Windows Media Player 11 performance with Movies

[zachd [MSFT]]

You keep dodging the issue.

Don't shift file formats and corruption types and expect the conversation
not to change. =)

If you invested half as much time in
trying to find out WHY Media Player screws up instead of spending most
of your time defending all the lame things it does we may be able to
lurch forward a bit.

That's not really my job, as mentioned previously. How it screws up is what
is interesting to me.

OK fine then, another chance for you at the same question. Explain WHY
Media Player said the file was only 26 seconds in length, but kept
playing for over 9 minutes.

Reported duration is the math you saw earlier. Playback doesn't follow that
exact logical path.

This isn't really interesting in that it's not likely to change any time
soon.

Remember you're the guy that claimed Media
Player flat out refuses to play a "broken" file and is designed to
stop because you claim further Microsoft is so fussy and has
standards. Facts suggest otherwise. I'm simply asking.

That would be wrong. It does various things based upon various types of
corruption. Each specific example should generally have a deterministic
response, but again this whole field is really a summer computer science
course and not a quick discussion.

Corruption is a very wide-ranging field.

Again with the excuses.

It's not what I'm here for. I choose to be here to find bugs and get stuff
fixed where possible. Helping users where possible is an important side
goal. Whatever you're generally after doesn't really cross my interest
path, and so we've just never really engaged.

Would you keep a file as-is when Media Player's scrubber only controls
less than 2% of the file's length? I did what you'd expect, fixed the
problem. The question always comes back to WHY should I have had to?

WMP fixing the file up isn't necessarily the greatest option. So then you
get to "maybe it should pop up a message about fixing it up", and all
further implications from there...
.... it's a fascinating fascinating field. Alternate solutions to this
particular issue have been raised and discarded and this is the way it
works.

You can consider the feedback passed on, and that generally closes that
specific particular issue.

I've got a ton of stuff to be doing, so: peace. =)

Regards,
-Z

 

[Adam Albright]

Don't shift file formats and corruption types and expect the conversation
not to change. =)

You're still dodging the issue. Maybe you can show us WHERE I
supposedly changed file formats in my original question. You asked for
a specific case when Media Player screws up. I gave you one that
happened to be a VOB file. If you actually knew what you were talking
about you would know a VOB file typically contains a video stream,
usually in MPEG-2 format (assuming a DVD) and a A3C audio stream.
Neither have anything to do with a AVI anything so it seems you're
confused...again.

That's not really my job, as mentioned previously. How it screws up is what
is interesting to me.

Yet you keep dancing around HOW Media Player screwed up. For the third
time, why does Media Player stop it's scrubber at the 26 second mark
yet go on playing the file for an additional nine minutes? I hope you
won't try to pass this off as just another of those weird Microsoft
undocumented "features" will you? It's a bug, why can't you admit it?

Seems like a simple enough question. I know you want to try, but you
can't have it both ways. You've claimed Media Player is designed to
stop any time it encounters any kind file corruption or error, yet in
this example it didn't stop going on to play the whole file when it's
scrubber DID stop which certainly suggests what you originally said,
ie, that Media Player will stop if it hits any kind of corruption or
error isn't true. One big reason people don't like Media Player and
can't rely on it is it never behaves the same way twice. It always
does whatever it wants and nobody at Microsoft can ever explain WHY it
does this odd behavior.

It's not what I'm here for. I choose to be here to find bugs and get stuff
fixed where possible.

OK fine, explain the bug I just documented for you or just admit you
don't know and that Media Player is broken.

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

I have no idea if you responded (the joys of managing newsreaders between
six systems, I think you're in the killfile on all of them now), but:

I'd like to apologize that we can't communicate very effectively.

Generally, the duration property needs to be gathered near-instantaneously,
whereas the file source doesn't need to worry about those constraints. But
then you get into back-propping a visible/decisive property, and that's just
not going to work well (obviously a disruptive event at best), so you get
into a fair quagmire - leading you back to the "do you offer to fix up the
file" possibility I mentioned earlier, blah blah boring blah.

That's all pretty straight-forward and stuff I would assume you already know
or deduced. I mostly just wanted to apologize in that I abjectly fail in my
ability to communicate effectively with you.