"initial delay" - trivia or reason for concern?

[shae]

As I understand, the "initial delay" reported by x264 is due to bframes. Is this just random info or more than that (like something that might desync A/V)?

[akupenguin]

trivia

[shae]

So it's just the number of frames a decoder will have to decode before outputting the first one?

Why is it displayed? Is this information useful in some situations?

[Inventive Software]

It's only used when encoding to MP4 files. I think it's the framerate denominator, from the only NTSC encode I've done.