this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2024
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Not discovered in the past year, but in the year before that:
Blender (program for 3D modelling, animation and rendering)
cobalt.tools(web-app for downloading video or audio content from youtube and other websites)
VLC (media player that plays almost everything)
What doesn't it play?
It can't go back one frame at a time yet has no problem going forward at the same pace.
Pathetic.
Are there any FOSS apps that can do this? MPV can move frame by frame but moving back is so unusably slow.
Depends on the machine and.. maybe other things. I used to think that, too, but on my current machines I can step backwards just fine.
It's probably a much more intensive operation requiring processing a lot of the file from before and throwing away current buffers or something.
I discovered that VLC isn't so good at playing .flv files. This are video files that are saved in the Adobe Flash Video container format. I have some episodes from cartoon series which I downloaded years ago. Sometimes there are no playback issues with VLC, but sometimes the audio track is delayed. For this reason I have installed IINA, but I like VLC's user interface better.
Thankfully, vlc's audio offset function is very easy to quickly adjust and save. As long as the audio delay is consistent you can adjust it pretty quickly.
Weirdly enough I often find things playing back better in IINA than VLC even though as I understand it they're basically the same under the hood. I also find the reverse occasionally as well.
The funny thing is that said .flv files could be played with VLC without any issue at the time I acquired them. I downloaded a bunch of cartoon episodes in this file format back in 2010 (?) when once-click-hosters like Megavideo were a big thing then. I was able to play them with the then current version of VLC without any problems.
Since then there were several updates with VLC and some time along the way it suddenly didn't work that good anymore. I might add that this file format is not very common today (it was, when Adobe Flash was still around), so today there might be no incentive to maintain any old codecs for these type of files any longer.
When it gets worse with dwindling playback compatibility I probably have to acquire these files with a more recent file format (e.g. .mp4) in the future.
You can convertΓ the files in another playable format with Handbrake, probably you Won't need Change the codecs of the files only the container and the conversiΓ³n will be fast than reencoding all
You can, but it's a lot of number crunching time to convert a bunch of files like that, as opposed to just using a different player.
Yep, but if it only he need to remux then is less time than reencoding.
Yes, this would be an option (that I did not think of). But I assume that it would be easier to download the same file in another file format, as there will be probably an improvement regarding the video resolution (480p versus 1080p or higher).
I Think so.
It also in more recent years had an update that messed with it's vcd playback ability. Don't remember exactly the problem but I had a rip of an old vcd and was pleased that it played it back no trouble, and even from the original disc too but then a couple of years later it changed so I had to do something to extract an mpeg2 stream or something to get it to work and it from then on had audio issues that had never been there before.
The Stargate SG-1 DVDs for some reason. All others I tried work fine.
It's not good at displaying anime fansubs if they have complex typesetting. I have to use MPC-HC + madVR. Sadly those fansub styles are a dying breed...
Banjo
Corrupted files
Need to keep Cobalt Tools in mind. Was looking for something like that.
How does it compare to yt-dlp?
Warning, I might be wrong:
yt-dlp seems to be operated with command lines, whereas cobalt is a user interface in an opened browser tab. You paste the link of the desired video or audio source into a search bar and you can toggle different settings (bitrate, file format, video output size etc.). The desired file will be appearing as a download into your download folder.
Ooh nice - if it is indeed a UI it would be perfect for my grand-aunt. We went through many such alternatives, but all stopped working after a while
You might be lucky: there is a gui availiable for yt-dlp on GitHub. I just looked it up. The descripition reads:
Graphical interface for the command line tool yt-dlp, which allows users to download videos from various websites, including YouTube. It is designed to be more user-friendly and accessible for those who are not comfortable using the command line.
Link: https://github.com/dsymbol/yt-dlp-gui
Edit/addition:
There are online services availiable (for instance https://yt5s.com/en173) that basically do the same as Cobalt.tools. I assume that they don't put any emphasis on privacy tho.
I didn't know cobalt.tools was OSS. cool!