Sorry but I have so far seen mostly three "cases" for the old menu
4) Forced downmixing for poorly mixed audio tracks.
This is a corner case.
...I have to disagree, this is NOT a "corner case", this is a
common case...I would have preferred to link to about 5-10 YouTube videos where the Audio is messed up, but I haven't gathered those links yet...
but even without those links, it's still true:
LOTS of YouTube videos are messed up, with either ALL of the Audio on the Left or Right channel
OR with SOME of the Audio on the Left or Right channel & other parts of the Audio/Video are fine...so the option to choose Stereo Mode: Left / Right
is not a solution, cuz you are only getting 1 channel of the Audio instead of both channels mixed into Mono (this difference is important).
You can work around it in several different ways, with OS settings, VLC settings, VLC audio filters...
...those are all "permanent" solutions to a TEMPORARY problem! We only need to correct ONE video. Why should we dig deep into the OS or VLC prefs, save changes, restart VLC, watch one video, then UNDO all those changes? Why? Yes, those prefs are GREAT
if you wanna make Mono permanent, but they are not great,
if you just wanna fix 1 video & only
temporarily.
This use case is not much less relevant...
..."not much less" or "much less"?
...than selecting the output device is. Nowadays, multiple output devices is the norm, not the exception (HDMI, BlueTooth, USB, S/PDIF...). So the repurposing of the Audio device will not be reverted.
...no no no, you must be misunderstanding the possible solutions...please DO NOT revert the
Audio Device menu (you weren't going to, but I'm just trying to make
my intent clear)...it
is much more useful as it is now...
however, you are ignoring the feature of
Forcing Mono on a
temporary basis.
Proper surround downmixing by the Audio channels (a.k.a. Stereo mode)...
...I'm not sure what this means, do you really mean "surround", as in surround sound?...what about simple "downmixing" of Stereo to Mono (as VLC already could do as of
2.0.8)...& can still do as of 2.1.5 (if you dig deep in prefs & FORCE the setting to apply to all videos).
My proposed fix: simply put a Mono option in the Stereo Mode menu
- Add a Force Mono (or just call it "Mono") menuitem to the current (VLC 2.1.5) Stereo Mode menu
- Rename the Stereo Mode menu to Audio Channels, since it now lets you choose Mono as well as Stereo options (optional)
...the backend of the
Force Mono menuitem
should not need to be written, it should already exist: it should simply "do whatever those VLC prefs do", except on a
temporary (1 video) basis. VLC can ALREADY Force Mono (deep in the prefs), but not from a
simple menuitem. All the menuitem needs to do is: trigger/turn on any of the possible ways to get Mono Audio, that already exists in VLC & restart the Audio device/stream/output.
If it's not obvious, my new
Stereo Mode menu (optionally renamed to
Audio Channels) would/could also contain the other old options: 5.1, 2 Front 2 Rear, Stereo, Mono...& anything else that can be considered an "Audio Channel". It really is a matter of "how many Audio Channels do you want?": 1 (Mono), 2 (Stereo), 3 (not needed???), 4 (2 Front 2 Rear), 5.1 (2F2R+Center+Subwoofer). I think my
Audio Channels menu makes a lot of sense: the ability to override your Audio Channels setting on a per-video, temporary basis. You would STILL set your default/global Audio options in the OS or in VLC prefs, but you could OVERRIDE them temporarily, for
just 1 video. It's the best of both worlds: Keep the new
Audio Device menu & add all the missing options to the Stereo Mode/Audio Channels menu.
Having the option to
temporarily Force Mono is NOT DIFFERENT from the options we already have to
temporarily force the Aspect Ratio or change Cropping: those options only exist to temporarily make a video "watchable": to overcome the flaws in the person who made the video.
Other than perhaps confusion (us all not understanding each other's point of view),
I cannot understand the VLC Devs resistance to this feature. Yes, you re-wrote the
Audio Device menu &
you made it better,
thank you for that ...but that re-write had 1 unfortunate casualty: the Mono menuitem.
- Do I want you to rip out your new Audio Device menu...putting it back like it was? NO!
Do I want you to add some type of menuitem to be able to Force Mono on 1 video? YES.
Do I want to have to change a global setting in the OS or in VLC prefs to fix 1 video temporarily? NO!
"why the f*** do i need a google+ account to comment on a video?" — jawed (2013) (about YouTube's new requirement of Google+)
youtube.lua — Play YouTube videos in VLC!
Updated: Thu, Jan 15, 2015 --- 1/15/15, 7:19:19pm EST
forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=111977&p=379147#p379147
Sigh, the above can't be a link: "You cannot use certain BBCodes: [url]."...so, I can't even link back to a post on this forum?
How about this: can long-term/trusted users be allowed links in sigs?