Re: [Usability] Graphical selection of text subtitles in Totem

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Fri, 5 Jan 2007, Bastien Nocera wrote:

> Date: Fri, 05 Jan 2007 16:24:05 +0000
> From: Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>
> To: usability gnome org
> Subject: [Usability] Graphical selection of text subtitles in Totem
>
> Hello, and happy new year to all,
>
> Totem has the ability to load text subtitles automatically, currently
> loading the text subtitle file with a known suffix, and with the same
> name as the movie (ie. test.avi would try to load test.srt, or test.sub
> as subtitles).
>
> People have requested being able to load the subtitle manually, from
> another location, which was implemented at:
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=165981
>
> I'm not very happy with the UI though, and would like comments on how to
> make it as unobtrusive as possible, while being discoverable.

Will give this more thought but so far best I can think of that there will
be many files, not only subtitles for video files, but also audio
transcripts/lyrics, fan producted commentaries for DVDs (early days but
here's hoping) or even people wanting to play Pink Floyd at the same time
as the Wizard of Oz.  (Hopefully this will give you some larger canvas on
which to reevaluate the problem, you are closest to the problem and
probably even more familiar than I am with the variety of players which
try to tackle this problem.)

Based on that premise I would think more along the lines of some kind of
extra entry in the file chooser, perhaps hidden behind a disclosure
triangle or behind some kind of options button.  Good think the extra
files can be detected automatically in most cases.  I liked the suggestion
of being able to drop a subtitles file onto the currently playing video.
The mockup showing nested lists in the playlist editor feels a little ugly
at first but is probaby the right way to represent the extra infromation,
especially if the list items can be collapsed to hide the extra detail.
Will definately need to think about it further though.

While were on the subject are there existing gstreamer based application
that migth make it easier to playback a video and annotate it with
subtitles?  (I'd hate to waste any further time trying to put together
subtitles in a text editor if it can easily be avoided but I should
probably try to hack together a plugin for Pitivi or something.)

Thanks for asking


Sincerely

Alan Horkan

http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/alanhorkan
http://alanhorkan.livejournal.com/