Re: [gentoo-user] I want to play movies without hangs [SOLVED, sort of]

[Michael Mol]

On Sun, May 13, 2012 at 5:33 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 13 May 2012 17:01:07 -0400
> Michael Mol <mikemol@×××××.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, May 13, 2012 at 4:53 PM, Alan McKinnon
>> <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote:
>> > On Sun, 13 May 2012 14:12:04 -0400
>> > Michael Mol <mikemol@×××××.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> On Sun, May 13, 2012 at 4:56 AM, Alan McKinnon
>> >> <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote:
>> >> > [1] .avi files are notorious for this shit. It's what happens
>> >> > when you are Microsoft and you release any old crappy format
>> >> > without consulting the other experts out there (who will always
>> >> > outnumber you)
>> >>
>> >> Which better container formats were available at the time AVI was
>> >> released (1992)? The only contemporary container format I'm aware
>> >> of is RIFF, which came out in 1988. MPEG-1 didn't come out until
>> >> 1993, which was the same year the Ogg project started. Real's
>> >> stuff didn't come out until 1995. Matroska was announced a decade
>> >> later, in 2005.
>> >>
>> >> Matroska, MP4 and even OGG are nicer container formats, sure, but
>> >> they weren't around yet. And even with any of them, it's perfectly
>> >> possible to accidentally get A/V desync or stuttering if you don't
>> >> mux your streams properly.
>> >>
>> >> (This post draws heavily on Wikipedia for date information, and
>> >> dates may be considered only as accurate as Wikipedia...)
>> >>
>> >
>> > You missed the essence of my post entirely.
>>
>> Anti-Microsoft snark? I thought I was calling you on it.
>>
>
> I said .avi is a crappy format, and it is, that much is obvious to
> anyone who understands the simple basics of what a container should do.

The MPEG group had only been formed four years prior to AVI's release,
and didn't release their first standard until a year later. Meanwhile,
Microsoft needed a video file format that:

1) Was a file format that sat on disk
2) Synchronized audio and video
3) Integrated cleanly with their being-developed operating system (AVI
is very closely related to the Video for Windows API. It's worth
noting that WMF, another Microsoft format from this time, is
essentially a serialized form of their drawing primitives.)
4) Ran smoothly on an 80386 at 33MHz with a 16-bit, 8MHz data bus
between the CPU and persistent storage.

With the exception of perhaps (3), those are the "basics." Consider
that this was released in 1992, and then consider that it had probably
been under development for at least a couple years prior.

I won't disagree that AVI is a crappy format by today's standards, and
that it should be avoided where possible, but what you consider simple
and obvious today was *new* at the time, and so not simple and
obvious.

> It would have been obvious to the .avi developers then. And yet it
> somehow made it's way to market and got used extensively
>
> You asked what alternatives were available. That is not a question I
> asked. It matters nothing that the public used .avi so much (they had
> precious little in the way of choice). So whether they had
> alternatives or not is irrelevant.

It's entirely relevant if you want to consider whether not the
expertise to come up with a 2012-modern format *existed* in the
lead-up time to 1992.

>
> The entire gist of my post was about how .avi as it stands is crappy
> and should never have been released by an entity with the engineering
> clout of Microsoft as they don't have the excuse of being one dude in
> Mom's basement who didn't know better. They really should have known
> better.

Seriously, why? Why do you think that the entire engineering clout of
a company which hadn't yet taken over the desktop market(!) would be
focused on perfecting AVI, one piece of a large,
already-late-to-market product? They had a bunch of difficult things
to pay attention to, such as mixing protected-mode and real-mode
applications on hardware in a task-switching environment, and working
around compatibility for programs whose developers still assumed they
had full run of the system. On a 386.

-- 
:wq