Mpv is great! And also the only player I found to be externally controlable, e.g. through a hardware jog/shuttle or an Arduino. This might be outdated (from 2018), but for reference (me talking to myself ;): https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/53208/video...
Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player
271–280 of 576 posts
Re: Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
The dev said they are happy to accept patch for this feature. Remember that you're not entitled to demand new features, as a (non-paying) user, you can't allocate dev's time to work on what you want.
This card is played too often by developers who only want to work on features they personally find interesting or worthwhile. Yes, you realistically cannot implement everything every user wants, but at the same time your software is meant to solve problems. Keeping direct communication with your users, and understanding what they find useful or not, should be the driving force of the design and features of your app.…
A FOSS project can be FOSS and refuse all other contributions. FOSS does not make any requirements towards how the creator/main contributor handles and treats users, submitted patches, and feature requests. So no, FOSS users have zero inherent right to request anything - until the creator allows for it.
I agree that taking that kind of "closed" approach is not helpful.
Re: Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not even about doing it, once added you have to maintain it, and then tomorrow a new format arises that makes this more a hassle, or some memory issue in an existing format is fixed in a way that changes it's memory profile and now VLC will crash with an out of memory. Seriously, I don't get these people that have infinite demands from open source developers and contribute zero.
You already have to maintain seeking code, stepping back one frame is just a specialized case for your seeking code.
You already have to maintain code for seeking by time. There's not necessarily any easy way to convert between time and frame count.
Re: Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player
#274Earlier 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…
> A playback architecture that can wrangle all of that cruelty into a consistent experience was hard won. No, it hasn't. The only reason I use mpv instead of VLC is because of the frame step feature. Everyone else has proven that it is possible and practical to do. Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If people don't use your product, it doesn't matter how right and pure of vision you are.
> The only reason I use mpv instead of VLC is because of the frame step feature.
so from VLC's point of view your problem is solved - you have a good, open source video player that lets you step back a frame and you are happy to use it. they don't need to be all things to all people.
Re: Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player
#275Is this worth a look when you are pretty happy with VLC already?
I have a 4k SDR display and 4k HDR content on VLC looks washed out.
Mpv does not have that issue and converts 4k HDR to SDR in real-time and shows a colorful image.
Re: Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player
#276Earlier 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…
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.
Wait, what? You can browse files on the iPhone just fine.
Re: Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player
#277Earlier 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…
If so, how comes you can do the workaround one suggested of entering a time one second ago then going forward a frame at a time?
Re: Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean.. can you show anyone piece of software or hardware or for that matter any man made creation that solves for all edge cases?
But it’s just simple things, like allowing an override of a status field. Or using a status field to check something is ok or not, instead of always checking the data itself. People make wrong assumptions, and requirements change. Don’t make it all rigid that you always need to implement every case
Everything is a “simple thing” unless you’re the one implementing it. Things that seem simple on the surface rarely are, especially long-term.
Re: Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
The dev said they are happy to accept patch for this feature. Remember that you're not entitled to demand new features, as a (non-paying) user, you can't allocate dev's time to work on what you want.
This card is played too often by developers who only want to work on features they personally find interesting or worthwhile. Yes, you realistically cannot implement everything every user wants, but at the same time your software is meant to solve problems. Keeping direct communication with your users, and understanding what they find useful or not, should be the driving force of the design and features of your app.…
> developers who only want to work on features they personally find interesting or worthwhile.
you say that like it's a bad or even a surprising thing. for a lot of people that's the entire point of open source development - in their day jobs they do what they are required to do for the company that pays them, and then in their own open source projects they can do what genuinely interests them.
Re: Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's impossible for video players to be exactly accurate on normal monitors as most computer monitors don't handle movie frame rates. Either a frame gets skipped or elongated here and there, audio get resampled while video speed changes, etc. but there's definitely no silver bullet due to imperfect hardware not matching movie data formats
It's relatively easy to get 100us level precision in CPU wait and mpv has 42ms (42,000us) to emit each frame (at 24fps). Nevermind that the monitor refresh is likely 60fps or better so each frame lasts for two+ monitor frames anyway. As long as it is consistent with each frame timing it should be very rare that a video frame is skipped or doubled up.
Frames shouldn't be skipped but if the monitor is at 60Hz and the video is at 24 then many frames will have to come early or late. That's what causes the stutter that is most apparent on slow planning scenes. It's like the reel in the projector is being fed through in a jerky manner so each from lines up with one of the monitor frames rather than going through at constant speed like it's supposed to. There's no way around this. However with 120Hz monitors you just display one frame every 5 frames and no jerky motion is required (except the fact that US releases are at 23.976fps, not 24, so a frame will have to be doubled every now and then I guess, or maybe the soundtrack is just pitched up to 24? Don't know).