Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player

I use it to inspect video frames by frames, particularly being able to go back one frame. VLC doesn't support it, this thread about the feature is hilarious https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=120627

I'll be happy to switch over to MPV for this alone. VLC is great in general, but lacking some basic features. This sort of 'not possible' nonsense from developers is always a sign of a project's long-term decline.

"not possible" is as much nonsense as "everything is possible". Is it possible for vlc to implement support for rendering and editing common 3d object models? Yes! But is it possible given what vlc was set out to do? No!

I think another sign of a projects long term decline is developers that are all too happy to expand the scope of the project. If that happens I just know that down the line the feature I started using the software because of is down prioritized due to the "need of supporting markdown in the email editor" when the software started as a MSN chat archiver.

So you’re saying going forward 1 frame in a video is in the scope, but going back 1 frame is out of scope. Weird stance.

If that feature would introduce a need to reactor or re-architect major parts of the the logic since everything has been built with the purpose of the playing video forwards supporting as many codecs as possible. Then, yes. And as a long time user of vlc video playback (and transcoding) I have never wanted to go back one frame. I always wanted to go back like 15 seconds, and that has worked forever.