[MPlayer-dev-eng] [SURVEY] change mencoder's default ofilename extension?

[The Wanderer]

Rich Felker wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 08:49:34PM -0500, The Wanderer wrote:
> 
>> Rich Felker wrote:

>>> what about removing the default altogether and forcing the user
>>> to specify a name with -o??
>> 
>> That's good policy in some ways, but in practice I think it'd just
>> amount to intentional user unfriendliness. It would be potentially
>> viable, however, if we allow the user to specify a default for -o
>> in the config file - either a relative path or an absolute one.
> 
> umm, of course this is possible! just add:
> o=test.avi
> in your mencoder config file!

Hmm. Okay, for some reason I didn't think that an option like that would
be included in the existing config-defaults scheme; looking back I'm not
sure why, since I was suggesting doing it exactly that way, but it made
sense at the time.

Objection withdrawn, then, as long as we make it explicit in the
documentation that this can be done. Actually, I'd like to see the
current coverage of the default filename handled better anyway, if I can
figure out a way to do it... mentioning the default only in the
description of the '-o' option somehow doesn't seem sufficient to me,
but I'm not sure where would be a good place to mention it.

> anyway as long as mencoder overwrites existing files (which i think
> it should) it's very bad to have a default output filename, imo!

Sometimes I've wanted to do it - run one quick encoding test, check the
results, run another, didn't care about the filename. Most of the time,
however, I wind up specifying an output filename anyway just because I
want to stick it in /tmp/ rather than in the current directory - so it
doesn't make that much difference in practice.

-- 
       The Wanderer

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

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.