this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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Microsoft employee:

Hi, This is a high priority ticket and the FFmpeg version is currently used in a highly visible product in Microsoft. We have customers experience issues with Caption during Teams Live Event. Please help

Maintainer's comment on twitter:

After politely requesting a support contract from Microsoft for long term maintenance, they offered a one-time payment of a few thousand dollars instead.

This is unacceptable.

And further:

The lesson from the xz fiasco is that investments in maintenance and sustainability are unsexy and probably won't get a middle manager their promotion but pay off a thousandfold over many years.

But try selling that to a bean counter

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[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 7 months ago (2 children)

FFMPEG is a core technology. You literally cannot do anything with video without touching FFMPEG at multiple places in the stack.

The fact that we have billions of dollars of revenue flowing through that software every day, but we rely on VOLUNTEERS to maintain it shows exactly how hollow the whole SV entrepreneur culture really is.

Bunch of fucking posers wouldn’t know performance code if it kicked them in the face.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The fact that we have billions of dollars of revenue flowing through that software every day, but we rely on VOLUNTEERS to maintain it shows exactly how hollow the whole SV entrepreneur culture really is.

Exactly: I'm not mad about important things being run by volunteers -- arguably, that's a good thing because it means project decisions are made uncorrupted by profit motive -- but I am mad about the profit being reaped elsewhere on the backs of their free labor.

[–] jrthreadgill@mastodon.social 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

@grue @vzq this is such an interesting space. The general public has no idea how much of their software relies on open source code and voluntary community contributions. There have been so many attempts to figure out a way to compensate these maintainers, but it doesn't seem like anything has really become the defacto solution. Open Collective and Tidelift are the closest things I can think of.

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[–] deweydecibel@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

They're not going to invest in it if they don't own it, and frankly I'm happy they don't.

[–] technom@programming.dev 2 points 7 months ago

Those same companies tell you that their products that you paid for don't belong to you. You are just buying a license to use them. Sadly, this asinine concept is spreading even to hardware markets.

I think it's fair to ask them to take their own bitter pill. They should also invest without owning.

[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

the FFmpeg version is currently used in a highly visible product in Microsoft. We have customers experience issues with Caption during Teams Live Event.

This seems like a "you" problem, Microsoft, and since you employ thousands of programmers with the experience to solve your problem and commit the change back to the FOSS project, I think this is also very easily a "you" solution as well.

[–] catch22@startrek.website 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

This is pretty funny, kinda suggests they have no faith in the engineers they work with... ffmpeg is an awesome piece of work, but if it's a bug they can repeat to some level, then like you said, it 100% a them problem!

E: oh, was thinking it was a pm raised it, but seems it was possibly one of their developers, brutal....

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[–] vahtos@programming.dev 6 points 7 months ago (4 children)

It's so ridiculous that this isn't even brought up:

The Command you provided worked fine. Thank you so much for the help! Really appreciated! We are going to proceed to make a release today and test with customers. Will post the updates here.

Gotta love being a forced beta tester... I mean customer.

[–] infinitepcg@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

If the live version is already broken, there isn't much to lose deploying the fix as soon as possible. Not sure what else they could have done here.

[–] aStonedSanta@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago

Yup. Shits fucked. Do what you can. Lol

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 3 points 7 months ago

That does kind of admit what we all suspected about Microsoft's QA since they fired the whole testing team in 2014.

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

isn't that what a canary release essentially is?

[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Man, must be rough to be an MS engineer and do work in public. Ignoring the financial aspect, can't say I've never had a similar ticket and resolution.

[–] matlag@sh.itjust.works 5 points 7 months ago

Alternative answer: "We understand your issue and will fix it as time and priorities allow. Please note that customers paying for support always get higher priority. Given MS contributions to the project, this ticket was ranked 42nd in our priority list.

Have a pleasant day! FFMPEG support team"

[–] NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 4 points 7 months ago (3 children)

"A failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." -Someone hopefully working on ffmpeg.

[–] otl@apubtest2.srcbeat.com 2 points 7 months ago

"A failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."

Wow now that is a quote I'm going to steal. Wondering if "A failure to understand on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." has the same punch or is as relevant... anyway, thanks for sharing!

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[–] slurpeesoforion@startrek.website 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Can't reproduce bug. Closing ticket.

[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It's what Microsoft would do in the same situation. It's only fair

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 7 points 7 months ago (4 children)

I understand you are having a problem with ffmpeg.

Firstly, I will need you to open a command prompt and run SFC /scannow.

And then reboot your PC.

And then run SFC /scannow again.

And reboot again.

Until you give up and reinstall Windows.

[–] pop@lemmy.ml 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

-Microsoft MVP

[–] laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 7 months ago

I tried all that but accidentally installed Linux at the last step, but it seems to have fixed the issue so I'm suggesting it as a functioning workaround to all of my colleagues

[–] Fenrisulfir@lemmy.ca 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

You forgot when the boot loader forgets where it placed your boot partition and you get to do a few rounds of bcdedit /h /s /gofuckyourself

[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

have you tried restarting explorer yet?

[–] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 1 points 7 months ago

Also, did you install all updates? Did you already accept Edge as your new web browser?

[–] Pyroglyph@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

I figured they would just run sfc /scannow and then sit staring at their screen bewildered when it inevitably does nothing.

[–] Steve@startrek.website 3 points 7 months ago

Tell Copilot to fix it.

[–] Corngood@lemmy.ml 2 points 7 months ago (7 children)

Hi, This is a high priority ticket and the FFmpeg version is currently used in a highly visible product in Microsoft. We have customers experience issues with Caption during Teams Live Event. Please help,

Use -data_field first as decoder option in CLI. Default value was changed from first to auto in latest FFmpeg version. Or modify AVOption of same name in API for this decoder.

Thanks @Elon for the reply, This is the command we are currently using: ffmpeg.exe -f lavfi -i movie=flvdecoder_input223.flv[out+subcc] -y -map 0:1 ./output_p.srt

I will be looking to see any updates in the FFmpeg documentation. Can you please elaborate and provide pointers the right decoding options or the right FF command er can use. Thank you!

ffmpeg.exe -data_field first -f lavfi -i movie=flvdecoder_input223.flv[out+subcc] -y -map 0:1 ./output_p.srt

Got that's fucking brutal. This isn't even asking them to fix a bug, it's just basic help-desk shit.

I'm sure Microsoft has some good devs that are a net benefit to the open source projects they use, but this is not one of them.

[–] pleasejustdie@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

If you've ever been forced to use Teams you must already know they scraped the bottom of their talent barrel for the team that works on it... The software is shit, riddled with bugs to the point where at one point I used to only be able to use teams on my browser because the desktop app just decided to never let me access the text chat, and the browser version I would load it would be a white screen and I would have to refresh 3 times for it to load. But at least it worked after those 3 refreshes. And it was exactly 3 refreshes every single time, never 2, never 4, and 5 was right out. It was always without fail 3 refreshes. Whether loading from Firefox, Chrome, or Edge. Fortunately we don't have too many meetings with people using Teams these days, so I haven't had to use it in a while, but its easily in my top 5 worst software I've been forced to deal with. Maybe Top 3. But its still miles behind Magento. Fuck Magento, just thinking of it right now gets my blood pumping and I refused to work with it ever again about 10 years ago... Fuck Magento. Teams is at least a distant 2nd or 3rd to that. Absolute crap.

[–] CodexArcanum@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

I'm convinced it's the whole B-2-B software world at this point. The shit starts at MS (or any of the FAANGS) and rolls downhill to everyone else.

We're working on a huge Dynamics 365 thing at work, and one of the third parties we use for automated testing is just.... the product seems barebones, is clearly built on top of open source automated testing tool, and is riddled with indicators that barely anyone works there, from the AI help bot to the "submit a ticket and we'll assign it eventually" approach to all other interactions.

I looked them up on Linked In and 12 people work there. 8 of them have C-suite or VP titles, and 4 of them are interns from a local university. This is the state of all modern tech: a board room full of investors, a website, and a product barely glued together from FOSS parts by interns. If you wonder why everything feels like a scam now it's because it is.

[–] kakes@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 months ago

Lmao even after providing a well explained answer, they still had to manually add the flag to their command for them.

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[–] TheMightyHUG@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Can someone enlighten me why a one-time payment of a few thousand for a bugfix is unacceptable? I feel like I'm missing something.

[–] BaskinRobbins@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (16 children)

I think the maintainer just viewed the bug report as tone deaf. Microsoft is a trillion dollar company and apparently relying on this library without a support contract. Then they a open a high priority bug item. The maintainer saying it's unacceptable is them basically saying they won't prioritize any work unless there's an existing support contract and that they don't do one off payments for bug fixes, which I think is fair.

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[–] technom@programming.dev 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I wonder if these trillion dollar companies offer support contracts for astroturfing on social media on their behalf. I can't think of any other way so many people are supporting their sociopathic attitude.

[–] Buttons@programming.dev 2 points 7 months ago

Cognitive dissonance.

For a lot of people, either they accept "this trillion dollar corporation that controls all my computers, and the programming languages I use, and my code editor, is evil". Or they accept "this trillion dollar company does lots of good things for me and is good".

One is easier to accept than the other.

[–] prosp3kt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

MIT license to make money is bad because of this. You shouldn't make money or ask me for support in first place if you arent sharing earnings bitch. This should be forbidden by law because software is given AS IS.

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