Selection not working in Annotation mode

tmgrosso · 17 September 2025 14:58

Hello,

I’m working on a PC using 7.0, but my collaborator uses a mac with possibly 6.8. I created a file with annotations that I left blank. The file no longer allows me to select areas that don’t have any annotations in them. When I click and drag, the red cross hair simply moves and there is no blue selection created. The weird part is that some of the tiers that have annotations do allow for new time intervals to be selected and created within already annotated tiers. However, some will only allow selection of the annotations that are already in existence. This doesn’t relate to which tiers are parent tiers because I cannot select an interval in anything outside of portions of the videos that are already (partially) annotated. It seems like there is a lock on creating new annotations, but I couldn’t find anything in the documentation on a setting that would do this. I have several videos and this issue has only come up on a few of them.

Here is a portion of the log.

NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:08:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:08:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:08:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:10:58 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:10:58 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:10:59 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:10:59 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:10:59 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:10:59 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:00 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:02 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:40 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:40 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:52 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:11:52 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:12:03 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:12:03 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:12:04 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:12:04 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)
Sep 17, 2025 10:20:40 AM mpi.eudico.client.annotator.prefs.PreferencesWriter encodeAndSave
INFO: Writing preferences: C:\Users\User\Box\GrossoDissertationData\FPASL5\FPASL5C.pfsx
Sep 17, 2025 10:23:46 AM mpi.eudico.client.annotator.prefs.PreferencesWriter encodeAndSave
INFO: Writing preferences: C:\Users\User.elan_data\elan.pfsx
Sep 17, 2025 10:24:18 AM mpi.eudico.client.annotator.prefs.PreferencesWriter encodeAndSave
INFO: Writing preferences: C:\Users\User.elan_data\elan.pfsx
Sep 17, 2025 10:24:49 AM mpi.eudico.client.annotator.prefs.PreferencesWriter encodeAndSave
INFO: Writing preferences: C:\Users\User.elan_data\elan.pfsx
Sep 17, 2025 10:36:53 AM mpi.eudico.client.annotator.prefs.PreferencesWriter encodeAndSave
INFO: Writing preferences: C:\Users\User.elan_data\elan.pfsx
Sep 17, 2025 10:36:53 AM mpi.eudico.client.annotator.prefs.PreferencesWriter encodeAndSave
INFO: Writing preferences: C:\Users\User.elan_data\elan.pfsx

divya.kanekal · 18 September 2025 12:13

Hello,

It could be that an annotation on a time subdivision dependent tier is selected ( activated ).
In such a case the (making of a) selection is restricted to the interval of that annotation.
The selected annotation might be outside of the visible part of the timeline view.
As you mention that some tiers allow for new time interval to be selected and some don’t, the tiers that don’t allow the selection : maybe they are of subdivision type ?

tmgrosso · 18 September 2025 18:29

Hi,

I’m sorry I’ve been unclear. I’m working with a collaborator so there are some parts of the video which have been annotated and some which haven’t. When I annotated the file originally, there were no issues. Now, my collaborator is having an issue. The parts of the file which have 0 annotations on them cannot be selected on any tier. (For example, in the first 30 seconds of the video, nothing happens of note so there are no annotations created for any tier on the first 30 seconds of video). Clicking the mouse and dragging it across simply moves the red cross hair across the screen. There is no blue selected section for any tier. I’m also unable to use the keyboard to select for these portions.

The portions of the video that have annotations on them already can be selected and new annotations made on any tiers within those areas (following the rules of those tiers, of course).

The file appears to be locked to new annotations, but I’m not aware of any setting which might have accidentally been activated to do this.

divya.kanekal · 19 September 2025 13:24

Hello,

Now the issue is clear. From your description and the error messages, i think it is safe to rule out that it is anything to do with tiers.

The error lines from above
“N_MMFPlayer.setMediaPositionA: unable to set the media position, position < 0 (-830000)” indicate that the media position is being set to negative time (-830000). Since you experience the issue with selection and the above error messages are logged during setting up of the media time.

I also recall from an older similar incident where the selection had lots of issues due to wrong encoding settings of the media file and similar error messages were reported.

Its good to look into the encoding of the video file. Maybe this can help ELAN media encoding guidelines

tmgrosso · 19 September 2025 16:38

Hi!

I formatted the videos according to the encoding guidelines. I checked my video editor settings again and re-rendered the videos I was using. The results are the same. I went back to the video that I annotated which is stored on a file on my pc hardrive. This file is perfectly fine. I saved a copy with a new name in the same harddrive. I checked and the new file was also working fine. Once I copied that new file to the box drive that I share with my collaborator (box is a cloud service like dropbox or googledrive), the new file has the issue that I described. I cannot figure out how to move the file without it corrupting.

divya.kanekal · 22 September 2025 09:27

As the box drive version of the file causes issue you could ask the collaborator to download the files to local drive and test ? Using files directly from the network might play a role.

If the local file still has issues, you could send me the complete log from View → View Log.
Better not post log contents here, but please send it to us by email (Divya.Kanekal AT [mpi.nl]). Then we can have a look.