Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Video for Rhythmbox

[Karsten Schmiedecke <Karsten Schmiedecke gmx de>]

On Sat, 2006-07-29 at 12:54 +1000, James "Doc" Livingston wrote:
> Not being able to (or not wanting to) code is fine, right now design is
> much more important. 
Really?  Gee, Rhythmbox gets sexier with every CVS-Version I check out
(currently 5 days old)! Plus, I get more and more comments from people
on parties that they like what they see. (Off-topic: right now, I have a
friend here with his 60G-iPod, which caused me to hack iPod detection
into my gentoo, and - I really love it! Rhythmbox handles it in the best
way ever!)

> I have no idea how iTunes does it's video-related
> stuff, or if it's design works for it, but this is what first springs to
> mind for me:
> 
> * Have a "Videos" source similar to the Library one
good. Thought so, too, when I read about video support.

> * Make RB smart and be able to put audio in the audio library, and video
> in the Video one
RB /is/ smart! That behaviour is what I would expect, too.

> * The "columns of info" layout probably wouldn't work well for video,
> particular since video usually has crappy metadata. Maybe a thumbnail
> the size of (say) three rows on the left, and the right side filled with
> some metadata.
Right! Here is my thought about this point, which actually caused me to
answer in the first place: A preview thumbnail is good. Making rows
larger for that is good, too. But, considering that 'movie'- files
usually start with a black screen, and 'episodes of' files probably all
start with either solid-color or identical splash screens, the preview
should include several (5?, 10?, 20?) screen shots from throughout the
file. Agreed, it would look like the advertisements on web pages if you
look at your video source and have 10 randomly changing preview images.
I guess they could animate on mouse-over or something, but I'd like more
than just a single shot of the first screen, as you find in nautilus,
afair - that wouldn't be the idea of 'preview'.

> * Some browser-like thing, so I can easily look at "Episodes of X", "The
> Y movies" or "everything else".
> 
> This will need input from a quite a few people, to decide what might
> work well. If there are any existing apps that do this kind of things,
> taking a look at them would be good.
I'll hook up aforementioned iPod to windows/iTunes on my laptop and see
what it does about video files.

> On the technical side, supporting this would require changes to
> Rhythmbox's core. But for the most part we're happy to adapt things if
> something needs it, and many of the changes are needed for other things:
> display video is fairly similar to displaying visualisations, we've been
> talking about better "track" listings for podcasts etc.
I'd love whiteCAP-style visualizations, but whatever.

You're awesome!
-karsten