[MPlayer-users] mencoder doesn't work with -vf remove-logo ?

[Peter Daum]

RC wrote:
> I have no idea why you want to spend time and effort arguing with
> someone trying to help you...  Unlike Oliver, I (and most-likely
> everyone else here) would simply have ignored your report and moved on.

... had I known that this tone is representative for a list supposedly
about "MPlayer usage questions, feature request, bug reports" I certainly
would not have tried it in the 1st place, because so far all reactions were
only concerned with "proving" what an idiot I am for asking.

Actually I still strongly hope that this is not the case, because
- mplayer is the most versatile media player that I know, thus
- I very much appreciate the effort of anybody engaging in the
   development in free software in general and mplayer in particular and
- especially appreciate the efforts of anybody trying to help people
   in using this very complex piece of software that (as most free software)
   is not always perfectly self-explanatory.

You're right, I (or anybody) certainly can not expect that somebody is willing
to deal with a question and thus it is perfectly alright, if you, Oliver Seitz
or everyone chooses not to do so. Thus, I had every reason to be grateful if
somebody is trying to help.

But this is obviously not the case - or at least in your reply. The original
reply of Oliver Seitz also (at least to me) sounded more like somebody trying
to be funny than somebody curious asking for clarification, but I may be wrong
with that ...

Under these circumstances I am not sure why i still try to reply (after the
prelude certainly not because I hope for an answer to my original question),
probably mostly just to defend my reputation after you and possibly Oliver
tried to publicly demonstrate what a moron I am. Let me try a short summary:

- I asked a fairly specific question: is the "remove-logo" filter for some
   reason only usable when playing films or can it also be used for encoding?

- even a command line like "mplayer some.file" will generate a pretty
   substantial amount of output, most of it always the same, some of it sounds
   like error messages (but obviously not very serious, because they also show up
   if everything works.

- the original setting was a pretty long command line consisting of filters and
   options for encoding. The single parts of the command seemed o.k. (leaving out
   the encoding-specific part and just playing the video using the filter chain)
   works, leaving everything else in place and just removing "remove-logo" or
   replacing it with delogo also works).

, mplayer's reaction to the whole command is to just emit lots of messages and abort

- I tried to only quote relevant portions of mplayer's output; it seems like these also
   are not relevant after all, but given these reactions I definitely would anticipate an
   outcry of indignation about what an idiot I am for expecting people to look through a
   dump of useless noise and figure out what I want if I'd just quote the whole 150+ lines
   of output generated by "mencoder -v" (and in this case I would perfectly understand the
   indignation - even then I would consider it more appropriate to just ignore the posting
   instead of offending the poster)

- I did not in any way try to put down Oliver Seitz or anybody else (if I did, then I
   honestly regret it; my reply was certainly a little ironic, but so was Oliver's).
   Instead I tried to clarify the problem and reduce it to a simple, reproducible case:
   whoever wants to know can just enter
   "mencoder -vf remove-logo=logo.pgm -ovc x264 -oac copy -o /dev/null infile"
   (infile being some video file, logo.pgm a grayscale image of identical dimensions)
   and see what happens.

- I was not "undeniably incorrect", I just found out that the crucial part of the
   combination was not just the combination of "remove-logo" and encoding but the
   combination of "remove-logo" and x264-encoding. This is not "alt.flame", so one would
   expect it to be of more interest if this is a known "remove-logo"-feature/bug than to
   reflect the on the "complete wrongness" of a person.

Actually, just another reply from Oliver came, which definitely sounds like he interpreted
my reply the way it was meant and did not take any offense (which I am glad about), so maybe
my whole outcry here (admittedly also not aimed primarily at technical problems regarding
mplayer;) is just the reflection of my annoyance about one single reply. I am still going to
send my reply to the list, because I think that this way of attacking people is very suitable
for deterring any newbie to ever try to ask a question again ...

_kind_ regards,
                               Peter