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

[comomolo <comomolo loquecreas com>]

andrewski wrote:
> 
> 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
> 
> _______________________________________________
> banshee-list mailing list
> banshee-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/banshee-list
> 
> 
OK, my honest opinion is that you definitely should remove the video portion
of a music library, but since you're willing to turn Banshee into a "media
library" (I surely hope you don't include pictures soon...) here are a few
examples of what you would want to add to the menus and preferences:

1- In "Preferences", "General" tab is really a "Music Library" tab. It
allows you to set the folder to find and watch for music, how you name the
hierarchy and files when importing music, etc. It must be changed to "Media
Library" and search for all types of media files (then putting them in the
right section of Banshee according to type), or you will need separated
"Music" and "Video" "general" tabs. You don't name movies or clips by
"Artist/Album/Number. Title" or anything resembling that.

2- Audio CD: You don't convert DVDs in the same way you import a CD, so
you'll need a "Video DVD" tab and/or maybe a "Video BluRay" tab or just a
"Video import" tab, with it's own set of settings. I can't see it as a good
idea to have a full video ripper inside Banshee but then again I don't think
it's a good idea to have video in it at all...

3- "Tools->Rescan music library" must be either become "Tools->Rescan media
library" or be split in two, one for audio, other for video.

4- Selecting "Edit track information" on a video clip brings up a dialog
asking for music-like tags. Video clips and movies have different features.
I don't even think there's a standard like ID3 to save that info, but
anyway, there's definitely no "composer" in my porn clips... ;-)

5- When importing video-clips, the Mirage extension is doing exactly what? I
know it's not a core developers issue but the reason why it tries to do
something with video clips is probably because there's nothing telling it
that video can't be classified by its audio features.

6- In the same way you have Radio, you might consider adding TV for video.
Again, this looks like a major and worrisome move to me, but it's only a
logical next step if you really want video in Banshee. You probably want to
access YouTube directly and other sources similar to that too (Totem is
doing it right now). Take a look at Songbird for adding even more internet
media content features (good luck with keeping the UI all tight and
clear...)

I guess I could be more thorough, but I think these examples show how video
is bolted on and half baked in Banshee. I wish they would also show you that
video is a whole different thing from audio and having separate applications
to handle music and video libraries and online content is the way to go, but
you're probably convinced that putting it all in one place is a great idea,
so I won't insist on that. I'm a fan of the old Unix way of having one
application for one task and profoundly dislike "swiss knife" software
design (Evolution being the worst example) so prevalent in other platforms,
like Windows. I still have a little hope that you reconsider video in
Banshee or at least allow your users to remove it at application
launch/compilation, but given the harsh replies to my request, I don't
expect much.

It's a shame, because Banshee was going in the right direction of making a
clever and clean music library manager.

Regards,

CM
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