Is it possible ?

[Leo 69]

...To play the videofile while it is being encoded (for example Recode's unfinished mp4).I.e. to check the quality during encoding process :)
Maybe there are some switches for Mplayer or smth different...
Any help appreciated.

Cheers
Leo

[Neo Neko]

Technically yes. But practically no. Most programs these days "lock" input and output files to keep other programs from moddifying them while they work on them. Unfortunatly this also has an impact on reading them. It is all for security though.

[Leo 69]

Well I'm usually encoding Vorbis tracks in HeadAC3He and I'm able to play the track with Winamp while it's still not finished... It'd be cool to implement the same possibility somewhere else but for video. I think it would be rather useful. :)

[Sirber]

AVIs the header are at the end, so it's kinda hard to playback it while it'S being written. It all depends on the app and the container.

[snacky]

FWIW, this works fine in MPlayer under Linux. The only issue is that you can't seek in AVI files without the index, but you can still at least play them.

[bond]

i am not sure about that, but i think the .ogg and .asf container should allow that (not sure about .mp4)

[stephanV]

Originally posted by Sirber
AVIs the header are at the end, so it's kinda hard to playback it while it'S being written. It all depends on the app and the container.

Header is at the front, index is at the back. (which indeed means you cant seek in the file, if you'd want to do this).

I think it should also be possible with .mpg...

[marcellus]

Didn't check lately but I remember that I watched mpeg2 encodings in progress (made with ffdshow) by drag'n'drop on VLC.