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 244 points 7 months ago (5 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 103 points 7 months ago (2 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 44 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 18 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.

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[–] vahtos@programming.dev 208 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.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 109 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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

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[–] infinitepcg@lemmy.world 91 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 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 21 points 7 months ago

Yup. Shits fucked. Do what you can. Lol

[–] notfromhere@lemmy.ml 8 points 7 months ago (2 children)

There are likely other changes made since they released that version to their customers, so the risk is other things in addition to the current thing get broken.

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[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 14 points 7 months ago

isn't that what a canary release essentially is?

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[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 181 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 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 35 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....

[–] Thann@lemmy.ml 20 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Use -data_field first as decoder option in CLI. Default value was changed from first to auto in latest FFmpeg version.

It seems like ffmpeg made a breaking change to their API, and I expect a lot of users to have problems.

[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 29 points 7 months ago

On one hand that's fair, but on the other hand Microsoft is the biggest name in software development and ffmpeg is a volunteer gig, this is probably a problem the megacorp can handle.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

But then it'd cost them money.

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[–] Corngood@lemmy.ml 170 points 7 months ago (8 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 106 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 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 62 points 7 months ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] spartanatreyu@programming.dev 19 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

There's a reason Teams is/was shit.

The first teams was written in AngularJS (which is a slow to run resource hog, but fast to develop) wrapped in Electron. It was kind of a minimum viable product, just to build something quickly to get some feedback and stats on what people needed.

The plan was to build a new native version of teams and build it into the next windows while having an web fallback (built on react) for everyone else.

They stopped working on the original teams and started working on the new versions.

They got half-way through working on the native and react versions when suddenly, covid happened.

They couldn't keep working on the new versions because they wouldn't be ready for a while, so they had to go back and resume development on the old one, introducing patch after patch to quickly get more features in there (like more than 2 webcam streams per call).

Eventually covid subsided and they were able to resume development on the new teams versions.

Windows 11 launched with a native teams version (which has less features but runs super quick), and the new react based teams (which can now be downloaded in a webview2 wrapper) has been in open beta since late last year (if you've seen the "Try the new Teams" toggle, then you've seen this). The React+Webview2 teams will replace the AngularJS+Electron version as the default on July 7th.

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[–] kakes@sh.itjust.works 38 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.

[–] cm0002@lemmy.world 29 points 7 months ago (3 children)

You got this dumbass at MS and then you've got the other MS guy who's a god damn hero that very well might have saved the world atm lmao

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[–] otl@apubtest2.srcbeat.com 12 points 7 months ago

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.

Found the guy who created the FFMpeg ticket on LinkedIn. Job title: "Principal software engineer at Microsoft", saying they are "A detailed, analytical Software Engineer with Eighteen years of experience". 18 years?! Fuck me dead...

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[–] Steve@startrek.website 127 points 7 months ago

Tell Copilot to fix it.

[–] slurpeesoforion@startrek.website 113 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Can't reproduce bug. Closing ticket.

[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 45 points 7 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 64 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.

[–] Fenrisulfir@lemmy.ca 14 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

[–] pop@lemmy.ml 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

-Microsoft MVP

[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

have you tried restarting explorer yet?

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[–] 42Firehawk@lemmynsfw.com 93 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Hilariously the issue was just a setting change in the update, that you can easily change via a command option. They saw thing didn't work, and didn't read the change log at all before asking to pay a one time fee to guarantee it be maintained for them.

[–] Die4Ever@programming.dev 28 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So ffmpeg gets a few thousand dollars for such a simple answer/solution? Sounds good to me?

[–] 42Firehawk@lemmynsfw.com 65 points 7 months ago

The problem is that Microsoft wants to pay that for a permanent "never maintain in a way that breaks caption decoding in any default behaviour we use" with that one time payment.

Its a quick fix on Microsofts end to change a quick flag in ffmpeg. It's also quick on their end to maintain a fork that only changes the default. One time payments for maintenance make open source projects like ffmpeg subject to fail.

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[–] stoly@lemmy.world 63 points 7 months ago (8 children)

I don't get why they don't propose a fix themselves.

[–] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 30 points 7 months ago

99% morons, that's why...

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[–] Supervisor194@lemmy.world 37 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I am confused. I realize this is just a flag change not even a dev problem but PEBKAC, still - in the event of an actual bug, why wouldn't Microsoft have a dev contribute to the project and fix it instead of just opening a ticket?

[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 34 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Filling an issue quickly is good etiquette. Then you can discuss in the ticket the best way to solve/work around.

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[–] testeronious@lemmy.world 15 points 7 months ago

why wouldn’t Microsoft have a dev contribute to the project

because fuck you, that's their thought.

[–] MotoAsh@lemmy.world 9 points 7 months ago

You assume MS is competent?

[–] witx@lemmy.sdf.org 32 points 7 months ago

Good, tell leech corporations and specially Microsoft to fuck right off. Pay for it or do it yourselves.

[–] nifty@lemmy.world 31 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Tasteless! MSFT can have their armies of skilled people do this instead of leeching off FOSS contributions. It’s just not an acceptable move from a profit-driven entity to expect free labor, regardless of the FOSS philosophy of the project!

[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 23 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

To be fair, I'm sure this is a lone developer at Microsoft, not Microsoft as a company. A lot of this still absolutely applies, but it's not Microsoft as a company making an official decision to go ask the FFMEPG guys for free shit.

It'd be nice if the guy had an avenue to go to leadership, tell them about the issue, and just ask them to actually fund the guys to work on it.

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[–] Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml 29 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Corporations treat free software as an endless pool of free resources to exploit, pollute, and then shut down.

[–] arthur@lemmy.zip 9 points 7 months ago

Or try to take over like Redis

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[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 28 points 7 months ago

Fucking suits. They don't even care about the bottom-line, they just care about their own salary and benefits.

Pay for support or get fucked M$

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

[–] Sneptaur@pawb.social 14 points 7 months ago (6 children)
[–] Sibbo@sopuli.xyz 48 points 7 months ago (2 children)

The tweet is from today. The ffmpeg team felt like it needed to be said.

[–] Sneptaur@pawb.social 17 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Thanks for additional context. I don't open Twitter links anymore because 3/4 of the time the link doesn't work after Musk made changes

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[–] LinearArray@programming.dev 14 points 7 months ago

lmao Elon is a FFMPEG maintainer?

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