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| fccHandler |
| Posted: Mar 26 2003, 05:21 AM |
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Administrator n00b
Group: Moderators
Posts: 3961
Member No.: 280
Joined: 13-September 02
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I just answered yet another complaint about VirtualDub's errors. It's pretty bad to have a dub running for hours only to have it abort at 90% because of a hiccup in the stream, or some other minor error.
This also happened to me in the early stages of my MPEG-2 upgrade, when I couldn't recompress a Shakira SVCD (thus the "fix for Shakira" notation in my version of Mpeg.cpp).
My humble suggestion is to implement something like a global error flag that the user can configure. Maybe it could be a dropdown menu indicating the actions to take based on the severity of the error. For instance:
Level 0: Break on all errors (default)
Level 1: Break on errors that indicate a corrupt input file
Level 2: Break on errors that would corrupt the output file
Level 3: Do everything possible not to break
(Of course, as a programmer I can imagine how difficult it would be to implement this, but there's my idea.)
P.S. A long time ago I read an essay comparing computer programs to living beings, and it was so profound that it affected my whole programming style. I wish I still had the link. The gist of it (if I can remember) was that programs should be written to behave more like living beings.
Too often, if a program encounters a moderately severe error it terminates immediately. The mindset of many computer programs is to bring errors to the attention of the user, and make them as conspicuous as possible, even if it means halting the operating system.
But living beings react more like "Level 3" above. So that you can go on living, your body functions take an opposite approach, minimizing the effects of errors and suppressing them as much as possible. After all, you wouldn't get very far in life if the rest of your body suddenly shut down because you cut your finger (or even if you lost a limb), because the mindset of a living being is to go on living, whatever it takes.
Anyway, thanks for listening to me ramble. 
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May the FOURCC be with you... |
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| phaeron |
| Posted: Mar 26 2003, 05:45 AM |
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Virtualdub Developer
Group: Administrator
Posts: 7773
Member No.: 61
Joined: 30-July 02
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This is a noble request, but I'm not going to implement such an option without a logging window. Without one, the guaranteed result is that users will shove it up to Level 3 or receive it automatically shoved to 3 by some pack installer and then bitch that their output is garbled or the program crashes. No thanks. I want a window on screen and lines in the crash log that say there were 18,473 decode errors and 5 access violations. I don't want silent fixes occurring in the background resulting in the characteristic limping of Windows 95.
As for your biological analogy, the price of having a system that automatically fixes some problems is that it goes drastically amok with anothers.
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| fccHandler |
| Posted: Mar 26 2003, 06:14 AM |
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Administrator n00b
Group: Moderators
Posts: 3961
Member No.: 280
Joined: 13-September 02
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| QUOTE (phaeron @ Mar 26 2003, 01:45 AM) | | I'm not going to implement such an option without a logging window. |
A logging window is perfectly OK, so long as the dub is allowed to continue (that was my real point).
| QUOTE | | Without one, the guaranteed result is that users will shove it up to Level 3 or receive it automatically shoved to 3 by some pack installer and then bitch that their output is garbled or the program crashes. |
Yes, they probably will shove it to 3, but the goal of the program at Level 3 is never to crash. If the output is garbled, then it's their own fault and the logging window could make that plain to them. Besides, they bitch just as much if their dub is aborted at 90% after several hours.
| QUOTE | | As for your biological analogy, the price of having a system that automatically fixes some problems is that it goes drastically amok with anothers. |
Your life would go drastically amok too if you lost a limb, but you need not die because of it.
Anyway, I'm not pushing you (or anyone) to implement such a feature. I'm just tossing the idea around.
Cheers.
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May the FOURCC be with you... |
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| ChristianHJW |
| Posted: Mar 26 2003, 03:12 PM |
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Advanced Member
Group: Moderators
Posts: 1768
Member No.: 2
Joined: 7-July 02
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Am i allowed to ask if using another, probably more error resilient container format thhan AVI, could be an advantage here for capturing ?  .....
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Visit the unofficial Virtualdub support forum on http://forums.virtualdub.org - help to reduce the big number of emails Avery Lee is getting every day !!
Support matroska as container and Gstreamer as the only truely open, x-platform multimedia platform .... |
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| fccHandler |
| Posted: Mar 26 2003, 04:22 PM |
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Administrator n00b
Group: Moderators
Posts: 3961
Member No.: 280
Joined: 13-September 02
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Sure, but I wasn't talking about capture problems. Primarily I'm talking about a dub operation being aborted because of tiny errors in the input stream (particularly MPEG). I think most of these are the result of corrupt downloads.
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May the FOURCC be with you... |
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