JWZ Reviews Video on Linux 872
An anonymous reader writes "The inimitable JWZ goes once again forth and reviews the state of video on Linux. Expect no mercy."
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JWZ Reviews Video on Linux
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"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity." - Oscar Wilde
What a grumpy asshole (Score:4, Interesting)
Who is JWZ (Score:1, Interesting)
OS X + Fink = bliss (Score:5, Interesting)
I know he poo-poos this idea, but he really should go to OS X. JWZ highly prizes usability, and so do most Mac developers (quicktime viewer aside), so it seems like a good match. He wants xemacs; he can get xemacs with fink and run it on a rootless X server, and thus get the best of both worlds. All the video stuff is likely trivial on a Mac.
And admit it, any time you see someone with hair like his, you immediately think, "Mac user".
MPEG4IP has a nice interface (Score:2, Interesting)
While it doesn't play all the bazillion formats of MPlayer, the CIsco-sponsored MPEG4IP has quite a nice little UI, compared to all the others. And it's just one package to compile, none of these source code + codec packs + skin + font downloads.
MPEG4IP only does MPEG-4, but since that is almost certain to be come the standard "open" video format, I'd expect it to become more and more useful throughout 2003. We're testing Cringely's NerdTV against it, and it works just fine.
http://mpeg4ip.sf.net
This also applies to XMMS (Score:5, Interesting)
When I got a Mac and started using iTunes, I was a much happier person.
He 110% rigth ! (Score:2, Interesting)
They never use any existing widget, and build new widget to build they app, the widget was crappy like the app. The Apps is never complete neider the widget.
And Even with K and G apps, you have to get the right version of the libs XYZ on your computer, and if you have a 2 days olds distribution, you just don't have the more recent libs, and the apps will never work.
Linux application and backward compatibility with recent distribution is just not here.
And even if you use and distribution with the apps comming with the distribution you have the problem. I install Suse or Mandrake, and I never manage to get a KDE media player to run.
-Denis B
Re:This guy is way off base (Score:1, Interesting)
But there is a simple rule I like to stick to in life. If you do something and it causes you pain then DON"T DO IT. I'm quite quite happy with my computing life (I don't use windows, I don't use mac, I use openbsd, freebsd, various Linux distros (yoper currently). I enjoy using them, if I find a project or distro I don't like or I don't like the way its set up.....I DON"T USE IT.
It fixes a variety of things if people stick to this philosophy. First projects that are lacking in whatever way either make themselves better to draw more attention, or fade away (beneficial on all counts). Second less time is wasted complaining about things and more time is spent coding. Third I don't waste my time either.
In summary, can I play every video format I want to play on linux without taking endless hours to do so, I'm happy. Thank you and sorry for wasting space on a good web page stating the obvious.
mplayer rocks! (Score:3, Interesting)
It can play just about ANY video file. And it does hell of a job playing! You can switch to fullscreen/back in an instant, even do panning-resizing on the fly (good for viewing 9:16 videos on 3:4 screen), adjust audio/video sync with a key, etc.
Ever tried using windows players? How about playing "bad" avi files, containing no indexes? Media Player, RealOne player all failed on those (well, they do play it, but you can't really seek, or if you can, it's fkkin slow).
Oh, and check that QuickTime player for Windows. It's slow, it's lame, it flickers, you can't resize it or do fullscreen.
I can't say much about mplayer's GUI, because I don't use it, but even that shouldn't be THAT bad. Just compare it to QuickTime or Media Player, which has all that unneccessary crap around the small movie.
Re:I fully concur (Score:4, Interesting)
Absolutely. Sadly, this follows you around by platform too. The Linux apps tend to have it, Windows apps certainly do (there are some terrible offenders bundled with sound cards), and Apple with its Quicktime player does as well.
Apple in particular ought to know better. Standards are standards for good reason, and a consistent user-interface is key. The writer of The Apple Human Interface Guidelines, which was written years ago for System 7 and which I still retain my copy of even though I'm no longer on a Mac, has many relevant things to say about such nonsense.
Cheers,
Ian
Best quote on JWZ.org is.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Forget the linked article "rant" -- by far the most accurate text on JWZ.org is the following:
FYI, the above quote, which can be found here [jwz.org], is attributed to "an anonymous poster to slashdot.org". If there is any justice in this world, that comment was modded to "5, Insightful".
This is not a rant... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I like this guy, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
I like the concept of themes, really, I do, but most people who do them have no concept of user-interface-design. If you're distributing a product, you should endevor to create a professional appearance once the work's been done behind the scenes.
A lot of folks seem to think that if it works for them, it works for everyone. Look at the plethora of shitty themes on themes.org or winamp skins at winamp.com or whatever it is that mac users do . . . my mac doesn't work right now. (iBook's yo-yo power supply is busted.) Anyhow, they're mostly just bad, cluttered, and really not that cohesive. I'm sure there are a couple, but I end up just getting the background pictures mostly.
For chrissakes, if you spend your whole life on a project, is 8 hours to make a theme unadorned with pictures of Heidi Klum wearing a Tux baby-T too much to ask?
"Gentlemen, BEHOLD! This thing!"
You should be able to use command lines, if you want, but it shouldn't be required.
switching distros (Score:3, Interesting)
Side note on what a kick ass program mplayer is: plays DVDs, mpg, wmv, mov (sorenson!), divx, xvid, on and on and on. Moreover, the low CPU usage is really quite incredible and makes it possible to watch DivX movies on my laptop that absolutely crawl on winders. Good stuff.
It seems like the UI annoyances Jamie Zawinski complains about with Mplayer are really quite trivial when you consider the immense benefits. I'm sure that there is a skin out there that would conform to the UI principles he wants (if not, how hard could it be to roll your own mplayer skin, especially for someone with his skills?). Find it. Use it. Stop complaining.
(OT: can we please cut the "JWZ" crap? Though I admire the things he has done for Linux, I think he seems to take himself a little too seriously, so when I see "JWZ" I'll think shortcut for "gee wiz", not that whining diva)
JWZ Emacs had its own movieplayer (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure that feature is broken in the current version (XEmac), and that nobody cares.
You're an idiot. (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe, if you're jwz.
You seem to be slightly ignorant of the fact that this "article" is just a rant, one of many on jwz's rants page. When he's pissed off, he writes something there. He's pissed off about the state of multimedia players on linux, and he ought to be. They're a pain in the ass to install, configure, and use. This is a cold, hard fact; jwz just said it better than I could.
- A.P.
A real funny read (Score:2, Interesting)
He's right on with the "theme mania" that is running ramped these days. If you have to have a themable GUI, please, please include a theme (the default) that mimics the platform that you are runing on. You know, rectangular windows, title bars, buttons, and never ever force my mouse to go anywhere, or force your window to be on top. I still hate that stupid Netscape 4.x (on windows) borderless window that insists on remaining on top while it attempts to load itself. At least mozilla's can get covered by something else while I'm waiting.
Basically, jwz has old data (Score:2, Interesting)
The part of the article that shows this more clearly is where he dismisses installation of apt as installing the debian package manager and saying it would lead to two package systems dueling over his system.
Clearly he ignores how apt4rpm works. If he had not been so sure of his knowledge, he would have used it, and he could have had xine and mplayer for RH 7.2 in about 3 minutes. So, at least the installation problems he describes are just caused by his refusing to follow leads that take to the real solution.
As for the rest: gmplayer has a regular with-titlebar window, IIRC, and yes, the resize-changes-aspect-ratio thing is annoying.
Re:What a grumpy asshole (Score:1, Interesting)
That being said, the price tag is insane, and no matter how hard you try, it's still Windows.
Apple's DVD Player (Score:3, Interesting)
And it goes on like this...
NOT a remote control!! (Score:1, Interesting)
Hasn't anybody
http://www.umlchina.com/GUI/ShameRecent.htm [umlchina.com] still seems to have it though. Search for "Creative Labs" on there.
Point being, the remote control has to be the worst possible computer UI in existence. And, not the best "real" interface for that matter.
overlapping windows suck...he is right (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not a super proponent of windows, but at east I know taht when my aopp freezes and I hit ctrl-alt-del I will
the running mplayer from a console is worse. it's pretty cool taht it works at all, but there is no way to stop it sometimes. esc works on small movies, but seems to not work on 2hr ones. so either I wait for the end ot I power off my machine.
otherwise now that I have the laitency hack inthe kernel work I have to say desktop linux is pretty cool =)
oh yeah... video playback suck in OSX too, I needed to install the OSX version of mplayer to get subtitles working in divX movies... ok sure not everyone uses that feature, but I do infact almost all the movies I watch use this feature. for me Widnows is thebvest experince. everything works, if is stops working you can kill it and generally the video is really fast.
too bad since mplayer is sooooo close to being perfect. maybe it's gnome and window handling. I have no idea. but one of them or both is not quite right.
Re:JWZ=Moron WITH No CLUE! I do video on Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
- First of all, Jamie was talking about just trying to play video. If he has to do any kind of configuration or compilation at all, he's done too much. Video playing is the easiest thing on the planet! Why is it so damned time-consuming under Linux?
For the rest of your self-praising argument,
- How long did it take you to compile and configure vcr, avilib support, transcode, mpeg2enc, and all the various patches that are required to get your video to record?
- "Also I create videos with a (...) camcorder (...) and Kino (...)"
Congratulations. Kino provides the same functionality that even the shittiest NLE, Adobe Premiere, had in version 1.0 (in... 1994?). Way to be on the cutting edge there.
From the Kino site: "It does not support multiple layers or tracks of video and audio." Huh? How can it be an NLE if it doesn't do more than one track? Have you ever sit in front of an Avid bay and done any kind of real video editing? Because I have news for you: Kino is to a NLE as a Kia is to a Ferrari.
- "I then save to mpeg2 and encode 9kbit video (...)"
I'm going to assume you meant 9Mbit video, because 9kbit video is like looking at an old, worn-out three-quarter-inch reel-to-reel tape from the 1950s. Still, though, let's review: you're shooting with a single-chip camera, importing as a lossy format, editing with a one-track editor, and exporting as a lossy format. Again, way to be on the cutting edge.
- "This is TOO simple."
I question your definition of simple. Check:
- Compile
- Find driver
- Compile
- Compile
- Install
- Try to find package
- Compile
- Install
- Cross fingers
- Compile
- Install
What you're doing can be done by my eight-year-old cousin on his iMac, using iMovie and iDVD, which (last I checked) doesn't take any time to install, because they come with OS X. And I'd bet the quality of his resulting video is completely superlative to yours, because the tools he's using are actually modern software (where the engineers have spent more than five minutes on the interface).
Jamie needs to bite the bullet and spend the cash for a good Powerbook or G4 tower. Linux on the desktop is dead. It will never get to the level that OS X is currently at. Face the facts.
Re:What a grumpy asshole (Score:2, Interesting)
On the other hand the NT servers I admin at work get rebooted when I have to patch. Period. Might be because I actually run the patch on each one instead of pushing some files and registry entries over and hoping I didn't miss anything. Then again maybe they just like me better.
At home I only reboot when some D3D game crashes my video drivers. That's hardly a Microsoft problem. It's a problem with the vendor supplied drivers.
Linux is stable. It's just irrelevant at the moment. I'd sooner go with OpenBSD on a server. As a desktop? It's a geek toy. People who just want to get things done don't use it. You know why? Because it takes longer to figure out how to get the hardware/software/user interface for a given task to work than it does to just do the work in another operating system.
This isn't directly related to the parent post but insomuch as the parent post seems to advocate Linux over Windows, allow me to relate my experience with Linux.
I've tried Linux twice. I tried it back around '97. Got the base system installed no problem. The 1024 cylinder boot limitation was annoying but not horrible. Configuring X was pretty horrible. Mostly because the kind of detailed specs X wanted about the monitor simply weren't available. PPP took me three days to get mostly working. I never did get it to consistently reconnect when the ISP did their hourly drop. X is probably the biggest reason I ended up dropping Linux. Call me a spoiled Windows user but I like being able to copy and or drag and drop without having to kill X from another box after it goes haywire. 3D gaming was pathetic. No real alternative to MS Office.
Tried it again a while ago with SUSE 7. Ran into the 1024 cylinder limitation. It was annoying on a 6GB drive. It was ridiculous years later on 20GB drive. Strike One. (Yes I know it's fixed now.) Trying to install any vaguely useful software quickly degenerated into darkest depths of conflicting libraries/ widget sets/ toolkits/ desktops/ etc. Dll Hell was never _this_ bad. Strike Two. (It isn't as bad now.) I had to recompile the kernal so it would recognize my NIC. Unfortunately something had apparently knackered gcc during strike two. (Probably fixed. I don't really know or care what the root cause was.) Strike Three.
I get paid decent money to admin computers at my job. I don't get paid to do the same at home. Time I spend trying to coerce and cojole Linux into doing the same tasks that other OS provide out of the box is less time with my family. If I'm not getting paid for it, and I wouldn't have to spend that time using a different OS, then it's a flat out waste of my time. You want Linux on the desktop? Get a version of Linux that provides the close to the same functionality of Windows or OS X out of the fscking box, and more people might take you seriously.
Re:What a grumpy asshole (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember, computers only become complicated when you install stuff/play around with the config. As geeks, we like to tinker with our machines, so obviously we run into troubles, but really we're looking for it. Mom/pop will usually be content to use it without try to change anything beyond the image background.
I've run into troubles with Windows before that took me as long to solve as Linux troubles. Some of the times, a complete reinstall of the OS was necessary. Obviously you had a bad experience with Linux - I haven't, and neither has my gf, who uses a Linux system that I've configured for her. It does everything she needs, and doesn't crash and/or suffer from general weirdness like her old Windows computer did.
Perhaps you should look into getting one of those preinstalled Linux boxes...
Re:eat this (Score:3, Interesting)
His credentials show that he's certainly capable of using Linux. The point was that he shouldn't have to enter Guru Mode in order to do it.
I'm not knocking the difficulty of writing stuff like Xine - I just don't see why I should have to read the manual in order to use it. I mean, is there really a compelling reason for inventing Yet Another User Interface? Having already been trained on how to use GUIs, I can operate MS' Media Player without having to take a special class. Is Xine compellingly different?
GUIs have been around for a long time now, and the whole User Interface stuff pretty well worked out and understood. There's not really any reason for people to "roll their own".
I wouldn't think people would encourage applications to be victims of fashion. Friends don't let friends wear mullets [mulletsgalore.com]. Why should Linux be any different?
Does it? Why?
Real programmers are lazy. They don't reinvent the wheel unless it's fun.
Part of the frustration here is that these applications are so freaking close to being usable, and suddenly we're confronted with a mullet.
For example, Xine pops up this weird VCR-style player. What the heck is that? Is it so difficult to use an existing toolkit? It puts being cool before usable, and there's really no reason for it.
As another poster pointed out, there's Kxine [sourceforge.net]. All the goodness of Xine, but with a standard user interface. Why didn't Xine provide this in the first place?
Friends don't let friends wear mullets.
Re:OS X + Fink = bliss (Score:3, Interesting)
You are completly ignoring the fact that he thinks running X of any sort on Mac OS X defeats the purpose.
I am guessing (and maybe I'm wrong) that he's really against running X as his only window manager. I suspect he has not considered running a rootless X server so that he can have his xemacs window and still eat his OS X cake, too. This is actually a pretty nice solution; it is a bit of a hack, so it might offend JWZ's touchy sensibilities, but in practice, I like it.
Another poster suggests that rootless X performance is bad. It does have problems, but if you use it to run a small set of apps, it's good enough for me.
Debunking JWZ (Score:3, Interesting)
Aside from throwing a tantrum and jumping Netscape to go run a nightclub he's perhaps best known for having written 'xscreensaver'. On his blog he brags at length about it's elegant / modular design whilst bashing the design of X11, and declaiming any possibility that his vaunted code could ever be responsible for problems.
Now I've used xlock for a freaking decade on Unix/Linux/BSD and I've yet to have an x-session crash because of it. By comparison I've never run a video card/Xserver version which some module of xscreensaver wouldn't crash. Now I'm accustomed to running my x-sessions for upwards of 6 months. Yes, this has always been marginally more stable on vendor-Unix than Linux.
So along comes jwz armed with his superior(sic) screensaver which has a couple of modules that will happily crash every linux X-server I've ever used -- what's up with this? My best guess is he's got a hair across his butt about not liking the X architecture and he's stuck in code that he knows will hit on known bugs.
Now this just antisocial imo. GUI's are the achilles heel of every os I've ever run, they do lots of memory copies, pointer ops and try to deal with async input from multiple sources.
And then go look at his Linux [jwz.org] gripes on his blog -- 2weeks to get X to display at bettter than 640x480??! I'm sorry but this just indicate the brightest bulb on the tree. Neither am I and I managed to get linux +x up in '96 in a couple of days, and since then I've run linux or *BSD on a dozen different systems. I agree with him that vendor-unix is more stable and better behaved as a gui -- big surprise -- the vendor has complete control of devices and has a reasonable shot at doing solid regression testing. Obviously OSS can't achieve that.
Re:This review sucks.. (Score:3, Interesting)
1) What WMs work with what video programs.
2) What libraries are required.
3) What version of gcc you used *G*
4) What flags are set, where to set them, and what's "right" for a wide range of systems, say, a few nVIDIA and ATI systems on AMD and Intel chips, and/or any specific motherboard-related issues.
5) All the other variables I've overlooked, but that you didn't, that make the difference between "It Works" and "It Doesn't".
One working example.
First, install Debian. Use this in your
deb http://marillat.free.fr/ unstable main
To install, run
apt-get install mplayer-686
apt-get install ffmpeg
Also, grab the extra binary codecs from the Mplayer site and throw them in
That site is here [mplayerhq.hu]
To play a vid, download it first. IF you get a stupid quicktime page thingy, load the page source, use "wget" to grab the vid, and play it.
If you get a windows streaming site, use mplayer -dumpstream to dump the stream to an ASF file on disk, and then play it. I usually use the options -vo xv and -xy 2 (or 3) to enlarge, and ensure usage of the XVideo extension.
So much for playing vids. To record digital vids, do the following
1) grab a cheap Firewire card. If you pay more than $20 you paid too much.
2) Build Firewire options into kernel and load the modules (or reboot if you build them in)
3) Use kino [schirmacher.de] to grab digital video. Again, from Debian, apt-get install kino. Edit in kino, export to a type 2 AVI file.
4) Use ffmpeg to make a divx file. I like to use these options
-f avi
-vcodec mpeg4
-s 360x240
-b 200
-g 300
-bf 2
-acodec mp3
-ab 128
If you have a lot of motion consider also using -4mv and -me FULL. If you have an IDE drive make sure dma transfer is enabled.
Again, just one working example.
Re:I like this guy, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
But one thing has to be said:
I compiled mplayer for myself and it can now play any video format (except quicktime) I use and it plays it perfectly smooth. The only problem is that the TV-out of my VGA (Matrox G550) is not supported with Linux due to copyright issues, hence I have to switch to Windows when watching films on my TV.
Man, those Windows players are *really* a pain in the a**. The playback is not smooth, the video/audio gets out of sync, the Window Media Player stops decoding when there are errors in the stream, the DivX player notorioulsly crashes my system, the TV-Out is not working for SVGACD's/DVD's, for viewing Divx on the TV-Out you have to install a strange shareware-program, AC3-Audio codecs are sometimes not working; Well - an endless list.
I'm soooo happy to have MPlayer under Linux!
Woo wooo! The cluetrain has arrived... (Score:4, Interesting)
THIS IS A CUSTOMER COMPLAINT! The louder, noisier, and more obnoxious the complaint, the more the person wants it fixed. If he wanted the product to please die quietly, he wouldn't even bother to complain. He would merely go away. He would let the product die in its own feces like he thinks it ought to. He wouldn't complain, because he doesn't want the product to improve and heave itself out of the pool of shit that it currently sleeps in.
And you know what? In order for this to happen, especially when the producers of said product honestly believe there's nothing wrong, the people making the product in question need to have their egos adjusted, probably in a brutal manner which will leave them lying on the floor in a fetal position, crying for their mommy. I have personally been through this before, so shut up, take the man's advice, and do it right. Stop fucking complaining that he's a mean old man, because believe it or not, he IS helping. He DOES give a damn. And if you're too weak minded to see this and adjust your own damn attitude, you deserve to die by choking on your own shit.
JWZ has lots of errors (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not saying that the state of video on Linux is perfect (ease of use ain't what it is on Windows), but it's a hell of a lot better than he makes out. Let's break it down:
I finally found RPMs of mplayer that would consent to install themselves on a Red Hat 7.2 machine, and actually got it to play some videos. Amazing.
Yup. The mplayer guys also complain about binary distribution, because mplayer really isn't meant to be distributed in binary form. There's a reason.
But it's a total pain in the ass to use due to rampant "themeing." Why do people do this? They map this stupid shaped window with no titlebar (oh, sorry, your choice of a dozen stupidly-shaped windows without titlebars) all of which use fonts that are way too small to read. But, here's the best part, there's no way to raise the window to the top. So if another window ever gets on top of it, well, sorry, you're out of luck. And half of the themes always map the window at the very bottom of the screen -- conveniently under my panel where I can't reach it.
Yup. *Exactly* like most Windows media players. I don't like it either. Which is why I use the non-GUI mplayer (granted, then you don't get a draggable progress bar).
It moves the mouse to the upper left corner of every dialog box it creates! Which is great, because that means that when it gets into this cute little state of popping up a blank dialog that says "Error" five times a second, you can't even move the mouse over to another window to kill the program, you have to log in from another machine.
This is new to me. I've never seen a program do this.
Fucking morons.
Yeah...I was thinking the same thing about JWZ.
So I gave up on that, and tried to install gstreamer. Get this. Their propose ``solution'' for distributing binaries on Red Hat systems? They point you at an RPM that installs apt, the Debian package system!
No. apt is just an auto-downloading front end. It works with both dpkg (the Debian packaging system, which is *NOT* apt) and RPM. It also makes Red Hat about ten thousand times more palatable, because up2date (Red Hat's own equivalent of apt) sucks very very very much.
Well, I found some RPMs for Red Hat 7.2, but apparently they expect you to have already rectally inserted Gnome2 on that 7.2 system first. Uh, no.
You *couldn't* manage to compile it yourself? Have you ever heard of checkinstall?
I've seen the horror of Red Hat 8.0, and there's no fucking way I'm putting Gnome2 on any more of my machines for at least another six months, maybe a year.
I think that you're being a bit silly -- lots of people are very happy with RH 8, but whatever floats your boat.
Ok, no gstreamer. Let's try Xine. I found RPMs, and it sucks about the same as mplayer, and in about the same ways, though slightly less bad: it doesn't screw the aspect ratio when you resize the window; and at least its stupidly-shaped window is always forced to be on top. I don't like that either, but it's better than never being on top. It took me ten minutes to figure out where the "Open File" dialog was. It's on the button labeled "://" whose tooltip says "MRL Browser". Then you get to select file names from an oh-so-cute window that I guess is supposed to look like a tty, or maybe an LCD screen. It conveniently centers the file names in the list, and truncates them at about 30 characters. The scrollbar is also composed of "characters": it's an underscore.
Again -- I don't like themed, pixmapped crap interfaces either, but the Windows world is exactly the same. For some reason, people designing media players have it stuck in their heads that anyone who wants to watch a movie wants a non-standard, hard-to-use pixmapped interface.
Oh, and even though I have libdvdcss installed (as evidenced by the fact that Ogle actually works) Xine won't play the same disc that Ogle will play. It seems to be claiming that the CSS stuff isn't installed, which it clearly is.
What the hell do your expect? You grab a bunch of random RPMs (not from Red Hat) which you didn't compile yourself (and ignored the fact that there are *two* DVD CSS libraries) and now you're bitching that things don't work. Either get it from RH (or FreshRPMs) or compile it yourself, laddie buck.