[MPlayer-dev-eng] mp-G2 pre18 / Video with no sound

[D Richard Felker III]

On Tue, May 06, 2003 at 10:10:58PM +0200, Moritz Bunkus wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> I'd like to chime in with a request :) You said that libdvdnav cannot be
> integrated properly because current mplayer structure does not allow for
> still images and overlay pictures (?) for menu selections and such

That's only a small part of the problem. The bigger problem is that
libdvdnav sucks and can't interface with mplayer's cache/stream layer.
So, when using dvdnav, you have to do silly hacks to go around the
nice architecture, and if your drive has choppy performance and needs
-cache, you're out of luck.

The solution is of course to make native dvd navigation code, or port
libdvdnav to mplayer's architecture.

BTW, this is a very good illustration of good vs bad library design.
Good libs (like libavcodec) provide flexibility for the calling
program to use them in many ways to maximize performance and and
minimize limitations. Bad libs (e.g. libdvdnav) tailor themselves to
particular (usually bad) ideas about how the calling app should be
written, and try to take on way too much responsibility themselves to
make it easy for a random newbie to write an app just by wrapping the
lib with a gui. Other good examples of bad libs are gui/widget/game
libs that force your whole program to run as a callback function from
the library's main loop. (no names here -- everyone knows who I'm
talking about... :)

> stuff. As G2 will have a new concept I'd like to see DVD navigation
> support considered. I know a lot of you (including me) never use DVD

The other problems should be able to be addressed in G2, so I think
it's just a matter of having a working dvd nav lib.

Rich