I’m using ffmpeg to take input from a live stream and write an mkv file. The stream runs a few hours. I want to play the mkv file while this is in progress. I find that the players basically do “seeks” by playing through the file, which is ok for very short “seeks” but not for very long ones.

When the ffmpeg ends it finalizes the mkv file, and seeks long or short work fine.

What can I do to be able to have a more usable mkv while ffmpeg is in progress? I suppose I could force ffmpeg to create a new mkv file every hour, with a name including an index. (Is there any automation for that?), but I was hoping for some way to force periodic finalizations to the single file.

This is on Linux.