What in the hell is with programmers and their completely unusable error messages?
I could at least respect "Error 0: I hate you." or the slightly less insulting "Dude, I can't handle that.". A smart program would not only give a real response like "Unknown codec" but it would give a hint as to the name of the codec and maybe even where to go to get codecs or troubleshoot further.
Here's the shopping list of programs which spit this out:
[mp3 @ 0x8db2500]mdb:403, lastbuf:0 skipping granule 0 [mp3 @ 0x8db2500]mdb:403, lastbuf:0 skipping granule 0 [mp3 @ 0x8db2500]invalid new backstep -493
Presumably they all use the same backbone. I'm guessing it's mplayer, but it might be ffmpeg.
There is no demuxer plugin available to handle 'filename.avi'. Usually this means that the file format was not recognized.
Of course that doesn't explain what a "demuxer plugin" is.
The player does not have the capabilities to play back this content.
It gives a "Check for Updates" button, which is sometimes quite helpful.
openmovieeditor seems to do nothing. It doesn't even give an error message, although at the console it gives some useless text that keeps being updated like it's some kind of time counter.
Avidemux gives "could not open the file". At the console it says more:
Cannot identify as H264 ES (0/50) unrecognized file detected...
elisa gives:
Unfortunately Elisa cannot play the selected file. Gstreamer error: Resource not found.
Christine and osmo4 seem to be casualties of PCLinuxOS' mounting pile of broken apps.
But seriously, why is it that so many programmers are consistently bad at documentation in every form, including error messages? Does anyone anywhere think that "invalid new backstep" is the hip new way to deliver an impactful error message? Oh crap, help me before I try to make some kind of error message marketing joke.
Linux software is the marketing joke.
UPDATE: While the download was 100% and it was seeding when I tried to play it and got the obscure error messages, I checked back the next day to see that it wasn't 100% downloaded any more. I downloaded the rest and was able to view it. I checked back just now and it's not 100% anymore. It looks like mplayer is deciding to change the file behind my back. Nice.
