I’ll allow their use of AI.
Sadly they’ve got a Ricky Gervais video as the ai subtitling sample, but then again it is his anti Hollywood golden globes speech… which was essentially controlled opposition.
Nevertheless.
VLC is truly irreplaceable. Its continued existence gives me hope for humanity
Finding VLC back in the day was euphoric; no more worrying about esoteric formats or “oh sorry you don’t have that codec good luck finding it,” everything just worked.
VLC has been part of my default list of software that gets deployed out to PCs I manage for going on a decade now. It’s just good software.
I’ll allow their use of AI.
The problem with most any technology isn’t that it exists, just how it’s used. Like I’ve heard Netflix has started using “AI” to dub content, including adjusting the lip sync, and from basically the moment “AI” became the trend of the day, I was thinking about how it could be used very effectively in dubbing to make content much more accessible across the world — but when this is being done by a for-profit corporation, I’m of course going to be skeptical of it. It isn’t exactly being done in the way I would’ve done it myself.
VLC on the other hand is FOSS developed by a non-profit organization, and it’s calling this new feature “AI” because that’s a word people recognize. “AI” is above all else a brand: if VLC were just upfront about how there’s no real meaningful difference between this new feature and how automated audio transcription and local translation have worked for many years already, at least that I can tell, I guess that wouldn’t have looked as “cool” on a booth sign.
Like I’ve heard Netflix has started using “AI” to dub content, including adjusting the lip sync, and from basically the moment “AI” became the trend of the day, I was thinking about how it could be used very effectively in dubbing to make content much more accessible across the world — but when this is being done by a for-profit corporation, I’m of course going to be skeptical of it.
Dubbing has been done for like a hundred years, you don’t need AI for it.
I was thinking more specifically about using voice cloning to help make dubs in small or endangered languages. Because obviously you don’t “need” AI to make a dub — and ideally you really shouldn’t — but if one actor alone can be given effectively infinite range, or multiple actors can take turns sharing the same voice, then this could drastically lower the barrier of entry for making a decent-quality dub of something, right? And there might be other use cases, too, but that’s the thing that stands out to me.
It’s a shame that one of the most famous anti-Hollywood speeches boils down to.
“Hey fellow rich people? You’re all too nice and it’s making everyone sick! Drop the philanthropy and be open douchebags!”
Literally a call for the ruling class to be LESS ethical.
Zizek makes kind of the same point and I’d hate to go to bat for either of them but I think they’re correct on that one. All the philantrophy is just bullshit anyways, smoke and mirrors. The only thing it serves to do is obfuscate the horrible shit
I use MPV these days but VLC is a real one
The MPV scripts are awesome
Skip silence is very good.
https://codeberg.org/ferreum/mpv-skipsilenceDon’t use this.
Why?
Is it risky? Is there a safer alternative?
Robert Fedvans though
Wait why’s he a fed? I just know that he’s annoying
In addition to what Molotov said he’s also openly talked about working with the feds training them to recognize online extremism, and I don’t trust anyone who’s willing to train cops
Edit:
Wah holy shit. So he was trying to harm reduction his CIA/Fed collaboration? Niiice
Yea pretty much. He puts on this anarchist/leftist aesthetic/costume but anyone who works with the feds is no comrade of mine.
I believe his “defence” is that he’s training them to persecute right-wing extremists, but I can’t believe he’s so naive as to think they wouldn’t use that knowledge to suppress leftists
Yeah that’s super suspicious, and good to know. I was on a road trip and listened to one of his Behind the Bastards where Margaret Killjoy was the guest and he just flat out interrupted her constantly and kept finishing her sentences, it was so frustrating that even with that I decided I didn’t like him but this is even more reason. Not just insufferable, but an insufferable opp
Works for Bellingcat. They’re an OSINT (open source intelligence) org who receive most of their funding from US/UK governments and NED (National Endowment for Democracy - US propaganda arm & CIA cutout).
Full of intelligence assets & aggressively manufacture consent (and sometimes faked ‘evidence’) in support of US foreign policy and to go after state enemies.
Yikes, that’s real bad. Wonder why he would be so open about being employed by them considering his audience
There’s still an enormous pool of Americans who maintain their chauvinism via the facade of the two party system, where every admitted problem with America can be attributed to the far right - whether that’s fash marching in the streets, republican politicians, or ‘rightwing’ billionaires. Any uniparty or foreign policy can simply be blamed on the other team in order to preserve the idea of America as a postive beacon of light in the world, and mroe importantly, their own heads.
If your audience is only ever looking for you to prescribe blame to that group, you can completely wash any complicity of yourself or your audiences role and views in the problem.
Is vlc a piracy software that I didn’t know had that functionality? I thought it was just a really good media player
It’s very good at playing those random garbage files people will upload that you accidentally downloaded.
I don’t even use VLC and they still get my upbear
i always cringe when people on reddit post that speech like it’s the most badass thing they’ve ever seen and heard. i never even watched it. once i heard it’s ricky gervais “taking hollywood to task” i figured, i don’t really need that in my life.
And nothing happened after. It’s great someone was able to say some stuff about someone…but that means fuck all if there aren’t any consequences. If you point out Harvey Weinstein’s accomplices and enablers, but don’t actually remove them from their positions or take legal action, you’re the equivalent of a strongly worded letter to the editor.
Anywho I’m ranting but lately I’ve grown tired of liberals and their inaction or outright obstruction. They say shit like “So-and-so really went after Trump and tore right into him! Really slammed him!” When I point out he’s not even getting fined, is still taking office, and definitely isn’t going to prison, they always have some excuse.
My relationship with VLC is on the rocks due to the fact that it has a hard dependency on an old version of ffmpeg which causes annoyances on Gentoo.
Pixelated Ricky Gervais looks an awful lot like
