Re: [Banshee-List] Re move the video portion of Banshee?

["Andrew Conkling" <andrew andrewski net>]

Hi comomolo,
Thanks for your feedback. Since the video support in Banshee is relatively new, it is pretty light (feature-wise) and also hasn't gotten as much feedback from users as has its audio support. So your feedback is certainly valued.

On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 8:33 PM, comomolo <comomolo loquecreas com> wrote:

> 2- Open the preferences dialog. You will find settings for all audio
> related things. None for video... as expected for a music library manager. 

Since Banshee manages both, you'd expect to find audio-related preferences. Simply put, as of yet there are no preferences for videos. What would you expect/want to see here for video support?

> 3- Scan all the menu entries and try to find video-related ones. There's
> none. Why? This is a music library manager, which is quite OK until you
> put a video section there that looks completely out of place.

Again, there are simply no video-specific actions. Everything about playback sources, playback actions, the Now Playing area, and library management are all generic, so they would work for both types of media. What would you expect/want to see here?

> I'm just stating the obvious. There's nothing I really would do to improve
> Banshee's video section except removing it, because I think Banshee has
> been designed to be a music library manager, and that's where it shines.

(I won't assume your answers to my questions above are "remove the existing video support", so please say so if that's what you're proposing.)
 

> If you really really really want to turn Banshee from a music library
> manager into a media library manager, then redesign it accordingly... from
> the start. Rethink the whole thing and get a proper design for general
> media.

Certainly an option, but what exactly is "proper" in this case? Do you have any specific ideas?

> Just putting there a video section because Gstreamer will handle
> that media, has little to do with that and makes it an ugly and wrong
> decision.

That's certainly not the mentality of what was done, for what it's worth.
 

> Now, really, I don't want to get involved in Banshee's design. I'm only
> saying all this because you asked. All I need is to get rid of those lines
> of code that put that video thingy in the middle of my music collection,
> or if the devs are so gentle, a switch that will hide it somehow (command
> line options, preferences switch, anything).

Binbin's idea of converting it to an extension would certainly be useful, regardless of any design changes or suggestions. There's actually been a bug filed on that specific request: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=536656.

-- 
Andrew Conkling
http://andrewski.net