[kllrnohj]

> One vendor specific API, not "various OS' native APIs".

Incorrect. Firefox uses Windows Media Foundation, which is cross-vendor, on Windows. It uses MediaCodec on Android which is again cross-vendor. Presumably it uses whatever iOS' equivalent is as well.

It only uses VA-API on a single OS, Linux, and that's probably more a reflection on the media qualities (or lack thereof) of Linux as a whole. Maybe Vulkan video extensions will be the savior on Linux. Or maybe it won't because it won't be anyone's focus of investment since it's largely a Linux-only problem in the first place.

[tagrun]

What is "incorrect"? The full sentence that you conveniently chose to cut in the middle before quoting (apparently to fit into some pessimistic forecast about the significance of Linux desktop) reads

> Firefox currently supports hardware video decoding with Intel's vendor specific VA-API only on Linux, which is not supported by NVIDIA.

(emphasis added)

You further wrote:

> Firefox uses Windows Media Foundation, which is cross-vendor, on Windows. It uses MediaCodec on Android which is again cross-vendor.

And? None of those APIs are cross-platform. Vulkan Video will eventually allow developers (including Firefox developers) to write a single code path for video to cover a wide range of platforms and vendors (likely with the exception of walled gardens like Apple-land, although someone might find a way to support like via a wrapper like MoltenVk for Vulkan).

[Dylan16807]

> The full sentence that you conveniently chose to cut in the middle before quoting (apparently to fit into some pessimistic forecast about the significance of Linux desktop) reads

What are you talking about? They didn't quote that sentence at all, and didn't cut in the middle of the sentence they quoted.

> And? None of those APIs are cross-platform.

Your original objection, the thing that got quoted, was about whether things are cross-vendor. That question is completely unrelated to whether things are cross-platform.

[tagrun]

> What are you talking about? They didn't quote that sentence at all, and didn't cut in the middle of the sentence they quoted.

Obviously, I meant to say statement, not sentence, but I can't edit it anymore.

[tagrun]

My original statement above about what the point of Vulkan Video is

> The idea behind Vulkan Video Extensions is to have a vendor independent and cross-platform video API.

(emphasis added)

[Dylan16807]

You did say that, but it's not the part of your post they were responding to.

[tagrun]

> You did say that, but it's not the part of your post they were responding to.

So if someone criticizes a portion of your statement which is already countered by your original full statement, you're not allowed to remind your full statement. What kind of logic is that?

My original post says the point of Vulkan Video is it will be cross-platform and cross-vendor. And gives one example of cross-vendor side of things on Linux.

Someone criticizes me by essentially saying "you are incorrect, that's only on Linux. Windows, Android and iOS have their own video APIs...". This "correction" is incorrect because I already said on Linux, and it goes on to actually reinforce the post that he is responding to by highlighting cross-platform side, which also is in the post he is responding to.

So, if you look at the full conversation, the criticism is self-contradictory. This is what I'm pointing out, but you are implying I'm not allowed to do that.

I disagree. When you fragment a statement in a way that changes its meaning and make a straw man out of it, people are justified in responding to it.

[Dylan16807]

> So if someone criticizes a portion of your statement which is already countered by your original full statement, you're not allowed to remind your full statement. What kind of logic is that?

The other stuff in your comment did not "counter" what they said. You made statements about cross-vendor and cross-platform. They chose to only respond to one of those statements. That's not incorrect.

> This "correction" is incorrect because I already said on Linux

The first part of your comment specifically said "not "various OS' native APIs"". That goes beyond Linux. The later part of your comment was about Linux in particular, but your introduction was an overall statement that wasn't true.

> When you fragment a statement in a way that changes its meaning

They didn't. You misspoke and they didn't know what you actually meant.

And from your other post: > Obviously, I meant to say statement, not sentence, but I can't edit it anymore.

That was not obvious. They quoted an entire paragraph, and the subsequent paragraph does not change its meaning the way you're claiming it does.

[Dalewyn]

I'm always annoyed how any Linux media player or encoder needs to bring its own entire media operating system, down to each individual nut and bolt.

On Windows there's Windows Media Foundation and DirectShow that centrally manage everything and also support the "individual nut and bolt" approach. Android has its own central thing (MediaCodec?) that must be used. MacOS and iOS presumably have their own central manager (Quicktime?) too.

But Linux? It doesn't serve as an operating system for media. It's tremendously inconvenient as an admin/user rather than an evangelist.

[shmerl]

You don't need to implement every nut and bolt in the application. Lot's of useful things can do the heavy lifting (Pipewire, ffmpeg, libplacebo, Mesa and so on). Linux isn't after calling it all using some uniform "DirectFoo" naming scheme, but tools are there.

Comparison is also invalid. Linux as a whole (not the kernel but OS experience) isn't controlled by some Big Brother who decides what and how it's done single mindedly. So such kind of composite result is somewhat expected.

[pjmlp]

Hence why it will never be embraced by desktop application developers, and Electron it is.

[shmerl]

Yeah, keep complaining about everything not being proprietary enough, while everyone who needs just makes it work (OBS, mpv, etc.).

[pjmlp]

Those 2% will appreciate their efforts.

[shmerl]

Those who use it appreciate their efforts. You aren't using it, why are you even complaining especially with complete nonsense comments. Anti Linux shilling should be getting old.

[account42]

Considering how user hostile most app developers are, I don't miss them.

[account42]

Install ffmpeg and you have all the codec support you need. How is this a real problem?

Yeah, binary software will have to ship its own copy of ffmpeg... This isn't unique to media codecs though.

[arp242]

And when someone installs some obscure or outdated and vulnerable codec on these systems, it's then automatically exposed to all sorts of applications to exploit. Maybe Windows sandboxes that these days(?) It was definitely a problem in the past.

No perfect solutions here; both "system-wide codecs" and "every application brings their own codecs" have their own up- and downsides.

Besides, with ffmpeg and gstreamer the system-wide codecs paradigm also works on Linux.

This is one of those "it's different but it doesn't really matter much" type of things. Most people "just" install vlc or mpv or whatnot and things will "just work" for them, not really different from Windows. That it's technically slightly different is almost entirely transparent to the user.

[pjmlp]

Yeah on UNIX side, NeXTSTEP, Irix, Solaris had their own thing, as graphical workstation UNIXes, and were great.

Ideally that kind of thing would be part of GNOME, or KDE, but then there are those that rather keep using twm like experience, making GNU/Linux really only good for headless experiences, at least the UNIX/POSIX part is always there.