[vlc] RTSP client in vlc 2.1

[Gilles Chanteperdrix]

On 12/15/2013 02:33 AM, Jean-Baptiste Kempf wrote:
> On 14 Dec, Gilles Chanteperdrix wrote :
>>> But since you think live555 is SO open, I will be delighted to look
>>> at the diff and changes between the last few versions...
>>
>> I have been working for several monthes with live555 code, I use:
>> https://github.com/hackeron/live555
> 
> Wow! Clearly live555 is very open...
> So much open that you must yourself create a repository...

I was talking about openness of the project towards its users reports,
not the openness of the development model.

> 
>> And I daresay I find live555 sources to have a way more manageable size
>> than those of vlc, which is why I did not even attempt to fix myself the
> 
> Comparing a library supporting one protocol to a full media framework
> supported dozens of protocols, hundreds of formats and codecs, in term
> of code size.
> Nice trolling.

Indeed. But you are not bad at that game yourself. You forget to answer
all the remarks that embarrass you. Like the report on the effects of
network jitter on playback of timestamped sources, or the remark that
the user mailing list address is still available on the web site,
whereas you claim that it is not appropriate, not to mention the fact
that you could have said that in answer to my first post, instead of
waiting for the tone to have become ridiculously over-aggressive.

> 
>> defects of vlc as an RTSP client and came to this (user) list.
> 
> lol. If, instead of trolling, you had given a look at VLC source code,
> you would have seen that the RTSP client module is just a single file
> of 2000 LoC.
> 
> Oh, and you have the history of all changes that could impact it:
> http://git.videolan.org/?p=vlc.git;a=history;f=modules/access/live555.cpp;hb=HEAD
> And there are not many changes since the 2.0.x fork...

Well, I asked for pointers, you could not send them. Now that I became
aggressive you give them to me. So, maybe becoming aggressive was useful
after all?

> 
> Moreover, when people tell you that you probably should fix it yourself,
> which you obviously have the skills to do, you turn into bersek mode and
> full aggressivity.
> Not to mention that this is probably just a revert to do.
> 
> So yes, please write your own RTSP client (that I hope will be under
> 2000 lines of code, of course! With full subtitles rendering!) and don't
> use VLC.

I already have a player with an RTSP client, and it takes 1 line of
code, because I simply pass the RTSP URL to avformat_open_input, as I do
any other.

Ok, so you have made your summary. Let me make mine. Hopefully
dispassionately if that is still possible.

Like I said in the original report, mostly for fun, I am developing a
server to stream videos using the RTSP protocol, from an internet
connected server to my PC through a DSL line. After several monthes of
trials (which would tend to disprove your claims about my skills), I
finally come to a solution which works well, but has issues with vlc, I
know that the server works well, because it works fine with ffplay for
instance.

Being an afficionado of vlc, a (one-time) donator even, and vlc being
what other users with which I wish to share videos will probably use
anyway, I decide that I should help fixing vlc. Maintaining myself a
free-software project I decide that what is most needed is a way for vlc
developers to reproduce my issue, so I take time to:
- set up a server using the public address of the free-software project
I am maintaining, with some pieces of videos, transcoded from Blu-rays;
- send a very detailed bug report, where I not only describe the
symptoms, but what informations I could gather by debugging the RTSP
dialog, and most of all two rtsp URLs allowing vlc developers to
reproduce the issues.

Then the only help I get is from the live555 maintainer, which should
not even have got involved, then a laconic:

"we will not fix it, send a patch", not even answering the second, more
serious bug.

to which I answer "your answer is demotivating, your code is scary, send
me pointers to get my feet wet", at which point you simply decide to not
send me the pointers. Then yes, I became aggressive, and I should not have.

So if you are wondering why I do not want to contribute to vlc, lack of
time, code size, and architectures questions aside, well, then look at
how poorly you seem to have handled a report which from my point of view
was more than adequate.

Regards.

-- 
                                                                Gilles.