What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

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JohnAStebbins
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by JohnAStebbins »

Pawnslinger wrote:Here is the problem. With no one to defend the copyright, a work will fall into the public domain. This happened to another program that I use... a chess engine. It was written and released under the GPL. Someone took it and made slight cosmetic modifications, and released a successful commercial chess program. The thief made a lot of moeny. It was a big controversy for a long time in the chess engine forums. But no one would step forward to protect the copyright (or enforce the GPL). Normally the copyright holder would do that, but in this case, he couldn't... for whatever reason.

I am not a lawyer. I am a programmer, that has paid my fair share of lawyer's fees. My first one was about 30 years ago, when I paid $3,000 for a 1 page letter to be written. Man, did I feel ripped off.
Yes, I would say that is a fair assessment. If nobody cares enough to defend the copyright, then something like this can happen. That doesn't make the copyright invalid. Copyrights are good for 120 years in the US now and *do not require an owner*. Anonymous works can be copyrighted. Copyrights do not revert to public domain just because nobody pursues litigation.
Pawnslinger
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by Pawnslinger »

JohnAStebbins wrote:
Pawnslinger wrote:Here is the problem. With no one to defend the copyright, a work will fall into the public domain. This happened to another program that I use... a chess engine. It was written and released under the GPL. Someone took it and made slight cosmetic modifications, and released a successful commercial chess program. The thief made a lot of moeny. It was a big controversy for a long time in the chess engine forums. But no one would step forward to protect the copyright (or enforce the GPL). Normally the copyright holder would do that, but in this case, he couldn't... for whatever reason.

I am not a lawyer. I am a programmer, that has paid my fair share of lawyer's fees. My first one was about 30 years ago, when I paid $3,000 for a 1 page letter to be written. Man, did I feel ripped off.
Yes, I would say that is a fair assessment. If nobody cares enough to defend the copyright, then something like this can happen. That doesn't make the copyright invalid. Copyrights are good for 120 years in the US now and *do not require an owner*. Anonymous works can be copyrighted. Copyrights do not revert to public domain just because nobody pursues litigation.
Of course, again, you are right. The copyright is not lost. Not even in the case I mentioned... the copyright still existed and it was held by the original party. But the ability of the copyright holder to enforce the copyright becomes... ahhh what is the right word... difficult, if the copyright holder does not positively assert his or her rights.

In the case of an orphan, who will assert their rights? The copyrighted work cannot protect itself. An owner must do it. And now we are back to the beginning of this discussion. Who is the owner of HandBrake?
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JohnAStebbins
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by JohnAStebbins »

Pawnslinger wrote:Who is the owner of HandBrake?
The "owner" in this case would be anyone who decides they would like to protect the work. Any interested party could do it. And in the case of GPL work, there are entities that will provide assistance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_F ... Law_Center
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/
Pawnslinger
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by Pawnslinger »

Perhaps they will. But in the case I mentioned before, they didn't. I believe that the case was actually appealled to the FSF and they remained mute, as far as I know.

I took a look at Vidcoder, just now, because of all this fuss. It seems a bit odd to use after using HandBrake for a few months. But we will see. On the other hand, the developer's in this conference tout the value of HandBrake -- and I believe in it's value. But it seems to me that a thief would find it "low hanging fruit".
match
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by match »

I was reading over this thread (as I believe target size is a useful option, albeit in only a few circumstances) and found it quite interesting. You have people saying they're sick of people saying this and sick of people saying that. Yet they continue to come back to the thread to read more and defend their position (even though they don't care what other people think). It takes fuel to maintain a fire. Remove the fuel, the fire goes out.

You have people instructing users, even creating spreadsheets to help people do something they don't believe should be done (predict file size).

Then when Vidcoder is mentioned (as it is Handbrake with file size option intact and working fine), someone comes back warning users of a couple flaws it has. (actually only 1 minor thing pointed out...Vidcoder works great, don't believe the propaganda). One flaw mentioned is that the users are directed back here for support. Well, you guys did write the code for Handbrake, no? If something's broke in Vidcoder, it is most likely broke in Handbrake. I think it should be appreciated that he (and yes he is a very nice guy) points users back here to point out some of the bugs in the encoding engine. He will always support any modification he has made, most of all his interface. I've never seen him point anyone back here to ask help with Vidcoder itself. And if no one cares if Handbrake is used (as it is just a pet project/hobby), why is everyone always defending it? And especially, why would someone want to warn users about using Vidcoder. I just find it hard to believe that it's just a concerned citizen.

Anyway, I do love Handbrake and use it when I don't need target file size (which is most of the time). And I thank you sincerely for this great piece of software. Plus..Vidcoder wouldn't exist except for you guys (and the developer knows it and is happy to admit it). While I find the forums exciting with all the intense banter back and forth, some contradictions do seem to arise.
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JohnAStebbins
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by JohnAStebbins »

match, I think the point here is that even though repeating myself over and over about the reasons the target files size option was dropped is tiresome, maintaining that option was *more* annoying. I'm sure VidCoder works fine if you use the option as it was intended to be used and aren't too fussy about it missing the mark a little sometimes. But as long as the feature was in the core handbrake library, we made every effort to make it difficult to impossible for the user to mis-use it and we made every effort to keep the output size as accurate as possible. These 2 goals were increasingly at odds with other project goals and increasingly difficult to maintain. They crossed a threshold of pain that provoked us to drop the feature. Believe me when I tell you, suffering all this moaning and groaning over the loss of this feature is far preferable.
TedJ
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by TedJ »

match wrote:Then when Vidcoder is mentioned (as it is Handbrake with file size option intact and working fine), someone comes back warning users of a couple flaws it has. (actually only 1 minor thing pointed out...Vidcoder works great, don't believe the propaganda). One flaw mentioned is that the users are directed back here for support. Well, you guys did write the code for Handbrake, no? If something's broke in Vidcoder, it is most likely broke in Handbrake. I think it should be appreciated that he (and yes he is a very nice guy) points users back here to point out some of the bugs in the encoding engine. He will always support any modification he has made, most of all his interface. I've never seen him point anyone back here to ask help with Vidcoder itself. And if no one cares if Handbrake is used (as it is just a pet project/hobby), why is everyone always defending it? And especially, why would someone want to warn users about using Vidcoder. I just find it hard to believe that it's just a concerned citizen.
The one minor thing I pointed out in my previous post was entirely due to a fault in the Vidcoder GUI, which he forwarded to us and it was hardly minor... it caused both software and hardware decoders to crash when attempting playback. The HandBrake CLI performs no sanity checking, that's up to either the end user or the developer of any wrapper.
Deleted User 13735

Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by Deleted User 13735 »

JohnAStebbins wrote:When a topic is wearing us down, we do tend to lock them.
One can only hope . . .
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by Deleted User 11865 »

TedJ wrote:
match wrote:Then when Vidcoder is mentioned (as it is Handbrake with file size option intact and working fine), someone comes back warning users of a couple flaws it has. (actually only 1 minor thing pointed out...Vidcoder works great, don't believe the propaganda). One flaw mentioned is that the users are directed back here for support. Well, you guys did write the code for Handbrake, no? If something's broke in Vidcoder, it is most likely broke in Handbrake. I think it should be appreciated that he (and yes he is a very nice guy) points users back here to point out some of the bugs in the encoding engine. He will always support any modification he has made, most of all his interface. I've never seen him point anyone back here to ask help with Vidcoder itself. And if no one cares if Handbrake is used (as it is just a pet project/hobby), why is everyone always defending it? And especially, why would someone want to warn users about using Vidcoder. I just find it hard to believe that it's just a concerned citizen.
The one minor thing I pointed out in my previous post was entirely due to a fault in the Vidcoder GUI, which he forwarded to us and it was hardly minor... it caused both software and hardware decoders to crash when attempting playback. The HandBrake CLI performs no sanity checking, that's up to either the end user or the developer of any wrapper.
VidCoder is not a CLI wrapper, it uses libhb via the "HandBrakeInterop" library.
match
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by match »

TedJ wrote:
match wrote:Then when Vidcoder is mentioned (as it is Handbrake with file size option intact and working fine), someone comes back warning users of a couple flaws it has. (actually only 1 minor thing pointed out...Vidcoder works great, don't believe the propaganda). One flaw mentioned is that the users are directed back here for support. Well, you guys did write the code for Handbrake, no? If something's broke in Vidcoder, it is most likely broke in Handbrake. I think it should be appreciated that he (and yes he is a very nice guy) points users back here to point out some of the bugs in the encoding engine. He will always support any modification he has made, most of all his interface. I've never seen him point anyone back here to ask help with Vidcoder itself. And if no one cares if Handbrake is used (as it is just a pet project/hobby), why is everyone always defending it? And especially, why would someone want to warn users about using Vidcoder. I just find it hard to believe that it's just a concerned citizen.
The one minor thing I pointed out in my previous post was entirely due to a fault in the Vidcoder GUI, which he forwarded to us and it was hardly minor... it caused both software and hardware decoders to crash when attempting playback. The HandBrake CLI performs no sanity checking, that's up to either the end user or the developer of any wrapper.
O.k., I shouldn't have said the one minor thing. I guess I should say, the 1 thing. In any event, I guess it was worked out, because everything seems to work fine now. If you were the one to spend the time to fix his gui after he referred the problem to you, then I can't really say anything. But I find it unlikely that you submitted the patch to him. I imagine he wound up fixing it himself. I admit, I shouldn't say more about this particular item, as don't know the specifics of how this item played out. But I doubt that he "often " forwards his gui problems back here unless he doesn't believe it to be a gui problem to begin with.

Anyway, it just seemed like Vidcoder, and the developer, were getting a little dissed when it is a very good program. He is a very cordial guy and is happy to answer user questions and problems to the best of his knowledge. He is just one man with a job and family, while you are a team of programmers (also with jobs and family). Still, for one guy he does a great job. He offers some things Handbrake doesn't which makes it a unique piece of software that for the most part, works very very well. It's not a competition...it's open source software. It just seemed like you were trying to steer people away from Vidcoder and back to Handbrake when all I hear is how no one cares if Handbrake is used, it's just a hobby, etc., etc. If you were truly just concerned about this person running into a possible problem with Vidcoder, I'm sincerely sorry that I imputed motives.
GregiBoy
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by GregiBoy »

Why don't you just give it a break!!! Get a life!!
match
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by match »

JohnAStebbins wrote:match, I think the point here is that even though repeating myself over and over about the reasons the target files size option was dropped is tiresome, maintaining that option was *more* annoying. I'm sure VidCoder works fine if you use the option as it was intended to be used and aren't too fussy about it missing the mark a little sometimes. But as long as the feature was in the core handbrake library, we made every effort to make it difficult to impossible for the user to mis-use it and we made every effort to keep the output size as accurate as possible. These 2 goals were increasingly at odds with other project goals and increasingly difficult to maintain. They crossed a threshold of pain that provoked us to drop the feature. Believe me when I tell you, suffering all this moaning and groaning over the loss of this feature is far preferable.
An honest, reasonable and understandable argument. Point taken.

I've seen your posts in other threads. You seem to be able to get to the core issue of a topic and give intelligent and reasonable responses.

Anyway, thank you for your response.
Last edited by match on Thu Aug 09, 2012 1:09 am, edited 2 times in total.
match
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by match »

GregiBoy wrote:Why don't you just give it a break!!! Get a life!!
As a comparison...here's a sample of an unpolite, unreasonable and unintelligible response. i yi yi.
Pawnslinger
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by Pawnslinger »

A couple of quick observations:

1. I am very surprised that this thread hasn't been locked yet. It is wearing thin, even for folks like me.
2. The option in HandBrake for Average Bitrate works very well. I tried Vidcoder, but prefer HandBrake, and I use the Constant Quality most of the time, but fallback to Average Bitrate in special situations.
3. A simple equation equates bitrate to filesize, so I don't really understand what all the fuss is about - I never used HandBrake before the Target Filesize was removed, but I have tested Vidcoder, and I have found the Constant Quality and Average Bitrate give me all the flexibility I need, and the Target Filesize in Vidcoder simply encouraged me to make the resultant file much bigger than I found desirable(i.e. tended to produce higher bitrates than I wanted).

So I am sticking with HandBrake, I find it superior, and this argument seems to be getting on everyone's nerves.
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s55
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by s55 »

1. I am very surprised that this thread hasn't been locked yet. It is wearing thin, even for folks like me.
QFT.
Locked