"Adam Albright" <AA@ABC.net> wrote in message
news:cu39i35khv6vtd5a5t6i6smldlc2vfou8j@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 28 Oct 2007 01:23:39 -0700, "zachd [MSFT]"
> <zachd@nomailplz.online.microsoft.com> wrote:
>>To expand slightly upon Cal's response, there's over 800 codecs out there
>>that you can stuff into AVI. I can certainly make any number of AVIs
>>using
>>official encoders that no one in the world can play. It's rather awful
>>that
>>way. This is why I personally have learned to loathe AVI. =P
> That's called the official Microsoft cop out.
I should have said "IMHO", but I thought the "personally" and "=P" were
clueful that I was speaking from my own feelings of distress about the
extremely high level of user pain in this arena.
> While AVI is a wrapper,
> the fact remains even with the right CODEC on your system Media Player
> often won't play and Movie Maker won't open many AVI files, while
> other players like GOM Player, VLC Media Player and XnView can. I keep
> asking why, never get a direct answer, just silly comments like above.
Please be specific, as always. I think I've pointed out repeatedly that
vendors who were inappropriately using PCMWAVEFORMAT for non-PCM data within
RIFF are finding that that content doesn't work within Vista, where the RIFF
parsing scheme now actually enforces using the right data type (WAVEFORMATEX
or "higher" for non-PCM). That content is misauthored. It'd be interesting
to try playback of that same content upon SP1.
Intriguingly, there hasn't been enough user or vendor pain that I'm aware of
that a KB article or notice has been required. While VLC/GOMP/XnV might be
awesome, it's finding out what's going on in the Microsoft code that's
interesting - Windows Media Player / Movie Maker in this very specific
instance were simply "limited" by the new stricter RIFF parser.
Other than that, I'm generally unaware of any new interesting AVI playback
failures in Vista. I would LOVE to know about more, of course.
To understand where I come from: if I manage to identify and help get fixed
something on the Microsoft side, that's a) awesome, b) helps you, c) makes
me look at least vaguely useful to my employer. My only real concern is B:
Helping You, but if you're assuming me to be self-serving, than it makes
more sense for me to desperately try to track down interesting bugs than it
will ever be to ignore or punt bugs. Either way, blowing smoke does me no
good no matter what. Solving a problem does me lots of good either way, and
my honest primary interest is just making it so people can use their
computers without any problems.
As always, it's brutally hard to track down and fix bugs given the awfulness
of newsgroups, but you'll generally notice I'm committed to the long-term
view, which makes finding and fixing these things *more* possible. (The
longest bug-without-repro-steps to track down was three years between Syon
(R.I.P.!) and myself on a nasty DirectShow issue, the average time for
bug-without-repro-steps-or-box-to-look-at is probably more along six months
FOR ME and me only because I suck and am divided between a hundred side
projects.)
But this all a tangent on a "missing codec" issue. The "missing codec"
issue is utterly utterly fascinating, and doesn't have any easy fixes, and
while there certainly is lot of blame here on Microsoft, it's also an
industry-wide failing. When I have to personally register codecs that have
been out in the wild for several years, something is viciously wrong with
the system. I kind of feel Syon's unfortunate death happening at the same
time as an explosion of unscrupulous vendors led to the fragile system
breaking, and it's never recovered. =(
I'll do what I can here (in addition to normal channels/processes), but
it'll take time unless I decide to empire build and get Minions. Those would
help.
-Zach
--
Speaking for myself only.
See
http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html for some helpful WMP info.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
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