"Adam Albright" <AA@ABC.net> wrote in message
news
ric33t5b1etinrkksav66jl48mtijgpju@4ax.com...
> On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 12:46:42 -0700, "zachd [MSFT]"
> <zachd@nomailplz.online.microsoft.com> wrote:
> If it was a video driver issue logic would suggest NO PLAYER would be
> able to play the files correctly.
That's not how it works. Look up VMR9 vs VMR7 vs ... a long boring and
fascinating list of the different ways different applications can do the
same task.
So, no, I dispassionately utterly and totally disagree with that conclusion.
No one who works in this area would be able to agree with that. A better
statement might be "there may be some way to get those drivers to work",
which we can both agree with and note that there definitely *appears* to be
a problem within a given area. You can question causality, but it seems
really ... interesting to avoid investigating the driver angle here through
simply checking for an updated driver.
> That begs the question WHY can't Media Player? If it is
> as finiky as you keep suggesting, that begs the question WHY doesn't
> Microsoft fix it?
I don't think it's particular finicky. I probably know the ins and outs
better than most. It's got some annoyances and headaches here and there,
but -- so does everything. I've come to the conclusion that there's
probably simply not One Best Way to do it. Thus an ecosystem of good
players and codecs probably is a great thing.
What in particular do you think should be fixed how? Maybe you should start
a new thread instead of jumping into other ones. =)
> Case in point. A couple days ago I stumbled on a little video I wanted
> to watch. It was in the COMMON MP4 format. Naturally, Media Player
> freaked. First it said it needed to look for a codec. It tried, and of
> course, failed.
If it's not Windows Media Audio or Video related (read: a Microsoft codec),
it's probably not available from the codec server. Sorry - that would be
rather a large security concern otherwise.
> Trying again with Media Player now knowing I installed a working codec
> for this file type it has the nerve to tell me "The file type is not
> recogniged by Media Player" going on to say the format is "unknow',
> what a load of crap! It then offered to try to play it anyway if I
> clicked ok, but warned maybe you shouldn't since maybe it shouldn't be
> trusted. Anyhow, it did finally play the file.
Well, yeah. You need to register your plug-in for WMP. That's not news.
> Face it. Meida Player is such a pathetic load of crap NOBODY wants to
> use it because Microsoft refuses to fix it even to just get it up to
> acceptable level of performance.
Your big failure here is an example of attempting to extend WMP to play a
new format in a backwards fashion. Do you have any out-of-box failure
examples for core scenarios... ?
http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html#mpeg4
is my quick little write-up. Do you have the Tag Support Extender
installed?
http://www.wmplugins.com/ItemDetail.aspx?ItemID=867
I'm not really sure what you installed (you weren't specific) - it just
sounds like they didn't register their type with WMP. It's a pretty
extensible system, but I'm not going to guess at what they want WMP to do.
It sounds like you want to talk to your filter provider and ask them to add
that registration when they install, right? Doesn't that seem like the best
possible solution? WMP isn't psychic. =)
If you really really really want a Microsoft player that plays MP4 by
default, get the Zune Media Player (doesn't require a Zune device to use).
Your example is kind of accidentally getting MPEG4 to work in WMP because a
plug-in not designed to work with WMP was installed to the system randomly.
There's no great way for WMP to detect or handle that. If you click that
little "Oh Yeah I Know About That Format", it should work fine. The little
prompts you get for unrecognized files and that kind of thing are pretty
important, and it's pretty trivial to register your type anyways.
So... I get that you like some random player. That's cool. I just don't
think this is an interesting example of the failures of WMP, but rather of
some random third party filter that doesn't register itself fully. Talk to
them about that.
-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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