user3723: Sometimes I watch a video that I don't want to see from beginning to the end, but only some parts. Sometimes I need to quickly find some scene/spot in a video. The less keyframes there are, the longer it takes to seek random place in a video.
What hardware/software configuration I need to make seeking time as fast as possible?
I mean if I to build a new PC, what hardware is there to get fast access time by fast decoding?

user3295: If its just about playback, I can highly recommend Media Player Classic HC for Windows. I think I haven't seen a faster player so far. It utilizes DirectX 9 for most image rendering which results in a lot faster playback on many machines. Most players only uitilize the CPU for drawing.
Even uncompressed avi's had a lag free playback and fast seeking times from a USB 2.0 hard drive. The player is very good at caching aswell which should give you a benfit with files that have keyframes that are far apart from each other. It also has the option to always skip to the next keyframe when seeking (Options/Tweaks/Fast Seek). It also has a setting for the jump distance when seeking very long videos.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mpc-hc/
Generally for all plattforms recommendable is mplayer with a fitting GUI (there are quite a few of them out there for Windows/Mac/Linux). A little "geeky" but very powerfull.
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html
You dont need RAID storage to seek through h.264 files fast. That only applies to really huge "raw" video files that are meant for editing. A video card that has MPEG-4 decoding supported would be good to have but normally any video card from the last 4-5 years supports that. Apart from that you dont need any special hardware, your problem is mainly a software issue.

3723: <p>Sometimes I watch a video that I don't want to see from beginning to the end, but only some parts. Sometimes I need to quickly find some scene/spot in a video. The less keyframes there are, the longer it takes to seek random place in a video.</p>

<p>What hardware/software configuration I need to make seeking time as fast as possible?</p>

<p>I mean if I to build a new PC, what hardware is there to get fast access time by fast decoding?</p>
 3295: <p>If its just about playback, I can highly recommend Media Player Classic HC for Windows. I think I haven't seen a faster player so far. It utilizes DirectX 9 for most image rendering which results in a lot faster playback on many machines. Most players only uitilize the CPU for drawing.
Even uncompressed avi's had a lag free playback and fast seeking times from a USB 2.0 hard drive. The player is very good at caching aswell which should give you a benfit with files that have keyframes that are far apart from each other. It also has the option to always skip to the next keyframe when seeking (Options/Tweaks/Fast Seek). It also has a setting for the jump distance when seeking very long videos.
<a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/mpc-hc/" rel="nofollow">http://sourceforge.net/projects/mpc-hc/</a></p>

<p>Generally for all plattforms recommendable is mplayer with a fitting GUI (there are quite a few of them out there for Windows/Mac/Linux). A little "geeky" but very powerfull.
<a href="http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html</a></p>

<p>You dont need RAID storage to seek through h.264 files fast. That only applies to really huge "raw" video files that are meant for editing. A video card that has MPEG-4 decoding supported would be good to have but normally any video card from the last 4-5 years supports that. Apart from that you dont need any special hardware, your problem is mainly a software issue.</p>
