On Wednesday 06 January 2021 08:05:25 Michael via tde-users wrote:
On Wednesday 06 January 2021 02:59:33 am William Morder via tde-users wrote:
On Tuesday 05 January 2021 23:58:20 deloptes via tde-users wrote:
William Morder via tde-users wrote:
Eventually, though, even if you stay off the Internet, the media players your unsupported Stretch and/or Wheezy systems will stop playing some formats, because they keep changing things. And like I said, Buster/Beowulf will be supported for years to come. So -- when things in your life get more bearable -- consider upgrading your system.
I must disagree - no one is changing the standards. At least I am not aware of things changing in already released formats. What may not work are new formats where you may not have the new codec.
Hmmm, well, I remember it happening in the past, back when I was still running KDE3, and resisted upgrading. However, that was many years ago, so my memory is a little fuzzy.
Bill is right. For whatever reason updates to software players using codecs do sometimes 'break' the ability to play existing (older) files. I've experienced this multiple times (100s probably) since the '90s (and my mother has lost some family videos to this phenomenon).
I've experience all of these situations:
- Software no longer includes the older codec and you can hunt down and
re-install the codec manually and it will play again.
- Software no longer includes the older codec and you can hunt down and
re-install the codec manually and it still will NOT play.
- Software claims to have the codec, but, while newer created files will
play correctly, older created files will NOT play.
Add in a bunch of situations to the above of mangled playing of older files (think old VHS playbacks).
Bit rot is probably responsible for some of it, but I’ve experienced cases (saved one of mom’s holiday videos) where copying the file to an ‘old’ machine (was literally stuck in a closet and hadn’t been updated in 5+ years) allowed the file to play ‘fine’ and was also able to convert the file to another format which then played correctly on the ‘new’ machine.
My rule of thumb is to convert any codec using file that I care about into 3 different formats for archiving.
HTH, Michael
Overnight, it suddenly occurred to me: when I downloaded mp4 videos from YouTube, I remembered that they were all pixelated and impossible to watch. My other mp4s, from other sources, played just fine. So I hung onto the videos, but couldn't watch them. Then when I upgraded (when moving from the 'buntus to Debian, then later to Devuan), I discovered that suddenly all those unwatchable YouTube mp4s played just fine again.
And it didn't matter what player I used, because it was the fact that I used an older distro that was causing the problem.
Bill