[vlc] Re: [ANN] VLC 0.7.0-test1

[Derk-Jan Hartman]

On 05 dec 2003, at 11:56, Bob Cannard wrote:
> Okay, I gave the MacOSX version of 0.7.0 a quick
> whirl and broke it in 3 seconds. Literally.
>
> Most obvious problem is that the playlist is broken in
> several ways.
>
> (a) Run VLC. Open the playlist. Drag an AVI into the
>     playlist. Double click on the AVI within the
>     playlist. Spinning beach ball of death. Nuke VLC.
>     This is absolutely consistent and repeatable.
>     (Playlist appears to work fine if you start by
>     dropping a movie onto the application icon.)

What version of MacOSX ?
I use VLC hourly and have never experienced this bug.

> (b) Run VLC. Click on the playlist button; the button
>     highlights to show the playlist is open. Close the
>     playlist by clicking the red traffic light; the
>     window closes but the playlist button stays
>     highlighted. Click the playlist button. VLC
>     crashes.

Haven't gotten to implementing that yet.

> (c) Playlist window does not remember its position on
>     screen. Trivial but annoying.

This must be a problem with your .plist file of VLC. OSX saves window 
positions in those files. VLC doesn't touch them and doesn't have 
anything to do with window positions.

> (d) Request: Any chance of putting the playlist back
>     in a drawer? Having only a single control/playlist
>     window to worry about is a boon for me, since I'm
>     running a club projection system and have to have
>     many applications and windows accessible at once.

A drawer is not suited for a playlist, because a drawer cannot be 
larger than the window that it is attached to. That makes a very very 
small drawer and than you can just as easily remove it in my eyes. I 
want a sort of iTunes approach in the future, but as long as I don't 
get paid or am the only OSX developer, i wouldn't hold my breath for 
this.
There are way way more important and real problems to fix on the OSX 
build that deserve my attention.

> DVD playback:
>
> (a) DVD menus: totally broken. Hit command-D to bring
>     up the dialog, make sure the DVD menus button is
>     selected, hit OK, and VLC crashes. DVD playback
>     works if this option is not selected.

i don't have a mac with a DVD player. Crashlogs anyone?

> (b) DVD subtitles are still being displayed incorrectly;
>     the alpha and colour values are being mixed up so
>     opaque colours are coming out as translucent white
>     (sometimes transparent depending on the intended
>     colour). This makes the subtitles *much* harder to
>     read. I put in a bug report about this a long time
>     ago and apparently no one has looked at it. Is this
>     ever going to be fixed?

People have looked at it and we know what is the problem. Just noone 
thinks it's important enough to invest the hours into it that it 
requires i guess...

> Controls:
>
> (a) The new controller looks very stylish and compact,
>     and is much better organised. Like it.

Max will be glad to hear that.

> (b) It would be good if step forward/step back would
>     step an absolute minimum (preferably a single frame,
>     although I understand that may not be feasible)
>     when the movie is paused, rather than doing nothing.

Not feasible. VLC doesn't work that way. btw they do something during 
pause, it's just not reflected in the interface.
if you start playing again you will notice it will skip 10 seconds.

> (c) Too many modifier keys! In particular, during a
>     presentation it would be too easy to forget a
>     modifier and hit command-left arrow instead of
>     command-option-left arrow. This would be a
>     catastrophic mistake; the UI should be organised
>     so as to make a severe mistake like this harder
>     to make. How about, say, using unmodified
>     arrow keys for step forward/back? I'd be quite
>     happy if this only worked in full screen mode,
>     where the controller is not accessible.

You can change the modifiers in the Preferences->Hotkeys

> (d) The Full Screen button on the control panel is
>     greatly appreciated, but like the Playlist button
>     highlights when it shouldn't: hit Full Screen
>     button, then command-F to go back to window mode,
>     and the button is still highlighted.

Same issue as playlist. Just haven't gotten around to it.
>
> Video: Upon starting a movie, still sometimes get a
> black screen for a second or two while the sound
> plays. VLC needs to get its act together before it
> starts playing, not afterwards.

No it does not. It conflicts with the streaming system.
We need to separate playing and streaming at the core level to account 
for this but this is a humongous effort.

> Audio: Sound still suffers unpleasant pitch variation
> when jumping to a different part of the movie. It sounds
> like it's being played on a cheap 60's tape recorder.
> This has been a problem for some time; I think it
> started somewhere around 0.6.0.

Don't know a thing about sound.....

> Miscellaneous: the error window showed 3 instances of
> "main: subpicture heap is full". I think this happened
> during DVD playback but not certain. Still investigating.

This is because holding the volume up/down keycombo draws many many OSD 
strings on the video. We know about the issue and considering an 
approach to tackle this.

> That's about it for now. Verdict: this version of VLC
> shows promise but is too fragile to be usable

That's why it's a test1 :)
Thanks for your input.

> FYI I'm running MacOSX 10.2.8 on a Titanium Powerbook
> G4/800 with 1GB RAM.
>
> Bob.
---
Videolan - VLC media player
Derk-Jan Hartman (hartman at videolan dot org)
Developer of the MacOS X port of vlc
http://www.videolan.org/vlc

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