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What you need to know before touching a video file

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Re: What you need to know before touching a video file

#241

Post by BloodyIron »

jaapz wrote: post #123
Drybones wrote: post #116

Nearly this entire HN comment section is upset about VLC being mentioned once and not recommended. If you can not understand why this very minor (but loud?) note was made, then you probably do not do any serious video encoding or you would know why it sucks today and is well past its prime. VLC is glorified because it was a video player that used to be amazing back in the day, but hasn't been for several years now. I…

> It is the Firefox of media players. So... the better option?

> So... the better option?

Depends on what you care about.

For me, Firefox really lacks in handling of very large amounts of tabs and a lot of features that I specifically use Vivaldi for. Does that mean Vivaldi is the best? Yes and No, it depends on what you care about.

Is Firefox still a good browser? As far as I know, yes. But I don't use it much at all because it doesn't give _me_ what I want and need.

And yes, I do actually need a large amount of tabs open at the same time very regularly due to the depth of references I work against in my line of work. That's on top of saving lots of bookmarks and syncing them via nextCloud.

You like Firefox? Great, keep at it.

You want to see features that aren't necessarily elsewhere? Consider trying Vivaldi and seeing if it's great for you or not.

Let's not act like browser selection is binary, because it isn't, and it really hasn't been since netscape navigator was new. And even then it's up for debate.

Re: What you need to know before touching a video file

#242

Post by zzo38computer »

liampulles wrote: post #229
zzo38computer wrote: post #119

Sometimes I would want to convert from MPEG-TS H.264 to DVD video format, or other conversions, so there are reasons to do so. However, once I had got desynchronized audio, and I don't know if that is because of the original source, because of the conversion, or because some segments have not been recorded. (Also, it could not retain the EIA-608 captions, but that seems to be a limitation with FFmpeg, rather than som…

Did you use a decent piece of DVD authoring software? Here are some options: https://www.videohelp.com/software/sections/authoring-dvd

I used the "ffmpeg" to convert the video/audio, and then I used the "dvdauthor" to make the files into the video DVD format, and then I used the "genisoimage" to make the disk image file in the DVD format.

Re: What you need to know before touching a video file

#243

Post by Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe »

morshu9001 wrote: post #206
amelius wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main problem with VLC is that when I accidentally hit the wrong key on my keyboard (usually in the dark, because that's how I watch movies), it is quite often almost impossible to get the settings back to what they were without restarting the player.

Keyboard shortcuts with no modifier key involved are evil. Even Gmail has those.

Funny how you say "evil" but all I can hear is "vi".

Re: What you need to know before touching a video file

#244

Post by morshu9001 »

Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe wrote: post #243
morshu9001 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keyboard shortcuts with no modifier key involved are evil. Even Gmail has those.

Funny how you say "evil" but all I can hear is "vi".

Oh it's fair game there. I love vi/vim

Re: What you need to know before touching a video file

#245

Post by astrange »

embedding-shape wrote: post #224
astrange wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are not very many recommendations in this article, but they're good.

Wish I knew which ones were applicable to me, but without any reasoning, these "recommendations" are as good as random tweets with factoids.

Well, I just told you they're good, so now you know.

Re: What you need to know before touching a video file

#246

Post by astrange »

dylan604 wrote: post #178
astrange wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ffmpeg and libavcodec are the same project.

yes. but do you have to include the ffmpeg part to include just the other libraries?

No, ffmpeg itself is a pretty small wrapper around them. But the rest are true libraries and not frameworks, so you have to make all kinds of playback decisions yourself. A/V sync is hard.

Re: What you need to know before touching a video file

#247

Post by centur »

BoppreH wrote: post #148
Drybones wrote: post #116

Nearly this entire HN comment section is upset about VLC being mentioned once and not recommended. If you can not understand why this very minor (but loud?) note was made, then you probably do not do any serious video encoding or you would know why it sucks today and is well past its prime. VLC is glorified because it was a video player that used to be amazing back in the day, but hasn't been for several years now. I…

I'm also surprised by people's defense of VLC. It's a nice project, especially when it was created, but the bugs I regularly encountered were numerous and in seemingly common use cases. Here's a post I made 4 years ago describing each bug, shortly before switching to MPV: https://www.reddit.com/r/VLC/comments/pm6y1n/too_many_bugs_o...

Honestly, I'm absolutely not. I still vividly remember those times when we have to install codecs separately. And every month something something new and incompatible pops up on a radar, which sent all users on a wild hunt for that exact codec and instructions how to tweak it so the funny clip could play. Oh dear I'm not loking back to times od all versions of divX xVid, matroska, mkv avi wma, mp4, mp3 vba ogg and everything else, all thos cryptic incantations to summon a non-broken video frame on a modern hardvare, for everyone but few people in anime community who drove that insanity on everyone else. I'll die on a hill of VLC, despite all its flaws, because it gave an escape route for everyone else - if you don't give a F about "pixel perfect lowest overhead most progressive compression that is still a scientific experiment but we want to encode a clip with it" and simply want to view a video - vlc was the way. Nothing else made so much good to users who simply want to watch a video and not be extatic about its perfect colour profile, loosless sound and smallest size possible.

All other players lost their plot when they tried to steer users into some madness pit of millions tweaks and configurations that somehow excites aughors of those players and some cohort of people who encode videos that way.

I istall vlc very single time, because this is a blunt answer to all video playing problems, even if its imperfect. And walked away from ever single player who tries to sell me something better asking to configure 100 parameters I've no idea about. Hope this answers the question why VLC won.

Re: What you need to know before touching a video file

#248

Post by embedding-shape »

astrange wrote: post #245
embedding-shape wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wish I knew which ones were applicable to me, but without any reasoning, these "recommendations" are as good as random tweets with factoids.

Well, I just told you they're good, so now you know.

Yeah, based on your comment I learnt as much as the original article, which is basically nothing. So thank you :)

Re: What you need to know before touching a video file

#249

Post by tau255 »

morshu9001 wrote: post #206
amelius wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main problem with VLC is that when I accidentally hit the wrong key on my keyboard (usually in the dark, because that's how I watch movies), it is quite often almost impossible to get the settings back to what they were without restarting the player.

Keyboard shortcuts with no modifier key involved are evil. Even Gmail has those.

Thunderbird has no modifier shortcuts too.

Re: What you need to know before touching a video file

#250

Post by rldjbpin »

arch1t3cht wrote: post #218

Original post author here. It seems like the main criticisms I am getting for this article are because it's escaped past its main target audience, so let me clarify a few things. This post was born out of me hanging out in communities where people would make their own shortened edits of TV series and, in particular, anime, often to cut out filler or padding. Many people there would make many of the mistakes mentioned…

remux vs reencode itself is a big point for video noobs such as myself.

in the past, cropping out a part of a video would meant reencoding it in some random preset. this would often take longer than required. however, accidentally realized the difference when trying out avidemux [1] and clipping together videos blazing fast (provided in same container and format)!

[1] http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/

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