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

mpv.io

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

#221

Post by ksec »

arch1t3cht wrote: post #79
tbeseda wrote: post #48

If anyone is looking for the mpv core with a GUI on macOS, take a look at IINA https://github.com/iina/iina

IINA has issues with color space conversions. I've heard that the specific issue is that it always (incorrectly) assumes a BT601 matrix for all videos, though I haven't verified it myself and cannot really right now. (I did verify its colors differing from stock mpv before writing this comment, though.) Various mpv wrappers exists, but for reasons like these stock mpv is the only fully reliable version.

Have you filled a bug report about this?

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

#222

Post by sebastos »

j1elo wrote: post #118
lairv wrote: 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…

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 to make even basic promises, like "the first frame's timestamp starts at 0" or "every parcel of data has a timestamp". Seemingly reasonable ideas that a neophyte might propose, like "suppose we store the video's framerate-" must be immediately interrupted with "you FOOL, there IS no framerate, nothing can be certain, this video might not even have frames, it might in fact be an interactive gift basket experience merely PRETENDING to be an mp4-". That's just the nature of the beast.

A playback architecture that can wrangle all of that cruelty into a consistent experience was hard won. Of course they're not eager to throw new features into the mix that will pollute that mental model, and suddenly introduce thousands of codec-vs-player-feature checks that were heretofore ruled out in principle. At a certain point, the architecture is sacred, and it's the only thing making VLC maintainable. If a feature doesn't work for everything, it doesn't work.

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

#224

Post by d110af5ccf »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #139
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What non-maintenance work needs doing? From the outside, it plays basically all the formats. There is always the potential for improving algorithms, but it strikes me as pretty feature complete.

> has many small seek/sync issues Playback issues... scrub problems mentioned elsewhere, audio/video get out of sync when seeking a lot; need to hit left arrow to reset, speed changes lag when changed a lot, when there's a short clip it can end audio early, etc, etc. Not a huge deal, but if you use it every day for video and audio file testing/lyric transcribing these little bugs get old. The playback core needs a re…

> audio/video get out of sync when seeking a lot

I have a very similar issue with subtitles in MPV sometimes. Some unknown (at least to me) combination of codec, encoding settings, subtitle format, switching subtitle tracks, and seeking will utterly break it to the point that I have to exit and reopen the file. I can't be bothered to debug the issue (so far).

In general I don't understand the negative comments I see VLC get. I've never encountered major problems with either piece of software. I've encountered minor bugs and annoyances with both.

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

#225

Post by mdf »

mtrower wrote: post #198
scottlamb wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have a long video with only a single key frame at the beginning then ...you can't support the scrub bar efficiently either, so no one encodes video that way. Typically to go to a frame you find the last IDR frame before it (and in reasonable encodings those are frequent enough) and decode forward until you get to the frame of interest. Doing that every time the user presses the single frame back button reall…

> It's of course work to do, and I'm not super motivated to send them that patch, and there's the question of it it would be merged That's my issue; he calls for people to send patches, but anyone capable of writing such a patch is also probably going to see that he's not positive on the matter, and that his "patches welcome" is really pretty passive aggressive in this instance. At least, that's how it comes off to m…

There's also a middle ground: Painstakingly describe the solution first, along with its downside of not being general in the same way as some of the existing features (I guess for example seeking back 10 seconds) are not, and ask whether a patch implementing this solution would be welcome before implementing it.

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

#227

Post by KingMob »

a1o wrote: post #168
throwaway22032 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The strange thing is that the same argument is true for seeking in general. Going back from frame 500000 to frame 499999 is in the limiting case as complex as seeking from 1 to 499999, and in most cases far better. I think the forum thread would be better answered "you do it, I don't need this feature" which is basically the gist of it and is a completely fair answer.

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.

It's because the developer is misconstruing a non-technical decision they made as a technical limitation.

The commenters are trying to point this out, which misses the reality that the developer probably isn't going to budge from their requirement of universal support.

That dev's rationalization also sends a signal to any commenter with the technical chops to submit a PR, that it will probably be rejected for not supporting 100% of the codecs. I have no doubt people who could do it, over the years looked at that thread and concluded it would be a waste of their time.

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

#229

Post by gorgoiler »

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...

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

#230

Post by imiric »

The_Colonel wrote: post #199
justin66 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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.

FWIW, I've been on both sides of this discussion, as an OSS maintainer and user, and have experience with demanding users and arrogant and, yes, _lazy_ developers alike. Let's stop the narrative that users don't have the right to request features because they're not paying customers, and that this is driving developers to burn out. Communication is key to producing useful software regardless of its license. OSS development in particular is not just about throwing some code online and forgetting about it.

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