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> 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 V

> 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.

MattDaEskimo 2y ago
The developers had a philosophy and they stuck to it. It's an open source project, not a profitable service.
namdnay 2y ago
> No, it hasn't. The only reason I use mpv instead of VLC is because of the frame step feature You realise your requirement is important for less than 0.01% of users? For every requirement you have to balance future maintainability and the impact it has on the code base against potential revenue
- topato 2y ago
  Not sure VLC is balancing anything against "potential revenue"...
- Sophira 2y ago
  I assure you the figure is much, much greater than 0.01%. Even outside of specialist uses (and not just in the field of video, either), most people like being able to pause a video on a specific frame to be able to study it more closely. Often that requires (or at least the task is made much simpler by) being able to step forwards and back frame-by-frame.
  - namdnay 2y ago
    > most people like being able to pause a video on a specific frame to be able to study it more closely I think the vast majority of people just want to be able to watch the film they downloaded.
zem 2y ago
> 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.
sebastos 2y ago
I'll admit I can't weigh on whether there's a plausible strategy for implementing backwards frame step in VLC without violating any of their sacred invariants. Maybe the existence of other players with that feature implies that the VLC devs just aren't seeing it. But without that knowledge, I'm left to trust the developer's presumably deep knowledge of their own architecture when they say that it just doesn't 'fit'. It seems more likely that the other players can do it because they're architected differently, or they make a different (smaller) set of guarantees about which formats they will play back in which scenarios. >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. This is great advice... for a business. VLC isn't a business, it's a useful thing that exists. It gives people fulfillment to donate their time to keep it useful and relevant. That fulfillment is going to be directly proportional to how elegant the design is and how much leverage they have, i.e. small amount of good code provides wide amount of functionality for many happy users. The more that maintenance of VLC degrades towards "brutal hand-crafted specialization of huge switch cases", the less well-maintained it's going to be. This is not an excuse, it's a statement about human nature, something akin to economics. It's possible that mpv picked a better abstraction and they can provide a strictly better application for the same or less software maintenance cost. But I tend to suspect that the differences arise from levels of support, not better design. That's just a spider sense though.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  > VLC isn't a business On the surface this is true, but my guess: The core team work as consultants. See "Consulting services" -> https://www.videolan.org/videolan/partners.html https://www.videolan.org/videolan/partners.html I assume this means you can hire lead devs to fix bugs and add features.

MattDaEskimo 2y ago

The developers had a philosophy and they stuck to it. It's an open source project, not a profitable service.

namdnay 2y ago

> No, it hasn't. The only reason I use mpv instead of VLC is because of the frame step feature You realise your requirement is important for less than 0.01% of users? For every requirement you have to balance future maintainability and the impact it has on the code base against potential revenue

topato 2y ago
Not sure VLC is balancing anything against "potential revenue"...
Sophira 2y ago
I assure you the figure is much, much greater than 0.01%. Even outside of specialist uses (and not just in the field of video, either), most people like being able to pause a video on a specific frame to be able to study it more closely. Often that requires (or at least the task is made much simpler by) being able to step forwards and back frame-by-frame.
- namdnay 2y ago
  > most people like being able to pause a video on a specific frame to be able to study it more closely I think the vast majority of people just want to be able to watch the film they downloaded.

zem 2y ago

> 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.

sebastos 2y ago

I'll admit I can't weigh on whether there's a plausible strategy for implementing backwards frame step in VLC without violating any of their sacred invariants. Maybe the existence of other players with that feature implies that the VLC devs just aren't seeing it. But without that knowledge, I'm left to trust the developer's presumably deep knowledge of their own architecture when they say that it just doesn't 'fit'. It seems more likely that the other players can do it because they're architected differently, or they make a different (smaller) set of guarantees about which formats they will play back in which scenarios. >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. This is great advice... for a business. VLC isn't a business, it's a useful thing that exists. It gives people fulfillment to donate their time to keep it useful and relevant. That fulfillment is going to be directly proportional to how elegant the design is and how much leverage they have, i.e. small amount of good code provides wide amount of functionality for many happy users. The more that maintenance of VLC degrades towards "brutal hand-crafted specialization of huge switch cases", the less well-maintained it's going to be. This is not an excuse, it's a statement about human nature, something akin to economics. It's possible that mpv picked a better abstraction and they can provide a strictly better application for the same or less software maintenance cost. But I tend to suspect that the differences arise from levels of support, not better design. That's just a spider sense though.

throwaway2037 2y ago
> VLC isn't a business On the surface this is true, but my guess: The core team work as consultants. See "Consulting services" -> https://www.videolan.org/videolan/partners.html https://www.videolan.org/videolan/partners.html I assume this means you can hire lead devs to fix bugs and add features.