[MPlayer-users] Containers, GMC, PSNR, and doom9

[The Wanderer]

Alexander Noe' wrote:

> Ivan Kowalenko schrieb:
> 
>>> [1] http://forums.virtualdub.org/index.php?s=8558dbc13f1fdb67454c5aca0e529d39&act=ST&f=2&t=11828&hl=stream+numbers
>> 
>> I stand corrected. The thing that confused me (and still does) is
>> that every time someone comes on the mailing list with an AVI file
>> with a subtitle track in it, they're told that the file is a hack,
>> and they'll need to extract the subtitle stream.  If AVI has no
>> problem with subtitles, as stated above, then what is the story
>> with those "hacked" files? I'm genuinely curious.
> 
> Those files are kinda badly designed: There is one big subtitle chunk
> for an entire stream, containing a SSA or SRT file, which is
> contrary to the concept of a "stream".

> The best way for mplayer to support that would probably be to map the
> chunk containing the entire subtitle stream into a memory-mapped
> file and run it through a subtitle file parser, treating it as
> external file. I guess this best way is not considered good enough...

My understanding is that it's not that this way is not "good enough",
it's just that no one with the skill to do so has actually gone to the
trouble. I'm fairly sure that a clean patch to that effect would be
accepted; certainly it (or some less-technically-detailed version of the
base idea) was the first thing I thought of when the nature of the
problem was first explained to me, which is (IIRC) right after it was
first discovered by a member of the MPlayer team.

The only reason that it might not be accepted is as a way to say
"breaking interleaving like that is not acceptable, get the people who
create the tools which mux in such a broken way to split the subtitles
up into vaguely appropriate chunks", and I don't think that the people
who reject additions based on philosophical principle (of whom I am
occasionally one, even if I don't usually need to speak up about it)
care enough about the issue to do that in this instance.

-- 
       The Wanderer

Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.