Feature suggestion

[jominor]

I was recently trying Nvidia's purevideo decoder. The 30 day trial ended and Sage put up some obscure message. I figured it out pretty quickly, but it stumped my wife.

How about printing a message that directs one to the problem like "The decoder [put decoder listed in Sage setup here] is having problems [starting, whatever]. Please confirm that the decoder works blah blah.

Good error handling(and displaying) is never at the top of the feature list. I know, I'm in the final two weeks of a software project and my messages are getting worse and worse. The tool I use Intellij Idea 5 recently added this little blinky that shows exceptions thrown by plugins so the user can properly diagnose(and not blame Intellij) the problem.

Sage should consider do something similar.

[Wheemer]

I agree the the error messages in Sage could be improved. The infomation is never anything understandable.

[naln]

Originally Posted by jominor

How about printing a message that directs one to the problem
..........
Sage should consider do something similar.

Great idea- it would make troubleshooting a new installation or changes so much easier- rather than an obscure error number.....

[nielm]

In the general case, I agree, but in this particular case, this is more of an issue with DirectShow's error reporting interface than Sage..

If there is a failure when 'connecting' the decoder to the ouput, all DirectShow will give you is an "I can't do it" error (the infamous 0x80040217 error)...
Saying "problem in video playback" is about all Sage can do...