cvGetCaptureProperty always return 0 for CV_CAP_PROP_FRAME_COUNT!

Question

This is a code snippet from O'Reilly Learning Opencv,

cvNamedWindow("Example3", CV_WINDOW_AUTOSIZE);
g_capture = cvCreateFileCapture(argv[1]);
int frames = (int) cvGetCaptureProperty(g_capture, CV_CAP_PROP_FRAME_COUNT);
if (frames != 0) {
 cvCreateTrackbar("Position", "Example3", &g_slider_postion, frames, onTrackbarSlide);
}

But unfortunately, cvGetCaptureProperty always return 0. I have searched opencv group in Yahoo, found the same problem.

Answer 1

Oh, I get it. I have found these code snippet in the Learning OpenCV's samples codes:

/*
OK, you caught us.  Video playback under linux is still just bad.  Part of this is due to FFMPEG, part of this
is due to lack of standards in video files.  But the position slider here will often not work. We tried to at least
find number of frames using the "getAVIFrames" hack below.  Terrible.  But, this file shows something of how to
put a slider up and play with it.  Sorry.
*/
//Hack because sometimes the number of frames in a video is not accessible.
//Probably delete this on Widows
int getAVIFrames(char * fname) {
    char tempSize[4];
    // Trying to open the video file
    ifstream  videoFile( fname , ios::in | ios::binary );
    // Checking the availablity of the file
    if ( !videoFile ) {
      cout << "Couldn’t open the input file " << fname << endl;
      exit( 1 );
    }
    // get the number of frames
    videoFile.seekg( 0x30 , ios::beg );
    videoFile.read( tempSize , 4 );
    int frames = (unsigned char ) tempSize[0] + 0x100*(unsigned char ) tempSize[1] + 0x10000*(unsigned char ) tempSize[2] +    0x1000000*(unsigned char ) tempSize[3];
    videoFile.close(  );
    return frames;
}