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Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player

mpv.io

231–240 of 576 posts

Re: Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player

#231
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow those answers are indeed funny. I agree that as an OSS dev/maintainer, it's easy to fall on the vice of over-generalization and crusade for the perfect solution, and it feels that's exactly what happened there. > this feature is algorithmically impossible > You're just looking at one specific video, not the general problem. > is not generally possible. As a fellow multimedia dev, man, who cares? Sometimes we forg…

Disagree! VLC is what it is today because the authors understood video standards enough to make the _right_ abstractions that could generalize to ~every video format ever. That is no easy task. Video container standards are utterly perverse, and seem to delight in stomping over even the most innocent intuitions about what you would expect to find in a stream of bits that purports to contain "video". They often refuse…

VLC doesn't have perfect compatibility. I think it worked correctly on random video files less frequently than mpv the last time I tried it. And mpv can actually step forward and back frame by frame.

Re: Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player

#232
post #170
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow those answers are indeed funny. I agree that as an OSS dev/maintainer, it's easy to fall on the vice of over-generalization and crusade for the perfect solution, and it feels that's exactly what happened there. > this feature is algorithmically impossible > You're just looking at one specific video, not the general problem. > is not generally possible. As a fellow multimedia dev, man, who cares? Sometimes we forg…

I notice a lot of devs try to deny the chaos of the world. It's almost like the code is where they go to hide from things that can't be cleanly and unambiguously expressed. I don't know how they get away with that though. In the coding work that I do, I'm constantly dealing with rules that have exceptions on top of exceptions. I just need to special-case some things, because the alternative is not delivering what the…

Because it's an open-source project, not commercial software.

In your job, you have to special-case some things because the alternative is not delivering what the boss wants. Regardless of the problems this may cause, or how much tech debt it generates - those are (in the end) business decisions, and while you can make a case to the boss that implementing the special case feature is going to cause huge problems, it's the boss's call as to whether it gets implemented.

In an open-source project the maintainer is the boss. If the maintainer thinks that the feature is going to cause problems, they're totally free to say "no, I'm not going to implement that feature". And, ofc, because it's FOSS, the user is totally free to fork it, or submit a PR for the feature, or whatever.

> just got here from a Google search. I gotta say the replies from Remi sound defensively toxic. I'm not here to program the app, I'm just here to find a simple feature and/or request it.

I think Remi sounds curt rather than toxic. There's no automatic right for anyone to go to a FOSS project and request a feature and have it implemented. The maintainer is perfectly within their rights to just say "no". It's their project, their code, their time, and they're free to do/not do anything they like with it.

Re: Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player

#233
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow those answers are indeed funny. I agree that as an OSS dev/maintainer, it's easy to fall on the vice of over-generalization and crusade for the perfect solution, and it feels that's exactly what happened there. > this feature is algorithmically impossible > You're just looking at one specific video, not the general problem. > is not generally possible. As a fellow multimedia dev, man, who cares? Sometimes we forg…

Disagree! VLC is what it is today because the authors understood video standards enough to make the _right_ abstractions that could generalize to ~every video format ever. That is no easy task. Video container standards are utterly perverse, and seem to delight in stomping over even the most innocent intuitions about what you would expect to find in a stream of bits that purports to contain "video". They often refuse…

I know the devs are good and they want the feature to be perfect, but it reminds me that they removed the ability to browse files on the iPhone which is unexplainable, or show that they are a bit in denial of what users need, which is confirmed by this thread.

Re: Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player

#234
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loved the last paragraph of the long, justified rant. Hilarious: “All in all, I believe this proves that software developers as a whole and as a culture produce worse results than drug addicted butt fucked monkeys randomly hacking on typewriters while inhaling the fumes of a radioactive dumpster fire fueled by chinese platsic toys for children and Elton John/Justin Bieber crossover CDs for all eternity.”

I actually thought that last paragraph really undermined his case, because rather than substantiating like he did before, here he goes all out and just insults whoever he can think of; people who take it in the ass, greybeards, the Chinese, listeners of bland music... I get him though. It's one of those writings from a foul mood. There was probably more going on in his life than some trouble dealing with locales.

> ...here he goes all out and just insults whoever he can think of...

No, he observes that software devs as a group, and as a culture tend to produce worse results than incredibly-distracted and certainly-fatally-intoxicated simians banging on typewriters.

It's a bit of hyperbole, but the overall state of software is absolutely dire.

> ...the Chinese, listeners of bland music...

In some-to-much of the world, it's pretty well-known that a lot of cheap crap (much of which has historically been made in China) is very shoddily made and fairly quickly finds its way to the landfill. One shouldn't confuse criticism of shoddily-made products for criticism of the citizens of the country of origin of said products.

I'd also expect the referenced (certainly entirely-hypothetical) CD to be something that ends up getting thrown into the dumpster in huge numbers because store inventory managers expect it to be WAY more popular than it actually ends up being. Also, see above about not getting confused about what the target of the insult is. ;)

> There was probably more going on in his life than some trouble dealing with locales.

shrug Not everyone chooses to write in sterile $DAYJOB-approved language when explaining in detail the root of their frustration with the absolutely bullshit garbage pile they have to build upon for their non-corporate side project.

Re: Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player

#235

This is an extremely venerable project, formerly known as mplayer. There are half a million commits going back to 2001, and that’s just from when the CVS repo was converted to Subversion. streamlink and mpv on a fanless Minix z100 running Ubuntu was a nigh-on perfect Olympics experience. https://streamlink.github.io/ https://www.minix.com.hk/products/z100-0db-fanless-n100-mini...

I don't think mplayer and mpv are the same thing. It forked mplayer (among others), but mplayer is still its own thing.

Re: Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player

#236
post #118
post #69

I use it to inspect video frames by frames, particularly being able to go back one frame. VLC doesn't support it, this thread about the feature is hilarious https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=120627

Wow those answers are indeed funny. I agree that as an OSS dev/maintainer, it's easy to fall on the vice of over-generalization and crusade for the perfect solution, and it feels that's exactly what happened there. > this feature is algorithmically impossible > You're just looking at one specific video, not the general problem. > is not generally possible. As a fellow multimedia dev, man, who cares? Sometimes we forg…

[deleted]

Re: Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Streaming or player errors? Plex has basically never failed to play any video I've ever given it, but a bad connection can totally ruin streaming. I wish they would implement pause and allow to buffer.

In my experience Plex has a serious problem with determining whether or not it's capable of playing a file back directly without converting. I regularly have to switch it to "convert automatically" to make a file play.

What can be directly played and not directly played are just lists of formats that Plex bakes into the app, and not really anything to do with mpv, right?

https://github.com/ambroisemaupate/plex-profiles/blob/master...

Re: Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player

#238
post #69

I use it to inspect video frames by frames, particularly being able to go back one frame. VLC doesn't support it, this thread about the feature is hilarious https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=120627

The developer responds to a comment: But many players are able to do it for years. with: If it's so easy, why are you not doing it? He's not just a butthole, he's a stereotypical open source developer butthole. On the other hand, if he worked for Microsoft, he'd be claiming that it takes a PhD to do it...

You need to send an email to the admin and ask for approval in order to register an account on VLC website to report bugs.

This says it all.

Re: Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The back and forth in itself feels so weird to me, with so many hurt feelings: - the devs expressed in no uncertain terms that they don't want to do it (the first answer is just perfect) - every third comment is about "we know you don't want to do it, but as users why should we care ?" Well, if you don't care about the devs, on what base are you asking them to care about your specific problem ?

> Well, if you don't care about the devs, on what base are you asking them to care about your specific problem ? Caring about the user's requirements is part of the dev's job description. Caring about the dev's... anything is not in the user's job description. (one advantage commercial software has: it really does help when there's an interface between the dev and the user in the form of customer support. or a commer…

> job description

Money getting involved would indeed simplify the question.

Here no money is changing hand, so coming up with an angle that's motivating enough for the devs is IMHO the only option. Either bring up an aspect they're not considering that changes the equation for them, or come up with a solution that isn't plaggued by the issues they are afraid to deal with.

That's where I see listening to the devs and caring about their issues to be the only path forward, short of contributing as a dev oneself..

Re: Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player

#240
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree! VLC is what it is today because the authors understood video standards enough to make the _right_ abstractions that could generalize to ~every video format ever. That is no easy task. Video container standards are utterly perverse, and seem to delight in stomping over even the most innocent intuitions about what you would expect to find in a stream of bits that purports to contain "video". They often refuse…

VLC doesn't have perfect compatibility. I think it worked correctly on random video files less frequently than mpv the last time I tried it. And mpv can actually step forward and back frame by frame.

So can mplayer and did that way before mpv could.
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