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

["Charles Mason" <charlie mas gmail com>]

On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 8:41 PM, comomolo <comomolo loquecreas com> wrote:
>
>
> 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.