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Kuu · 13/02/2009 01:53 AM

TheFluff Wrote:0.9.2 trip report

After experimenting for about 10 minutes I have the following bugs to report (there are most likely a lot more but I haven't found them yet):

1) H.264 support is extremely broken, even by VLC standards. This especially affects H.264 in MKV, but H.264 in MP4 also suffers from problems, although less than MKV. You are quite likely to get random garbage artifacts at random places. This is especially evident when seeking; every time you seek you are likely (more likely with MKV, somewhat less likely with MP4) to get garbage output and/or lots of hilarious blocking until next IDR-frame.

2) MKV support is a complete joke. It isn't just broken, it's completely unusable. First off, the playback is jerky; pans that are smooth in any other player are extremely jerky in VLC. Second, see the seeking problems above; they happen almost every time you seek in an MKV. Third, even after reaching next IDR-frame after a seek, you're quite likely to get random borks for a while, it seems. Bitrate peaks also seems to make it spoon its pants; things like the Kurenai OP that works fine in all other media players I've tested breaks VLC spectacularly (actually, high bitrates in MKV in general seems to break it).

Ordered chapters are "supported", but segment linking isn't, so a virtual timeline is built but if you try to seek to somewhere that would land you in an external segment, VLC instead seeks to the start of the file, making it extremely annoying to try to seek anywhere near segment switch points.

3) The famed libass support is erratic at best. It seems that they screwed up the libass position in the render chain so subtitles are rendered after anamorphic stretching, so on anamorphic releases subtitles end up off-center and with an odd aspect ratio (this will reportedly be fixed in 0.9.3). It also doesn't support fades for some reason, and colors are wrong (it seems it interprets them as RGB instead of BGR), at least with the opengl.

4) The only video renderer that really works decently on my Windows XP installation is OpenGL; all the others have either incorrect blacklevels, absurdly bad scaling or other problems, at least on my system (this is probably related to video drivers).

5) The ancient problem that if you seek to the end of a file, VLC instantly closes it is still there, and you can't disable it. This makes seeking near the end of a file extremely annoying because if you seek too far you need to reload the file to seek backwards.

Funny screenshots: http://uppcon.se/thefluff/fansub/vlc/

Conclusion and public service announcement: never use VLC.

subtitle speaks the truth

Source: http://forums.animesuki.com/showpost.php...stcount=80

ZiNgA BuRgA · 13/02/2009 01:56 AM

VLC has always been dodgey... Later versions are better, but the v0.8.x series was just a joke.
Might have more of a hope on Mac/Linux platforms, if there's not good mplayer GUI (dunno, since I don't really use those platforms).

VLC does work for most videos however - it's only really a problem in the anime community (ie donkey subs). If you just get XviD AVIs, it should work fine. VLC also has a portable version which works relatively well, and even though I dislike the VLC GUI, I somewhat prefer it over MPUI.

boogschd · 13/02/2009 01:59 AM

GOMPlayer! :D

/scramz!

feinicks · 13/02/2009 02:02 AM

boogschd Wrote:GOMPlayer! :D

/scramz!

I found VLC to be very dodgey the first time I used it. Haven't used it since. It was mostly MPC or GOMPlayer.

Assassinator · 13/02/2009 02:09 AM

MPC + Codecs > everything else (excpet MPlayer).

That was on 0.9.2. Don't know if it's any better now. I think the subs + anamorphic issue has been solved now.

Heh, TheFluff. gg and Eclipse's encoder.

Kuu · 13/02/2009 02:19 AM

Assassinator Wrote:Heh, TheFluff. gg and Eclipse's encoder.

Caught that did you? ^_^

Assassinator · 13/02/2009 02:46 AM

Kuu Wrote:
Assassinator Wrote:Heh, TheFluff. gg and Eclipse's encoder.

Caught that did you? ^_^

He's quite active in #Darkhold (encoders channel. The only IRC channel I bother to sometimes lurk on).

He's pretty cocky but he knows his shit well (so it's actually justified).

SchmilK · 13/02/2009 05:44 AM

See...I think this is a masdebater concerning improperly encoded videos vs a perfectly fine player.

Ive been using VLC for well over 7 years now and have never had problems like those mentioned above whne using divx and xvid codecs...I personally don't like vorbis/MKV because they do usually have strange encoding glitches on the few videos I have watched in that format.

BUT

I never watch anime ;) I watch self encoded and publicly encoded videos only in xvid and divx. :(

Assassinator · 13/02/2009 06:06 AM

SchmilK Wrote:See...I think this is a masdebater concerning improperly encoded videos vs a perfectly fine player.

Ive been using VLC for well over 7 years now and have never had problems like those mentioned above whne using divx and xvid codecs...I personally don't like vorbis/MKV because they do usually have strange encoding glitches on the few videos I have watched in that format.

What do you mean improperly encoded videos? The vids are properly encoded, and other stuff like MPC and MPlayer plays them fine.

You're pretty much just saying your player doesn't play it properly. Therefore the video is bad. That's pretty much like saying "OMG my 7yr old computer can't play Half-Life 2. I think the game is improperly programmed and bad. I've been using it fine for 7 years, and it plays everything else like Starcraft and the old Half-Life. So it must be the game's problem" «- "lolwut" logic.

SchmilK Wrote:BUT

I never watch anime ;) I watch self encoded and publicly encoded videos only in xvid and divx. :(

It's not just to do with anime. If you ever downloaded HD movies or something, they'd be either H.264 in MP4 or MKV.

DivX and XviD are old, outdated, obsolete codecs that still live because they have wide player support and can play on hardware (just like MP3). H.264/AVC is pretty much superior in pretty much everything.

AVI is just about the weakest container still in use. It carries XviD with the help of hacks, and pretty much doesn't have any of the features the newer containers (hell, every other container in use) has, like chapters, multiple audio streams, embedding of subtitle stream, etc. AVI needs to R.I.P.

SchmilK · 13/02/2009 06:19 AM

Assassinator Wrote:AVI is just about the weakest container still in use. It carries XviD with the help of hacks, and pretty much doesn't have any of the features the newer containers (hell, every other container in use) has, like chapters, multiple audio streams, embedding of subtitle stream, etc. AVI needs to R.I.P.

That's too many features for a video file...
i just double click and enjoy. :(

disregard my comments..im just trying to get my post count up :P

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