[MPlayer-dev-eng] What is odml good for??

[The Wanderer]

Reimar Döffinger wrote:

> Hi, I'd like to know what ODML is good for, because the only thing I
> heard about it up to now is that it is very good at crashing MPlayer
> (see http://bugzilla.mplayerhq.hu/show_bug.cgi?id=86).

It does two things that I know of: it allows vaguely proper handling of
AVI files greater than 2GB in size (there were, once upon a time, quite
a number of requests for this; if OpenDML support were removed, I
suspect there would be again), and it allows proper seeking in AVI files
of any size which have OpenDML indices. The former of these is more
commonly important than the latter, judging by the discussions and
requests I've seen, but it is the latter which matters to me because I
have a number of AVI files which use OpenDML even though they're small
enough that they don't need to - and I'd very much rather be able to
seek in them than not.

> I'd say either this feature is important enough to somebody that
> he/she/it will fix or I'll just remove it.

Don't, please. It may, perhaps, be worthwhile to make OpenDML
non-automatic and/or non-default (and I don't mean at compile time) -
but it took long enough to get support added in the first place that I
feel that even comparatively buggy support is better than no support at
all, especially since while there's buggy support there's the chance of
someone deciding to go in and fix it.

> I'm quite fed up with stupid, useless code in MPlayer.

...on principle I'd agree with you, but I'm a little sore right now over
the fact that I'm not sure I want to update to the latest CVS because
I'd lose volume-control functionality because AFAIRBATT at last check
the volume filter *still* did not provide functionality equivalent to
what was provided by the volume plugin...

I don't plan to agitate for the audio plugins to be put back, but that
doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.

-- 
       The Wanderer

Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.

A government exists to serve its citizens, not to control them.