[MPlayer-users] Jerky 1080p h264 playback

[Phil Rhodes]

> MPlayer needs quite a few headers that are not "basic". The configure
> output gives little information about which of the things checked for
> are really required or useful at all (some do more harm than good); even
> if you manage to get a binary it can be hard to know whether it's really
> a reasonable configuration or if the resulting player is missing some
> important functionality. If you're missing some dependency there's no
> information how to get it. Even if the dependencies are packaged for
> your distro it's nontrivial to find some of the right packages to
> install based on just configure output.

This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about.

There is a very great tendency, especially with FOSS but in computing 
generally, to assume that things which are not obvious, are. This is 
especially the case where software engineers work in a day to day 
environment that has a lot of givens which other people rarely need or have.

P