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
replies(19):
> this feature is algorithmically impossible
> You're just looking at one specific video, not the general problem.
> is not generally possible.
As a fellow multimedia dev, man, who cares? Sometimes we forget that software ought to be useful, not hypothetical ideals of truth. Just implement the feature for those codecs that support it and which probably are in the 98% percentile of what users actually use, regardless of the damned "general case".
Or accept and announce shamelessly that you don't have either the knowledge or the development resources to tackle such a complex feature. But excuses about not being possible for absolutely every possible codec in a completely generic way is just denying that the world is just a chaotic and dirty place where things are not ideal nor perfect. Just give your users a real-world solution (or rejection).
I don't know how they get away with that though. In the coding work that I do, I'm constantly dealing with rules that have exceptions on top of exceptions. I just need to special-case some things, because the alternative is not delivering what the business needs.
In your job, you have to special-case some things because the alternative is not delivering what the boss wants. Regardless of the problems this may cause, or how much tech debt it generates - those are (in the end) business decisions, and while you can make a case to the boss that implementing the special case feature is going to cause huge problems, it's the boss's call as to whether it gets implemented.
In an open-source project the maintainer is the boss. If the maintainer thinks that the feature is going to cause problems, they're totally free to say "no, I'm not going to implement that feature". And, ofc, because it's FOSS, the user is totally free to fork it, or submit a PR for the feature, or whatever.
> just got here from a Google search. I gotta say the replies from Remi sound defensively toxic. I'm not here to program the app, I'm just here to find a simple feature and/or request it.
I think Remi sounds curt rather than toxic. There's no automatic right for anyone to go to a FOSS project and request a feature and have it implemented. The maintainer is perfectly within their rights to just say "no". It's their project, their code, their time, and they're free to do/not do anything they like with it.
> If it's so easy, why are you not doing it? Talk is cheap.
> I'll be waiting for your patch. Surely you're not as lazy and incompetent as the existing volunteer developers.
I'd say that is pretty toxic.
Specifically, that is no way to talk about other volunteer developers that contribute their time. It is precisely the kind of language that keeps people away from contributing to open source. It's the very definition of toxic.