G'bye 3rd Party ASP/AVC Filters in WMP/MCE on Win7?

[LoRd_MuldeR]

We don't need more complexity. Just an "advanced" button with advanced options for advanced users ;)

[Trahald]

We don't need more complexity. Just an "advanced" button with advanced options for advanced users ;)Ask Jdobbs about advanced settings. he probably sits with his mouse over the 'submit reply' button for a half an hour before he submits a post that reveals a hidden advanced setting in one of his utilities. He knows while you can say only advanced users should touch the setting (and more importantly deal with the consequences), there will be a jump in bug reports due to people messing with the setting that have no business doing so.

As you can tell while I wish microsoft didnt have to , I understand why this was done. Having worked on the phone for years in the past.

[clsid]

Windows is full of settings and hidden tweaks.

An option for post-processing would be one that can do no harm at all.

[Manao]

An option for post-processing would be one that can do no harm at all. Never doubt the capability of users to create trouble with seemingly harmless options.

And in this case, most probably there's a switch in the registry to reduce/remove deblocking. But if it is, it's hidden and undocumented, thus far less liable to generate bug reports.

[benwaggoner]

Never doubt the capability of users to create trouble with seemingly harmless options.
Oh, yeah.

For every option, you have to weigh

The probability of a user who would benefit using it, proportional to that benefit.
The probably of a user who shouldn't use it using it anyway, proportional to the cost using it.
The additional test cost of testing everything each way for each option. Four on/off options just increased requirements for full test coverage by 16x!


In scrubbing the UX for a forthcoming H.264 encoder update, I pushed the team to take options out whenever we could find a good heuristic. For example, bundling speed/quality features into the complexity levels where they make sense so it can just be a slider.

Thus, Adaptive Rounding is off for Complexity 0-1, and on for 2-8, since it's always beneficial, but just a little slower. So, off for when the user wants to go super-fast, on when they're optimizing more for qualtiy.

[clsid]

Testing is so 2008. Formal verification is way cooler.

[benwaggoner]

Testing is so 2008. Formal verification is way cooler.
And once we have a formal metric for video quality, we'll be good to go :)!

[Zanthra]

Edit: I apologize for my idiocy. I got here from a link form elsewhere, and did not check the last post date/time.

[Revgen]

Can we at least agree that there's a real reason for this? You're saying excuse like codec pack and multiple decoder issues aren't an actual problem, but there's plenty of evidence here at forums.doom9.org that the contrary is true :). And the people who can make it as far as here to ask for help with a problem are going to be the top portion of the audience who have tried.

And every newbie that comes in to complain about codec packs is told to get VLC player or a version of mplayer if they are having issues with codec packs or codec conflicts.

Of course Microsoft isn't going to like that, so perhaps you'd be better served creating WMP lite and WMP advanced. If people decide to use WMP Advanced, then give them a warning like "Warning: this is an ADVANCED VIDEO PLAYER meant for professionals and enthusiasts. We can't ensure that it will work the way you want it to" or something of that nature. Your OS does this every time I install a non-WHQL driver. Why not do the same for WMP?

The excuses I'm seeing from your end don't seem to add up.

[ranpha]

And every newbie that comes in to complain about codec packs is told to get VLC player or a version of mplayer if they are having issues with codec packs or codec conflicts.

Of course Microsoft isn't going to like that, so perhaps you'd be better served creating WMP lite and WMP advanced. If people decide to use WMP Advanced, then give them a warning like "Warning: this is an ADVANCED VIDEO PLAYER meant for professionals and enthusiasts. We can't ensure that it will work the way you want it to" or something of that nature. Your OS does this every time I install a non-WHQL driver. Why not do the same for WMP?

The excuses I'm seeing from your end don't seem to add up.

Uhm... no, if a newbie complains about codec pack problems, he/she will usually be told to just uninstall that codec pack and then just install the Haali+MPC-HC+ffdshow combo or get a better pack such as CCCP.

And what is the difference between your proposed WMP Lite and WMP Advanced anyway? And what make you think that your WMP Advanced (application) is the same as an unsigned device driver?

[Revgen]

Uhm... no, if a newbie complains about codec pack problems, he/she will usually be told to just uninstall that codec pack and then just install the Haali+MPC-HC+ffdshow combo or get a better pack such as CCCP.

And what is the difference between your proposed WMP Lite and WMP Advanced anyway? And what make you think that your WMP Advanced (application) is the same as an unsigned device driver?

That's not my experience. Some codec packs cannot even be uninstalled correctly. The best thing to do is never to install a codec pack. It's better to just grab VLC Player or Mplayer to watch the videos. Now if the newbie is trying to use an avisynth script or use Vdub, then your suggestion makes more sense.

WMP Lite is essentially a VLC Player or MPlayer. Only it's built by MS. Even if it uses dshow, it would be restricted to codecs approved by MS.

WMP Advanced is WMP similar to how it is on WinXP. Perhaps with something better than the current merit system as somebody suggested earlier.

The whole idea is to let "professionals" and "enthusiasts" use the filters they want to use. Just as gamers would use beta drivers that aren't WHQL'd by MS.

[Shakey_Jake33]

I doubt they would want to maintain two different versions of an application, especially with one being for a minority enthusiast audience whom largely use MPC-HC/Zoom Player/etc anyway. They have a hard enough time dealing with separate x86/x86-64 builds of an application.

The bigger issue in my eyes (admittedly as a person who isn't affected by this) is how it affects Media Centre.

[Revgen]

^ I don't see why MS would have to do much maintenance with WMP Advanced. Just keep it the way it is.

[ranpha]

That's not my experience. Some codec packs cannot even be uninstalled correctly. The best thing to do is never to install a codec pack. It's better to just grab VLC Player or Mplayer to watch the videos. Now if the newbie is trying to use an avisynth script or use Vdub, then your suggestion makes more sense.

WMP Lite is essentially a VLC Player or MPlayer. Only it's built by MS. Even if it uses dshow, it would be restricted to codecs approved by MS.

WMP Advanced is WMP similar to how it is on WinXP. Perhaps with something better than the current merit system as somebody suggested earlier.

The whole idea is to let "professionals" and "enthusiasts" use the filters they want to use. Just as gamers would use beta drivers that aren't WHQL'd by MS.

What is this codec pack that cannot be uninstalled correctly? Anyway, IINM, CCCP can detect the presence of other codec packs and clean the system as needed. Installing the Haali+MPC-HC+ffdshow is much better than mplayer/VLC especially when it comes to performance.

If you whole idea is to let 'professional/enthusiasts' to be able to use the filters they want, they would have already chosen to use MPC-HC/KMPlayer/MediaPortal etc. instead of WMP or MediaCenter.

Plus, since when WMP 11 on WIndows XP has become a flexible and professional video playing software?

[benwaggoner]

^ I don't see why MS would have to do much maintenance with WMP Advanced. Just keep it the way it is.
This is software development. The word "just" is only used as black humor :).

There's always test cost, even with code that didn't change, because it needs to get tested with/on the stuff that did change.

[Revgen]

This is software development. The word "just" is only used as black humor :).

There's always test cost, even with code that didn't change, because it needs to get tested with/on the stuff that did change.

I'm sure you can charge a fee. Just as you charge Nvidia and ATI for WHQL certification.

Granted, CoreAVC, DIVX, and Cyberlink aren't the huge companies Nvidia and ATI are, but what they sell isn't exactly pushing the envelope like 3D GPU's. Can the fees required "just for testing" be so prohibitively high? It's not like you have pull CoreAVC and DIVX decoders in and out slots on a test bed machine.

WHQL certified filters may not be such a bad thing from a business standpoint. Assuming, of course, that you're not trying to monopolize.

[benwaggoner]

I'm sure you can charge a fee. Just as you charge Nvidia and ATI for WHQL certification.
If people are going to pay for a full-featured media player, there are PLENTY of companies who'd be happy to sell them one, and one with a whole lot more features than WMP.

Windows is designed to allow 3rd party players to take full advantage of the media pipeline, to support a wide variety of scenarios we're not going to handle directly. We're not doing a Blu-ray player either, but made sure Blu=ray players can take full advantage of DXVA and PMP.

Granted, CoreAVC, DIVX, and Cyberlink aren't the huge companies Nvidia and ATI are, but what they sell isn't exactly pushing the envelope like 3D GPU's. Can the fees required "just for testing" be so prohibitively high? It's not like you have pull CoreAVC and DIVX decoders in and out slots on a test bed machine
It's not just, or even mainly, about fees. There's a limited number of digital media pipeline test experts at any company. If we add new surface area for testing, we have to drop other features, or spread testing more thinly.

Also, Divx and Cyberlink make their own players, so this shoudn't be a problem for them, should it?