affaan-m/ECC · error · RuntimeError

Decoder produced no frames

Error message

Decoder produced no frames

What it means

transform_stream counts decoded frames n; if the decoder produced no frames at all it raises RuntimeError('Decoder produced no frames') instead of returning 0. This makes empty decoder output an explicit failure rather than silently producing an empty output file.

Solutions

1. Verify the media actually contains decodable video frames: ffprobe -count_frames source
2. Check that start is within the media duration
3. Run the decoder command manually and check stderr for codec/decode errors
4. Install/reinstall a full ffmpeg build that supports the source codec

Example fix

// before
render(src, start=600, ...)  # video is only 30s -> no frames
// after
render(src, start=0, ...)  # valid in-range start

dur = float(ffprobe_duration(src))
assert dur > 0, 'media has no video frames'
assert 0 <= start < dur, 'start outside media duration'

try:
    render(src, start, out)
except RuntimeError as e:
    if 'no frames' in str(e):
        print('decoder yielded zero frames — check start range and codec support')

When it happens

Trigger: The ffmpeg decode command yields zero frames (empty input file, invalid seek start beyond EOF, unsupported codec producing no packets); dec.stdout closes immediately with no frame data.

Common situations: Passing a start timestamp past the end of the media; pointing render at a zero-byte or metadata-only file; a codec not compiled into the installed ffmpeg build.

Understand the failure class

Background: EmptyResultError / "no results found": when an API or scraper succeeds but returns zero rows — this error's family across 9 libraries.

Related errors

• Media command produced an empty output
• Decoder produced a truncated frame
• apply_local needs at least one media clip
• asset contains too few frames
• asset requires verified alpha

AI-assisted analysis of affaan-m/ECC@8321021c54 (2026-09-16). Data as JSON: /api/errors/8ab6e3f252e11b6e. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at skills/taste-application/scripts/tasteforge/media/glitch.py:96

            y = 0
            while y < height:
                bh = int(rng.integers(8, 28))
                if rng.random() < 0.12 * p:
                    shift = int(rng.integers(4, 40) * p) * (
                        1 if rng.random() < 0.5 else -1
                    )
                    out[y : y + bh] = np.roll(out[y : y + bh], shift, axis=1)
                y += bh
            if p > 0.2:
                r = int(2 + 8 * p)
                b = int(1 + 6 * p)
                out[:, :, 0] = np.roll(out[:, :, 0], r, axis=1)
                out[:, :, 2] = np.roll(out[:, :, 2], -b, axis=1)
        enc.stdin.write(out.tobytes())
        n += 1

    if not n:
        raise RuntimeError("Decoder produced no frames")
    return n


def render(
    source,
    start,
    duration,
    output,
    seed,
    mode="drift",
    width=1920,
    height=1080,
    fps=30,
    overwrite=False,
):
    geometry(width, height, fps, duration)
    if not math.isfinite(start) or start < 0:
        raise ValueError("Start must be finite and nonnegative")

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