[MPlayer-users] Conflict between -vf and -vop suboption parsing

[Frederick Bruckman]

On Tue, 6 May 2003, D Richard Felker III wrote:

> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> On Tue, May 06, 2003 at 12:09:19PM +0800, ephemeron at softhome.net wrote:
> > [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> > Which is obsoleted, -vf or -vop?  Both options work with my cvs
> > version of MPlayer. However, -vop ${SCALE},${CROP} works like -vf
> > ${CROP},${SCALE}.  For example, -vop ${CROP},${SCALE} will bail
> > out if the "cropped area is out of original".  To produce a
> > similar "crash" with -vf I have to reverse the suboptions to -vf
> > ${SCALE},${CROP}.  Shouldn't the two options produce the same
> > results?  Shouldn't mplayer at least parse their suboptions in
> > the same order?  Better yet, why not do away with the other
> > option?  It's confusing!
>
> No, that's the whole point of -vf. -vop has always been backwards and
> that was confusing, and the name was dumb/inconsistent to begin with,
> so -vf was added to replace it and do things in the forward order.
> BUT, -vop was left in for backwards compatibility with old scripts and
> whatnot. So you should use -vf now. -vop is deprecated.

The fact that "-vf" is backwards from "-vop" never would have occured
to me from looking at the man page. As the text for "-vf" is exactly
the same as the old text for "-vop", I just assumed it was a
one-for-one change. (I only figured it out recently, by trial and
error.) It would be much kinder if "-vf" were to say something like,
"Setup a chain of video filters, to be applied in order", and "-vop"
said something like "(Deprecated) Same as -vf, except filters are
listed backwards from the order they're applied."

Frederick