer (based on ffmpeg) sometimes works when 
ffmpeg doesn't. Sadly, if mplayer doesn't work you're probably out of 
luck. At least in the open-source world.

And yes, it's puzzling why so much AVCHD doesn't work with the open 
source tools.

good luck.

sean