It’s just weird.
Microsoft movie editor (or clickchamp or whatever they call it) can edit them, OpenShot can edit them… Every other video editor has no issues. But with shotcut, suddenly unusable
Weirder still, you never even know what shotcut is going to consider non-seekable.
I recorded 20 clips the same exact way and 2 of them end up “unseekable” (both have 2 audio channels, with one audio channels. I can send examples if necessary).
In the end I installed OpenShot, exported the clips from that video editor, and used the exported result in shotcut.
Shotcut does include a “convert to seekable” option, sure, but it gives me a file literally 183 times the size of the original, and with completely botched fps and quality.
I suggest you not ignore the warning signs (“unseekable”, “botched fps”) regardless that other tools fail to warn you. I cannot fix your garbage game captures, but maybe you can fix your settings. Of course, you do not have to use our solid and mature convert tool (ffmpeg). Feel free to use another conversion tool that will degrade your quality and make seeking slow.
Regular samsung galaxy phone recordings are ALSO non-seekable. I can send you those too.
You can ignore the problem that only this editor has, or you can take the files and see what’s going on.
I’m only trying to help u improve the product.
So far using OpenShot to export the files is a good solution, as it gives identical quality and identical video size.
I can also send you (somehow) the 11gig file that your trusted and mature conversion tool made out of a 200meg mp4, while also lowering fps from 80 to 25 (even after I manually set it to 80 fps in the tool options).
Non-seekable is expected. Cell phone video is often variable frame rate. Cell phones also randomly skip or not skip frames depending on how busy they are or how much similarity they find between frames (to make file size smaller).
Many editors have this problem. They just fail to report it and the current project is probably not exposing the potential problems.
To reveal such a problem in other editors, use multiple phone cameras to film a scene at once (a multi-cam shot). Put each phone on its own track in Shotcut and synchronize the footage. Then make a bunch of cuts and switches and edits between tracks. Export it with parallel processing turned on. The scene cuts will be before and/or after the intended cut times because seeking is not frame-accurate with VFR sources. Audiences will notice the skipping of time and the repeat of frames at cut points where seek failed during export.
Having said that, does Shotcut prevent using the file at all? Or does it just give a warning with a cancel option? If only a warning is given, then it is possible to roll the dice and edit as normal, and hope that no problems will happen. Turn parallel processing off to increase the chances of a good export (reduces the number of parallel seeks).
Which conversion preset was used? The H.264 option is sufficient for cell phone video and usually produces reasonable sizes. The DNxHR and Lossless options would admittedly be large and probably overkill.
The phone did not record at 80fps. That number tells us that variable frame rate is in play, and explains why conversion is the safest way to go, although I agree that conversion is a buzzkill to speed and creativity. But it is what it is when dealing with cell phones. A budget-friendly mirrorless camera can make this step go away and provide higher quality, too.
This file you provided is seekable. The problem Shotcut reports is that it is variable frame rate. You do not need to convert them if you do not want to. Often it works well enough without conversion. We are just being cautious, and you can choose to ignore the warning. Non-seekable is different in that it makes it hard to include in a project, but not impossible. I tested conversion to the default MP4 option and changed the frame rate to 80 in the convert dialog (even though the average fps is around 30, and that is what a default conversion gives). What I got was 80 fps and 758.3 MB (source is 186.3 MB). If I let it choose the fps (30), then it is 417 MB after conversion to the default MP4 option.
If you do want to include a non-seekable source in the project, open it in the source first and then add it to the playlist. It will ask you for a duration since it treats non-seekable like a live input that has no natural duration. Then, you can drag it from playlist to the timeline.
The recorded gameplay files were 80fps, not the cellphone recordings (which I mentioned later, since you blamed the issue on my ‘shitty’ game recordings).
If, as you say, the cellphone recordings are seekable and completely fine to edit then why would shotcut ask me to convert them?
And I say that because ALL of the files I use in my projects are VBR. My game recordings, that is. And all those work just fine and are seekable.
The issue arises ONLY when I have over 1 audio track in the recording, and I can’t understand why that would be an issue.
I can send you examples of this as well (around 200mb) if interested.
Neither Austin, I, or Shotcut said they are completely fine. Go ahead and use them as-is at your own risk. Try it and make your own judgement. You can always convert later because the convert action replaces clips in the timeline when the job completes.
VBR
We are not talking about VBR. That is something different, and there is no warning or problem with that. Maybe you meant VFR.
work just fine and are seekable… The issue
What issue? A dismissable warning that you can choose to ignore forever is not an issue. You said the game captures are seekable. The phone recording you shared is seekable. Variable frame rate is separate from seekable, but VFR is not frame accurate for seeking. A file can be VFR but still seekable. Not frame accurate (VFR) does not always mean you do not get what you chose for an edit point; it means that it is unreliable. We have some very detail oriented users who complain when things are not perfect and need the feedback to know when those situations may arise.
