VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development
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This month is the 20th anniversary of the first release of the VLC video player. Like so many other applications, the fuckwad developers are hell-bent on destroying it.
VLC 4.0 sneak peek—a look at its work-in-progress new interface
VLC 4.0's brand-new interface abstracts media files away from their content.
As long as your videos are all in your local Videos folder, you probably won't have any difficulty with the new interface—but in its current state, it's not much fun for browsing large numbers of files in multiple directories. If you need to get out of your Videos directory, you'll need to click the hamburger menu on the upper left of the playlist and select Media-->Open Directory. Selecting Open Directory, unfortunately, doesn't actually take you to the new directory—instead, it scans all files both inside and beneath the new directory you select and adds them all willy-nilly to the Videos tab itself.
They have apparently been working on this for 2 years. The level of retarded fuckery is quite exceptional.
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@El_Heffe I think this is the same behavior Open Directory already has (I'm not sure, because I never use that feature), so that's not particularly retarded. Removing normal Open File behavior is. But I almost never use that either, so as long as drag-drop still works, the retarded fuckery probably won't affect me much. It's still retarded, though.
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@El_Heffe said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
adds them all willy-nilly to the Videos tab itself.
Ah, so the "Videos" tab is really just the "Playlist", but renamed?
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Fondleslabs decreed that "Filesystem = BAD!" long ago. That happens when your documents/home dir is everybody's dumping ground but yours and there's no desktop anymore either. Now get on with the program.
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"Any sufficiently complicated
C or FortranGUI program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half ofCommon Lispfile picker widget (but touch friendly)."
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VLC has been on my shitlist for video players for quite som time, after I found out they were doing
implementations of standards. Also, I prefer to have my codecs system-wide tyvm, so any video player can use them instead of them being built-in to one specific player.
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They have a tradition of naming main releases after Discworld characters, so I hope they name this one after Bloody Stupid Johnson.
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@Atazhaia said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
VLC has been on my shitlist for video players for quite som time, after I found out they were doing
implementations of standards.I found that VLC consistently plays everything you could possibly throw at it, so I don't have to go around trying 12 other players that may or may not work. That the previous GUI was "too technical" and "not polished enough" (read: dumbed down to 3 buttons) was rather a plus in my opinion.
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@topspin I hope my goto music player will stay as it is. Has an overly simplified interface and can play pretty much anything (with plugins as needed).
Although I suppose the "highly technical" interface of foobar2000 may scare people off, though.
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The Android version of VLC looks pretty similar to the 4.0 pictures.
On Windows I've been using MPC-HC for a very long time. I don't have any desire to switch to a library-based VLC.
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@Atazhaia said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
Although I suppose the "highly technical" interface of foobar2000 may scare people off, though.
I never understood why people like it. Clunky, looks like crap, plus stupid name.
IME all media players, video or music, are shitty. I don't know if it's a uniquely challenging field or what.
I use Media Go, old version, which is simple and easy to use. And Spotify, which is getting on my nerves more and more.
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I use Windows Media Player
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@Applied-Mediocrity Windows Media Player 6.4 is the best.
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@MrL said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
IME all media players, video or music, are shitty. I don't know if it's a uniquely challenging field or what.
One of the big challenges is that the end-users have highly inconsistent expectations of what such a program can do and how it should present those capabilities.
I find, for example, that PowerDVD does an acceptable job of playing actual DVDs (which VLC can do well) and Blu-Rays (which is a source of severe stress with VLC), but I wouldn't use it for playing media files of any type. (Yeah, I know, DVD and Blu-Ray films etc. are contained in .VOB files, but y'all knew what I meant, right?)
I'd also like for Apple to stop messing with the UI of the music player app on iOS. Seems like every new version of iOS (even relatively minor number changes) stirs the pot in some way, usually for the worse.
And Zoom. They do the same shit - every time they release a new version, something moves or changes the way it works, and since it's currently a daily-use go-to tool, that's ... annoying.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
I use Windows Media Player
Farble me, I didn't realise that's still a thing in Windows 10, but yes, it is. It's changed a bit since I last used it...
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@MrL said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
IME all media players, video or music, are shitty. I don't know if it's a uniquely challenging field or what.
One of the big challenges is that the end-users have highly inconsistent expectations of what such a program can do and how it should present those capabilities.
I don't know if it explains fully the sheer retardedness of media players.
Looking for a usable player on android, I eventually conceded defeat. Every single one is somehow broken in a idiotic way. Some examples:
- no, I don't want to be able to only play shuffled songs of chosen artist
- no, I don't want to make everything a 'playlist'
- no, I don't want whole screen surface to be the 'next' button
- no, I don't want to categorize everything only by 'genre'
- no, I don't want autogenerated 'mood' playlists thrown in my face all the time
- no, I don't want to share every click on facebook, or anywhere
- no, I don't want to rate songs with retarded stars/smileys/notes
and so on.
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@MrL said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@MrL said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
IME all media players, video or music, are shitty. I don't know if it's a uniquely challenging field or what.
One of the big challenges is that the end-users have highly inconsistent expectations of what such a program can do and how it should present those capabilities.
I don't know if it explains fully the sheer retardedness of media players.
No, it probably doesn't, but it explains part of it, while other parts can be explained by "well, users are idiots because, well, users" combined with "developers are users too". That probably explains some of the "whole screen surface is the next button" thing which even Apple doesn't do. Some of those things you described sound like they are somehow linked to some sort of music marketing thing.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
No, it probably doesn't, but it explains part of it, while other parts can be explained by "well, users are idiots because, well, users" combined with "developers are users too". That probably explains some of the "whole screen surface is the next button" thing which even Apple doesn't do.
"People are idiots" may seem like a non-answer, but it's accurate so often...
Some of those things you described sound like they are somehow linked to some sort of music marketing thing.
Possibly.
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I find the Android version of VLC quite OK. It's not exactly intuitive but once you get used to it it works well and plays everything. Reminds me of vim
Desktop is a different story though.
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@MrL said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
IME all media players, video or music, are shitty. I don't know if it's a uniquely challenging field or what.
Winamp and MPC-HC are both quite good
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
And Zoom. They do the same shit - every time they release a new version, something moves or changes the way it works, and since it's currently a daily-use go-to tool, that's ... annoying.
Yes, and unlike something like VLC, Zoom could do with improving their underlying technology instead. I'd like to once more point out its absolutely garbage quality-framerate combinations.
Filed under: Furthermore, I consider Zoom to be crap.
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@hungrier said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@MrL said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
IME all media players, video or music, are shitty. I don't know if it's a uniquely challenging field or what.
Winamp and MPC-HC are both quite good
Yeah I used Winamp MMD3 for a long time.
As for video players, fortunately I don't use any.
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@LaoC said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
I find the Android version of VLC quite OK. It's not exactly intuitive but once you get used to it it works well and plays everything. Reminds me of vim
Desktop is a different story though.It is convinced ~20 files with the same album value but between them 3 different artist values should be grouped separately in the album view.
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@hungrier said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@MrL said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
IME all media players, video or music, are shitty. I don't know if it's a uniquely challenging field or what.
Winamp and MPC-HC are both quite good
WACUP (which can be pronounced as wakeup or wac-up or however you prefer it in your native tongue) is designed to work only with the patched Winamp 5.666 release to provide bug fixes, updates of existing features and most importantly new features with the goal to eventually become it's own highly Winamp compatible media player.
WACUP makes use of the benefits of Winamp being heavily based on a plug-in system so new plug-ins can add additional features as well as allowing replacements to be created which provide better implementations over the plug-ins natively included with Winamp.
If none of that makes sense, a good way to think about WACUP is that it is like a video game mod where you initially use the original game but then files related to it are added to or edited in-order to provide a better experience.
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I think the only way I've ever used VLC is by clicking on a file in the file manager. Which isn't often.
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@boomzilla said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
I think the only way I've ever used VLC is by clicking on a file in the file manager. Which isn't often.
I used to install it a bunch - when I try to open a video file and it didn't play, install VLC and watch the video. Lately, I haven't needed to do that as often. The default codecs with Windows have covered my default case.
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@dcon yeah...mostly I just don't watch video files or listen to audio files on my computer much.
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@boomzilla said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@dcon yeah...mostly I just don't watch video files or listen to audio files on my computer much.
Most of mine are videos of my dog's agility runs. (and depending on who filmed it, the format I get is ...um... variable.)
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I use a fork of MPC-HC to play videos outside of a web browser (I have my own custom file management/viewer pages for
). Like our alt @boomzilla I only really use it by clicking a file in the file manager.
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@hungrier said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@MrL said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
IME all media players, video or music, are shitty. I don't know if it's a uniquely challenging field or what.
Winamp and MPC-HC are both quite good
MPC has one really great feature that very few other players have -- the ability to easily play multiple videos.
Play a video and when MPC gets to the end it will automagically start playing the next video in the folder. Or you can hit the "next" or "back" button at any time to jump to the next or previous video. Seems simple and obvious, but most other players (that I have tried) don't do this.
VLC (and Winamp and many others) are a "one and done" player. They will only play one file unless you create a playlist. I've gotten so used to the way that MPC works that I get really annoyed when I try to use a different player.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@Applied-Mediocrity said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
I use Windows Media Player
Farble me, I didn't realise that's still a thing in Windows 10, but yes, it is. It's changed a bit since I last used it...
I sill use WinAmp.
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I'm so glad I don't listen to music.
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@Gąska said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
I'm so glad I don't listen to music.
In Soviet Poland music listens to you?
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@topspin said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@Atazhaia said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
VLC has been on my shitlist for video players for quite som time, after I found out they were doing
implementations of standards.I found that VLC consistently plays everything you could possibly throw at it, so I don't have to go around trying 12 other players that may or may not work. That the previous GUI was "too technical" and "not polished enough" (read: dumbed down to 3 buttons) was rather a plus in my opinion.
VLC has some features that are (mostly useless but) occasionally useful. If you're watching a movie and a scene is too dark to see useful detail, you can
zoom-ehanceadjust the brightness and contrast to improve the visibility. If you are watching a foreign-language film, you can (maybe) download a subtitle file from Open Subtitles and tell VLC to play it along with the movie. However, the subtitle may not match the timing of the video, in which case you can adjust the subtitle timing to match the video. Maybe other video players can do this, too, but I know it works in VLC.
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This post is deleted!
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I use Mediamonkey for playing music on Windows. It's a library player with a nice tag editor (for fixing the occasional error) and good settings for auto-converting files when putting them on a device. For a while Mediamonkey's developers have been
rewriting it usingcreating a similar will-probably-be-cross-platform application that uses Chromium Embedded. I'm not a fan of the new UI, mostly because there's very little separation between various sections. (Ex: the divider between lists is the scrollbar, but there's no border and the track is the same color as the background of the list.)Over on my phone I use Mediamonkey for Android to play local files. It's not flashy, but it'll play playlists for music I've copied over from my desktop and knows how to use ReplayGain tags for leveling.
I do use MPC-HC for playing one-off music files (like to quick play a downloaded file) but not for general music use.
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@PleegWat said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@LaoC said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
I find the Android version of VLC quite OK. It's not exactly intuitive but once you get used to it it works well and plays everything. Reminds me of vim
Desktop is a different story though.It is convinced ~20 files with the same album value but between them 3 different artist values should be grouped separately in the album view.
That's moronic. But then again, I've only ever used it to play videos. For music, there's Rhythmbox.
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@LaoC said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
For music, there's
RhythmboxMoC .FTFY
For an uninterruptible audio experience, music is best played by a dedicated server. Correctly built, this setup also shortens the audio's path from file to amplifier.
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@acrow said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@LaoC said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
For music, there's
RhythmboxMoC .FTFY
For an uninterruptible audio experience, music is best played by a dedicated server. Correctly built, this setup also shortens the audio's path from file to amplifier.
Does it take the bits and gold-plate them? The best audio stuff is gold-plated
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@loopback0 said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@acrow said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@LaoC said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
For music, there's
RhythmboxMoC .FTFY
For an uninterruptible audio experience, music is best played by a dedicated server. Correctly built, this setup also shortens the audio's path from file to amplifier.
Does it take the bits and gold-plate them? The best audio stuff is gold-plated
I'll have to check. Raspberry Pi has gold-plated HDMI connector pins, IIRC, but the analog audio plug has 50:50 chances and I've never actually checked.
No, wait. I think I changed out of the Raspberry Pi setup a few years ago. Now I have a Mini-ITX box doing double-duty as file server and music player.
...I don't even remember the brand of motherboard, let alone if it has gilded connectors.
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@loopback0 For recording and live performances you kind of have to. Singing or playing with percetible delay feels really weird. When assorted digital munging (such as autotune
) is applied, it creeps up, so you reduce it where you can.
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@Applied-Mediocrity I know but
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@PleegWat said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@LaoC said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
I find the Android version of VLC quite OK. It's not exactly intuitive but once you get used to it it works well and plays everything. Reminds me of vim
Desktop is a different story though.It is convinced ~20 files with the same album value but between them 3 different artist values should be grouped separately in the album view.
That would be because the artist fields (yes, there are more than just one) aren't correctly filled in, so it's actually a fault in the files themselves rather than the player. Specifically, there's an "Artist" field, which is (should be?) used as "the artist of this track", and an "Album Artist" field which should be for the overall artist of the album, but is usually blank even for albums with a mixture of artists.
For general compilations that span many different artists, the Album Artist should probably simply be "Various", of course. I have one album by Texas where one of the tracks has a guest artist, and thus its (track) artist is listed as "Texas feat. Someone" (no, I don't remember who it was). iTunes has the same problem, displaying the collection as if it is two albums, but putting "Texas" in the Album Artist field of all the tracks makes it organise them as a single album.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
"Texas feat. Someone" (no, I don't remember who it was)
Method Man (or, alternatively, Wu Tang Clan)?
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@HardwareGeek said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@topspin said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@Atazhaia said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
VLC has been on my shitlist for video players for quite som time, after I found out they were doing
implementations of standards.I found that VLC consistently plays everything you could possibly throw at it, so I don't have to go around trying 12 other players that may or may not work. That the previous GUI was "too technical" and "not polished enough" (read: dumbed down to 3 buttons) was rather a plus in my opinion.
VLC has some features that are (mostly useless but) occasionally useful. If you're watching a movie and a scene is too dark to see useful detail, you can
zoom-ehanceadjust the brightness and contrast to improve the visibility. If you are watching a foreign-language film, you can (maybe) download a subtitle file from Open Subtitles and tell VLC to play it along with the movie. However, the subtitle may not match the timing of the video, in which case you can adjust the subtitle timing to match the video. Maybe other video players can do this, too, but I know it works in VLC.Another nice feature: Cropping on the fly. For instance, if someone has hardcoded the black bars on top and bottom, I can crop them back out again without needing to touch the files so I don't have black bars on all sides with my 21:9 monitor.
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@Gurth said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
"Texas feat. Someone" (no, I don't remember who it was)
Method Man (or, alternatively, Wu Tang Clan)?
I just checked, and yes, that's the one.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@PleegWat said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@LaoC said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
I find the Android version of VLC quite OK. It's not exactly intuitive but once you get used to it it works well and plays everything. Reminds me of vim
Desktop is a different story though.It is convinced ~20 files with the same album value but between them 3 different artist values should be grouped separately in the album view.
That would be because the artist fields (yes, there are more than just one) aren't correctly filled in, so it's actually a fault in the files themselves rather than the player. Specifically, there's an "Artist" field, which is (should be?) used as "the artist of this track", and an "Album Artist" field which should be for the overall artist of the album, but is usually blank even for albums with a mixture of artists.
For general compilations that span many different artists, the Album Artist should probably simply be "Various", of course. I have one album by Texas where one of the tracks has a guest artist, and thus its (track) artist is listed as "Texas feat. Someone" (no, I don't remember who it was). iTunes has the same problem, displaying the collection as if it is two albums, but putting "Texas" in the Album Artist field of all the tracks makes it organise them as a single album.
It's even more confusing for classical music. Take, for example, a recording of Beethoven's Symphony #9. Is the "artist" the composer, the orchestra that's performing it, the conductor of the orchestra (who may be a guest, not the orchestra's normal conductor, and that can make a huge difference in the performance), the chorus that's singing the "Ode to Joy" in the 4th movement, or the vocal soloists? (All of them, obviously, but there aren't enough fields for that.) Add to that the fact that the single piece of music is made up of 4 separate tracks, all with the same title.
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@HardwareGeek said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@PleegWat said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@LaoC said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
I find the Android version of VLC quite OK. It's not exactly intuitive but once you get used to it it works well and plays everything. Reminds me of vim
Desktop is a different story though.It is convinced ~20 files with the same album value but between them 3 different artist values should be grouped separately in the album view.
That would be because the artist fields (yes, there are more than just one) aren't correctly filled in, so it's actually a fault in the files themselves rather than the player. Specifically, there's an "Artist" field, which is (should be?) used as "the artist of this track", and an "Album Artist" field which should be for the overall artist of the album, but is usually blank even for albums with a mixture of artists.
For general compilations that span many different artists, the Album Artist should probably simply be "Various", of course. I have one album by Texas where one of the tracks has a guest artist, and thus its (track) artist is listed as "Texas feat. Someone" (no, I don't remember who it was). iTunes has the same problem, displaying the collection as if it is two albums, but putting "Texas" in the Album Artist field of all the tracks makes it organise them as a single album.
It's even more confusing for classical music. Take, for example, a recording of Beethoven's Symphony #9. Is the "artist" the composer, the orchestra that's performing it, the conductor of the orchestra (who may be a guest, not the orchestra's normal conductor, and that can make a huge difference in the performance), the chorus that's singing the "Ode to Joy" in the 4th movement, or the vocal soloists? (All of them, obviously, but there aren't enough fields for that.) Add to that the fact that the single piece of music is made up of 4 separate tracks, all with the same title.
Technically, the "artist" is supposed to be the orchestra. If the vocalists aren't regularly part of the orchestra, they're additional artists in the same way that a duet has additional artists.
ID3 has separate tags for composer and conductor.
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@HardwareGeek said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
It's even more confusing for classical music.
Relating that to popular music, I’d say the orchestra would be the artist — for popular music, nobody lists the composer as the principal name with the work. And since there is a Composer tag, you would use that for, well, the composer. Then just add the appropriate column to your music browser so you actually see it (pointless for popular music, IMHO, but it would make sense for classical).
Guest conductors, additional performers like choirs etc. can all be lumped under what pop music calls “featuring” — for which you could then use the Artist field while the Album Artist has just the orchestra, so everything gets sorted right when you sort by artist.
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@MrL said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
@MrL said in VLC - The new poster child for everything wrong with software development:
IME all media players, video or music, are shitty. I don't know if it's a uniquely challenging field or what.
One of the big challenges is that the end-users have highly inconsistent expectations of what such a program can do and how it should present those capabilities.
I don't know if it explains fully the sheer retardedness of media players.
Looking for a usable player on android, I eventually conceded defeat. Every single one is somehow broken in a idiotic way. Some examples:
- no, I don't want to be able to only play shuffled songs of chosen artist
- no, I don't want to make everything a 'playlist'
- no, I don't want whole screen surface to be the 'next' button
- no, I don't want to categorize everything only by 'genre'
- no, I don't want autogenerated 'mood' playlists thrown in my face all the time
- no, I don't want to share every click on facebook, or anywhere
- no, I don't want to rate songs with retarded stars/smileys/notes
and so on.Try Musicolet. It has some retardation with the play queue (but it might be configurable) but it looks decent, has no ads, it's lightweight and is really the best in a very bad bunch.
