Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

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FalconFour
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Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by FalconFour »

Please don't bash this poor dev newbie too hard! I'm a web (PHP) developer and I've really been wanting to get into desktop coding for a while, but just the complexity of many programs has just got me too confused. I can see a lot of things that could use correction and improvement in Handbrake, so I thought maybe I can put my "learn out of necessity" to use by jumping in with this.

Well, I jumped in, following the CompileOnWindows Wiki page, and all I got was a "hurrk, bleh" from Visual C# 2008 Express. It really doesn't tell me (in any clear terms at least) what's wrong... so I have no idea where to begin. I'm sure it's an "avalanche" effect from one file not loading or something changing between versions of C#, but...

Image
wat

Hopefully this is just a simple idiot newbie screwup that can be fixed with "that obvious answer" that I totally don't know about. And that'll be that!
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s55
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by s55 »

Delete your SVN checkout folder, and re-checkout the code.
Also, make sure you have quicktime installed. It installs a library control which is used for the QT preview feature. It doesn't appear to have found that

I don't personally use the express edition of C# so it may be that there is a problem with that version of the IDE. ( I use the full professional edition now)


If you have ideas for features/ improvements, best spell them out otherwise you might find it's stuff that's already being worked on.
FalconFour
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by FalconFour »

Thanks for the info! :)

Well, my suggestions and tweaks would boil down to:
- Ability to disable minimize to tray (you know how many times I've re-opened Handbrake when I didn't realize it had hid itself in the tray?)
- Try to figure out the cause of hangs in middle of first pass encoding on otherwise perfect DVDs... (don't know if I'm ready to dive into CLI stuff though)
- Save the file extension and directory path as part of a preset so I don't have to browse every time...

You're right, I don't have Quicktime installed (bluch...). But if it's necessary, I'll install it. I'd hope that the express edition would at least enable someone to compile code though... guess I'll have to poke around a bit.

edit: Hey, it built! Not sure if it's because I rebooted (which gave me some sort of "status" icons in the SVN folder), or because of installing Quicktime, but it works now. I also noticed it now has that option to not minimize to tray (yay!). Now to partition my hard drive and install the Cygwin spaghetti, and see if I can compile the CLI! :)

edit edit: Of course I'm only doing this because I can't find any current SVN snapshot binaries, and I'm trying to see if the current SVN has resolved a big glaring bug in the current "stable" build. Perhaps it would be a good time to push out a beta version? :?

edit^3: Oh... I'm also using Windows 7 RC. So hey, here's a little testing for ya! :D
fred_be9300
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by fred_be9300 »

I compiled Handbrake yesterday for the first time. I followed the wiki instructions to the letter, and apart from a very minor adjustment here and there, it worked without issues.

As for the GUI, the only thing I had to do that wasn't mentioned in wiki, was to install QuickTime. Without that, build failed with some errors/warnings about QTOControlLib and AxQTOControlLib (or so) missing. I used the free, newly installed, Visual C# 2008 SP1 Express Edition, in a 100% clean Win XP SP3 Virtual Machine.
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s55
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by s55 »

Point 2 - That'll be a problem with libhb (not the wingui) or something wrong with the source itself.
Point 3 - Not something that will get committed to the SVN. It's deliberate that presets don't have destination paths in them. They do store the file extension already though. The way to do this is to use auto-naming and set the default directory and naming format. This will set the destination file up automatically, and you can simply edit the filename in the text box if it's not suitable.
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s55
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by s55 »

Now is not a good time for a beta. Too much stuff is "In-progress".

What "glaring" bug?
FalconFour
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by FalconFour »

s55 wrote:Now is not a good time for a beta. Too much stuff is "In-progress".

What "glaring" bug?
Well, I think minimizing to tray without an option to disable (or even notification that it's happening) is very poor UI behavior, a la Limewire "hide it so they forget they're making our network bigger". IMO that's one big reason to push for a new version itself, since at least an acceptable fix has been committed to the SVN already.

I don't have any way to rightly show that it's a bug in the program itself, but on several occasions, with several different DVDs, on two different OSes on two different PCs, I've had Handbrake (CLI) just lock up while encoding a first pass. It happens at a random percentage but always behaves in the same way - 0% CPU usage by Handbrake, pressing Enter just reprints the same status line, and it responds immediately to a Ctrl+C or hitting X. I don't know what causes it, but it always fails in the same way no matter what DVD I throw at it. I'd give Handbrake about a 3 in 4 chance of completing a successful encode, which in my opinion is certainly a Beta-class failure rate... I'd think stable would be more like 99 in 100 ;)

On an entirely unrelated note, god dang Cygwin is a complicated spaghetti mess. I had to wipe the installation and start over because it got involved in a spaghetti mess of unresolvable dependencies that I didn't even want - like graphics software, Apache, and X11 stuff! It really should wait for me to select my desired packages _BEFORE_ trying to resolve dependencies... as it is now, one accidental click and a thousand programs are added behind my back and out of sight. Augh. This is gonna be a long night...
fred_be9300
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by fred_be9300 »

falcon, I just posted my story of compiling Handbrake yesterday. I didn't go into detail on the Cygwin install, as it's just about clicking on the required packages as listed in wiki.

But euhm... if you plan to do this tonight, I think you won't finish before morning ;-) Took me several hours (well, mostly hours waiting for compile, or fixing some errors I made) ;-)
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s55
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by s55 »


Well, I think minimizing to tray without an option to disable (or even notification that it's happening) is very poor UI behavior
Minimize to tray should fire a balloon tip popup with HandBrake as the title and the encode status (assuming they are not turned off at the system level). I personally find full blown notifications with an OK button irritating. I figure if it's controllable, off by default and there is a balloon popup, that is enough imo.

You are aware that if you type in a DOS window, it can pause the standard output text output. HItting space may resume some of those encodes if that's whats paused it. (note, that's the CLI text output, not the CLI itself. The CLI may still be running with no textual status indication if the text output only is paused) If it's not this, post an activity log and someone can tell ya what is going on. I rarely see DVD encodes fail that isn't left over copy protection or user error. Universal input files on the other hand tend to cause crashes on a regular basis but this is a known and mostly fixed issue.
FalconFour
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by FalconFour »

s55 wrote:Minimize to tray should fire a balloon tip popup with HandBrake as the title and the encode status (assuming they are not turned off at the system level). I personally find full blown notifications with an OK button irritating. I figure if it's controllable, off by default and there is a balloon popup, that is enough imo.
Yeah, except that the balloon always says "Not encoding" when it is encoding, and (something to the effect of) "Encoding" when it's idle... after that goes away, Handbrake doesn't re-appear when you try launching it again (as one may rightly assume that it's not running - people don't look for active tasks in the system tray!)... it just starts a new instance. That's another thing that bugged me - multiple instances in an application that supports queueing (albeit buggy on its own - canceling a "scanning source" operation causes the current encode to be canceled as well).
s55 wrote:You are aware that if you type in a DOS window, it can pause the standard output text output. HItting space may resume some of those encodes if that's whats paused it. (note, that's the CLI text output, not the CLI itself. The CLI may still be running with no textual status indication if the text output only is paused) If it's not this, post an activity log and someone can tell ya what is going on. I rarely see DVD encodes fail that isn't left over copy protection or user error. Universal input files on the other hand tend to cause crashes on a regular basis but this is a known and mostly fixed issue.
Yep, I know that (typing in the window), that's why I said that pressing enter only redraws the line. It seems to stop in the same place every time for each source (that is, for example, 59% each time on source1, 86% each time on source2, etc). I know it happens in the same place because I make two encodes of some movies for different bitrates, and they both fail in the same place.

Where would I go about finding the activity log...? That may be able to help me as well.
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s55
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by s55 »

Multi-instance is not supported. It's planned but not of priority. If it's not done by the next version, I'll add a check to make sure people don't try to start more than one instance.


Log -> See activity log window. Folder where logs are stored: C:\<user folder>\<username>\Application Data\HandBrake\Logs
FalconFour
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by FalconFour »

s55 wrote:Log -> See activity log window. Folder where logs are stored: C:\<user folder>\<username>\Application Data\HandBrake\Logs
Hm, I've got nothing in that folder except presets.xml. That path isn't hard-coded in the app, is it? Hopefully it's "%AppData%\Handbrake\Logs"... on Win7 and Vista, it's C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\HandBrake\Logs. I'll try another encode later today.... I'm not having much luck getting the complicated Handbrake CLI compilation to run successfully, it seems to get hung a lot. =\
FalconFour
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by FalconFour »

For what it's worth, a few observations... :)

- The "hang bug" seems to have been fixed in the SVN, whatever caused it... I've been encoding with that build non-stop ever since the compile completed, and it hasn't once hung on anything. It doesn't seem to be much faster (as I've seen reported in other threads) though... =\
- If the "%AppData%\Handbrake\Logs" folder doesn't already exist when a disc is being scanned, it'll error out with a mysterious error that doesn't imply in any way that it simply forgot to create the folder. This will be a big problem for users of the current build (such as myself) since old versions didn't use %AppData% (and hence, don't have a Logs folder)...
- The new GUI is awesome, but adding/manipulating audio tracks is confusing, and feels like "boxing" with the GUI. I don't think it's a uniform GUI feeling to make it so that when you click an entry in the list, it starts directly editing it on the wonky controls above. It constantly changes important things like bitrate and channels, to their default values, without any notification. I have to double/triple/quadruple check the settings after making any audio changes! =\

Other than those few things, wow, I love what's in the works! Very much improved, and many of my gripes are resolved... of note, I can now choose to not minimize to tray (first thing to go!), the encode queue is now actually "useful" in that it shows the paths of input and output (instead of "maybe i'll show you the source... if it doesn't have a space, or any other special characters"). Tooltips still fade out (they should stay on the screen as long as the user is hovering over them, IMO), but that's a small thing...

IMHO, if that AppData bug was fixed, it'd be ready for a beta release... there aren't any show-stopping bugs beyond that (I haven't had to edit any code to make it do its job), and it's far superior to the currently posted version in the number of bugs that are fixed. The current version looks like an alpha version now! ;)
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s55
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by s55 »

HB is no-where near another release. Alot of things still need to be sorted before that happens.

AppData bug is fixed in latest SVN.
Audio Panel will be tweaked for usability at some point. Not high up on the priority list at the moment.
FalconFour
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by FalconFour »

s55 wrote:HB is no-where near another release. Alot of things still need to be sorted before that happens.
I'd really like to know why you think it's "no-where near another release"... what is there that needs to be fixed that isn't already working better than the current release? I think making people wait any longer will cause people to abandon Handbrake in favor of newer apps that don't crash...

At the very least, at this stage in stability (with, as you've indicated, the AppData bug already being fixed), I think a beta is about due... it'd be silly to hide this much progress from the general public. If nothing else maybe I can help "bridge the gap" by providing SVN builds... but I'd really like to see the HandBrake devs themselves stepping up to bridge the gap instead of forcing the community (such as myself) to provide a more stable version than the current "stable release"... =\
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s55
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by s55 »

The GUI is only a small part of HandBrake. It doesn't get released separately to the back-end

The back-end code for the new picture settings anamorphic stuff is incomplete (and not even implemented in the windows gui yet)
The new subtitle features are incomplete (and not implemented in the windows gui yet either)
We've got a new method of building HandBrakeCLI for windows which is hasn't gone through any sort of good testing yet.
There are several known crashes in universal input and fixes waiting to be checked in for some of these.

You talk about these gui issues as being problematic. We've had next to no complaints about most of them. They are trivial.

This is open-source. It's scheduled around for developer convenience. If it doesn't suit the user, then they can always find another app.
FalconFour
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by FalconFour »

Hm, well, those appear to me like they're issues with "new" features (some not even implemented, like "new picture settings")... while it's nice to have new features, I don't think they should hold up releasing a version that fixes other issues... ;)

Okay, so, well, I can understand why there's hesitation to release a beta. Would it be violating anyone's licenses to post compiled versions of the current SVN? (edit: with source, of course)
KonaBlend
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by KonaBlend »

FalconFour wrote:Hm, well, those appear to me like they're issues with "new" features (some not even implemented, like "new picture settings")... while it's nice to have new features, I don't think they should hold up releasing a version that fixes other issues... ;)
And many volunteers on this project don't want to expend time working on the old because it holds up development of new features and pushes a new release even further down the road.
FalconFour
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by FalconFour »

Well, I don't mean "a version" like a different branch, but I mean that working on new features shouldn't continuously push back the release of the application, when other bugs (present in the current version) have already been fixed. It would be better to release the new version, with "broken new features" simply disabled, than to continuously push back the release until the new features are working...

That's just my opinion, but being as though I'm more of a user than a developer, and someone looking from the "outside-in" (as opposed to being a developer that's always using the "forever delayed" new version), I hope my idea would be considered...
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by jbrjake »

FalconFour wrote:I think making people wait any longer will cause people to abandon Handbrake in favor of newer apps that don't crash...
Why would you be worried about this? Why would anyone worry about this?
If nothing else maybe I can help "bridge the gap" by providing SVN builds... but I'd really like to see the HandBrake devs themselves stepping up to bridge the gap instead of forcing the community (such as myself) to provide a more stable version than the current "stable release"... =\
It takes a hell of a lot of gall to argue that you know better than we do whether our code is stable, and even more to claim that it would be a "help" for you to release it against our wishes. How can you possibly think it would help us for you to deluge us with unwanted users of unstable code? What kind of person wants to make work and aggravation for volunteers, or try to dictate how they should manage their free time? You should be ashamed of yourself.
KonaBlend
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by KonaBlend »

FalconFour wrote:Well, I don't mean "a version" like a different branch...... It would be better to release the new version, with "broken new features" simply disabled, than to continuously push back the release until the new features are working...
But that's exactly what you are suggesting, a different branch. That is what back-porting fixes to a release implies. That means having separate release and development branches.

It is not better just because you say so. Have you looked even looked at source code diffs between last release and head? Ignorance is bliss when suggesting "broken new features (could be) simply disabled". For the latter to be even remotely practical all new features need be developed with boolean feature switches. Hint: this is not the case as doing that would be much more expensive than developing it using our current volunteer-manhours-budget.
FalconFour
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by FalconFour »

jbrjake wrote:
FalconFour wrote:I think making people wait any longer will cause people to abandon Handbrake in favor of newer apps that don't crash...
Why would you be worried about this? Why would anyone worry about this?
Um, because the current released version is hopelessly unstable and broken? Why do you think I was even looking to compile the SVN version?

Well, in the spirit of open source (and, I believe, in compliance with the GPL), I've [Edit: Download link edited out, since we do not condone or support svn builds] a compiled build of the latest SVN. I've made it abundantly clear on that post that people shouldn't take their issues to this forum. You shouldn't have any issues with that.

Any developer that thinks they're better than the users of their software clearly has their priorities a little mixed up. Sure, you see every little problem in a program, but the users don't necessarily care unless it affects the operation of the program - which it doesn't. Just like a doctor that tells someone all the little things that are wrong with someone, but the person really doesn't care because they feel fine. Sometimes you need to just forget about the little things eating away at your impression of your own program.

I've got a feeling I'm going to get banned from this forum just because the developers don't agree with me... at least, that's the feeling I'm getting. I'd appreciate it if it wouldn't end that way, of course. I just want to see a good piece of software get the bug-fix it needs. But if that's what it takes to get this SVN out to the public, then so be it... I'm just here to benefit the general public. :(

edit re: the above: I did NOT say that I want to see developers back-porting fixes. That's ludicrous. What I AM saying is that if the current version fixes problems, release it. Simple as that. Ignore the new features that don't work (just disable/hide them for the release - what harm would that be?). Just don't drag out development for months and months because new features keep getting added... *sigh*
Last edited by dynaflash on Fri May 15, 2009 3:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Do not link to svn binaries, especially when you clearly have no ability to support them whatsoever.
KonaBlend
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by KonaBlend »

FalconFour wrote:I did NOT say that I want to see developers back-porting fixes. That's ludicrous. What I AM saying is that if the current version fixes problems, release it. Simple as that. Ignore the new features that don't work (just disable/hide them for the release - what harm would that be?). Just don't drag out development for months and months because new features keep getting added... *sigh*
Seems to me you have all the answers. So I pose this challenge; if this is "simple as that" then why did you post a build which includes bugfixes + new features ? If this is as "simple as that" why don't you simply provide a bugfix build without the new features? I eagerly await your answer.
FalconFour
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by FalconFour »

... Because I simply don't know how. I just compiled the program as-is. I only suggested that incomplete features be disabled, for the simple fact that it's the only thing supposedly holding up a beta release (incomplete features).

p.s.: thanks for not jumping down my throat for posting that built version ;)

edit: by "...release it", I mean release the version that has the bugs fixed in it. Not "release the bug fix"...
KonaBlend
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Re: Want to get involved but... my IDE exploded with open errors

Post by KonaBlend »

FalconFour wrote:... Because I simply don't know how. I just compiled the program as-is.
See that's the point. You don't know how yet you're trying to tell this project how to manage releases. And if you examine this more closely:
FalconFour wrote:I only suggested that incomplete features be disabled, for the simple fact that it's the only thing supposedly holding up a beta release (incomplete features).
Realize that the reason for suggesting features-be-disabled does not in any way make it simple. What you're trying to do here, unsuccessfully and quite amusingly I might add, is tell people who:
  1. have all the information you have
  2. have more information that you don't have
  3. have a significant amount of software dev/release experience (which apparently you lack)
  4. have actually looked at the source code, changed it, evolved it, developed it
how they should do things differently without any concrete reasoning; driven only by one thing; it's your opinion that releases take too long. Nothing to see here folks. Please move along :mrgreen:
p.s.: thanks for not jumping down my throat for posting that built version
Not my place. However, i suspect your link will be edit'd out because iirc similar edits have happened before.
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