"Build decoder graph" box in performance test is confusing

[mirh]

I mean, I think I lost 5 minutes trying to understand why changing source didn't affect the video benchmarked with "start".

I mean.. I guess it wouldn't hurt if it was already pre-filled with whatever you had opened before (should it exist)?
And perhaps "build graph" button should be grayed out when "settings are still the same"?

[mikecopperwhite]

To be honest, I've never used the graph building part of this dialog. I simply changed the dialog so that it could run performance tests on the existing graph rather than build and test in one step as I wanted detailed control of the graph building.

So yes, I'm sure graph building part of the dialog could be greatly improved. Auto populating the dialog from an arbitrary selection of filters wouldn't be trivial though.

[mirh]

Arbitrary selection?
Isn't what you had opened yourself "fixed"?

[mikecopperwhite]

No question the 'Build Decoder Graph' section of this dialog could be made more intuitive or even moved into its own dialog. It's not a particularly useful part of the application and is mostly obsolete due to improved graph editing and loading facilities in GSN. 'Build' should be called 'rebuild' really as clears the existing graph and rebuilds it. I'll tweak the wording here to make this dialog a bit clearer.

Personally I find it easier just to open a media file and render it from the main menu, optionally creating demuxer, decoder, time measurer or renderer filters first so that they are automatically used for rendering the media file if compatible. Once this is done simply save it as a GRF or GRFX file so that it can be loaded directly without having to revisit the build graph controls.

[mirh]

Mhh, I don't think the "build decoder graph" is totally useless. Also, it should be build because technically if you hadn't open anything previously, that's what you are doing.

Personally I find it easier just to open a media file and render it from the main menu, optionally creating demuxer, decoder, time measurer or renderer filters first so that they are automatically used for rendering the media file if compatible.

Sure, though I can see a use case where I'm trying to compare different codecs speed, and where a drop-down menu readily available would help.

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Long story short though, I'm not sure I have understood why "reading which file/codec had already been opened/loaded" would be so problematic.
EDIT: seriously, instead of the new note, this last thing I mentioned would be 10 times more clearly straightforward 👅