Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What you need to know before touching a video file

gist.github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 251 posts

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

#81

Post by ryandrake »

BitsAndObjects wrote: post #35
BitsAndObjects wrote: post #5

Interesting read, it’s a shame the ranty format makes it 3x longer than necessary. Not sure why it takes a dump on VLC - it’s been the most stable and friendly video player for Windows for a long time (it matters that ordinary users, like school teachers, can use it without special training. I don’t care how ideological you are about Linux or video players or whatever lol).

Follow-up comment: I love how the author’s one brief take-down shot at VLC is currently the dominant criticism in the HN comments (inc. mine). 10,000+ words and the entire lot is being questioned because of one dubious throwaway comment about VLC. A lesson to learn in that. Lol

There was an article[1] yesterday where a single poor word choice derailed much of the comment section with rat-holing and nitpicking until the author revised the article. HN's gotta HN.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46413256

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

#82

Post by memoriuaysj »

perching_aix wrote: post #38

I've had a lot of misconceptions that I had to contend with over the years myself as well. Maybe this thread is a good opportunity to air the biggest one of those. Additionally, I'll touch on subbing at the end, since the post specifically calls it out. My biggest misconception, bar none, was around what a codec is exactly, and how well specified they are. I'd keep hearing downright mythical sounding claims, such as…

what if I told you the same issue is true for lossless plain compression like .zip files

the compressor (encoder) decides exactly how to pack the data, it's not deterministic, you can do a better job at it or a worse one

which is why we have "better" zlib implementations which compress more tightly

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

#83

Post by knowitnone3 »

Etheryte wrote: post #17
embedding-shape wrote: post #9

It seems really weirdly written. It's written with a lot of authority, like saying "Don't use VLC" and "Don't use Y" yet provides no reasoning for those things. Just putting "Trust me, just don't" doesn't suddenly mean I trust the author more, it probably has the opposite effect. Some sections seem to differ based on if the reader knows/doesn't know something, but I thought the article was supposed to be for the latt…

Exactly, very hard to take the rest of it seriously after the VLC bit. VLC has literally never left me hanging, across I don't know how many decades. It's gonna take more than a trust me bro to challenge that.

VLC has left me hanging many times. It's play a file wrong or not played at all while mpv plays it no problem. Do not use vlc.

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

#84

Post by perching_aix »

memoriuaysj wrote: post #82
perching_aix wrote: post #38

I've had a lot of misconceptions that I had to contend with over the years myself as well. Maybe this thread is a good opportunity to air the biggest one of those. Additionally, I'll touch on subbing at the end, since the post specifically calls it out. My biggest misconception, bar none, was around what a codec is exactly, and how well specified they are. I'd keep hearing downright mythical sounding claims, such as…

what if I told you the same issue is true for lossless plain compression like .zip files the compressor (encoder) decides exactly how to pack the data, it's not deterministic, you can do a better job at it or a worse one which is why we have "better" zlib implementations which compress more tightly

Drives me crazy but I'm glad to learn of it :D

Makes a lot of sense in retrospect, to the extent it bothers me I haven't figured it out myself earlier.

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

#85

Post by memoriuaysj »

perching_aix wrote: post #84
memoriuaysj wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what if I told you the same issue is true for lossless plain compression like .zip files the compressor (encoder) decides exactly how to pack the data, it's not deterministic, you can do a better job at it or a worse one which is why we have "better" zlib implementations which compress more tightly

Drives me crazy but I'm glad to learn of it :D Makes a lot of sense in retrospect, to the extent it bothers me I haven't figured it out myself earlier.

this is exactly what "higher" compression levels do (among other things like bigger dictionary) - they try harder, more iterations, to find the optimum combination of available knobs for a particular chunk of data.

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

#86

Post by netsharc »

The second technical definition in this document is wrong. Great way to put the "the author is opinionated but is clueless" marker right near the top.

> Actual video coding formats are formats like H.264 (also known as AVC) or H.265 (also known as HEVC). Sometimes they're also called codecs, short for "encode, decode".

Codec is coder/decoder. It's not the format.

There's a footnote claiming people mix the 2 terms up (a video format is apparently equal to a video codec according to this "expert") but apparently acknowledging the difference is seemingly only what nitpickers do. Sheesh. If you want to educate, educate with precision, and don't spread your misinformation!

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

#87

Post by Forgeties79 »

BitsAndObjects wrote: post #5

Interesting read, it’s a shame the ranty format makes it 3x longer than necessary. Not sure why it takes a dump on VLC - it’s been the most stable and friendly video player for Windows for a long time (it matters that ordinary users, like school teachers, can use it without special training. I don’t care how ideological you are about Linux or video players or whatever lol).

It seems to me he’s talking about using it for re-encoding/conversion as part of your editing workflow and is not really talking about its media playback capabilities. In that sense he is very much correct.

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

#88

Post by knowitnone3 »

yaur wrote: post #75
ramesh31 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

technically correct is the best kind. who cares if it's obnoxious? take the opinions and agree or disagree with them.

When we switched from x264 to hardware based encoders it saved something like 90% on our customers' power and cooling bills. So while this essay might be "technically correct" in some very narrow sense the author is speaking with far more authority than they have the experience to justify, which is what makes it obnoxious in the first place.

the author never talked about power savings or cooling bills, they talked about quality so they are still correct.

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

#89

Post by encom »

yaur wrote: post #75
ramesh31 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

technically correct is the best kind. who cares if it's obnoxious? take the opinions and agree or disagree with them.

When we switched from x264 to hardware based encoders it saved something like 90% on our customers' power and cooling bills. So while this essay might be "technically correct" in some very narrow sense the author is speaking with far more authority than they have the experience to justify, which is what makes it obnoxious in the first place.

This is already mentioned in the article. Software vs. hardware is a tradeoff. x264 produces higher quality (perceptual or compression efficiency) video, at the expense of latency.

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

#90

Post by knowitnone3 »

jlarocco wrote: post #45
perching_aix wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda the problem with anecdotes isn't it? :) My own anecdotal experience with VLC was that while every update fixed something, they also broke something in return - and these updates were common. This got annoying enough at some point for me to hop ships, and so I switched to mpc-hc and never looked back. I've since also tried (and keep trying) the to-me still newfangled mpv, but I'm not a fan of the GUI or the keyb…

And you think everybody else should stop using it because you had problems? I'll make up my own mind on it.

You should make up your own mind. why bother reading comments at all? why bother reading reviews? I bet you watch every movie and never comment on how good or bad they are because you'll be telling everybody else what to do and that would be hypocritical. I wonder how you stumbled upon VLC in the first place - perhaps you read about it somewhere and followed that advice?
Post reply on HN