[mythtv-users] MythVideo: UI suggestion

Steve Peters - Priority Electronics steve at priorityelectronics.com
Tue Feb 26 20:02:00 UTC 2008



-----Original Message-----
From: mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org
[mailto:mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org] On Behalf Of Robin Neatherway
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 7:12 AM
To: Discussion about mythtv
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] MythVideo: UI suggestion


>  The normal "file browser" view is fine for general browsing. It could  
> stand to be spruced up a bit but it's perfectly functional. Although  
> some metadata driven navigation could be useful. Although this goes 
> for  the recordings list too. A particular actor might show up in 
> multiple  genres (in mythvideo) or multiple recording rules (in 
> recordings). It  would be cool to resort based on that sort of thing.

This is the view that I use and there is one small change that I think would
improve the interface significantly here. I have received many comments from
both technical and non-technical users of the browser that it is confusing
when the selection moves from right to left without the videos shown on
screen changing. I think it would be best if the selection remained on the
right the entire time and the videos shown moved around it. I had a dig
around to this end and tracked it down to the ManagedTreeList (or similar
name) in the main myth source code. I assume it behaves in this way because
it was designed for the Watch Recordings view and this is very sensible with
only two columns. It wasn't obvious to me how to alter this behaviour
however. Any pointers would be much appreciated even if this is something I
maintain in my own tree.

>  I think that "series" awareness in mythvideo would be a very useful  
> feature.

Agreed. Also something the OP mentioned is knowing which episode you have
watched - perhaps each video could simply have an extra field in the DB
noting when it was last viewed?


--
Robin
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I agree, browsing video collections that are large is a big pain. The linux
mce program screenshot here:
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Image:FileBrowserUI2M.jpg looks pretty
cool. Has some sort buttons at the bottom, though I'm not sure how they're
activated.

My big thing is that when in gallery view, there is a big lag when doing
page downs, like 1-2 seconds each, so when I want to jump down to videos
that start with M for example, it can take 10-20 seconds or more (I have a
lot of videos) just to get there. I've played with the image cache setting
but nothing made any difference (core 2 duo with nvidia 7300 frontend)

Another idea I had was that you could press number buttons on the remote to
get you to certain areas, like press 5 to get you to movies that start with
J...press it again to go to K, press 8 to get to T, and so on. I think
something so simple like that would really speed up casual browsing.

Also, what if there was a button press to just start cycling through
generes, like press the pause button or something, that would bring up
comedy, pause again would bring up drama (or whatever comes next).

Lastly for my ideas, if in gallery mode (my favorite obviously and imho best
waf view), there could be a hot key (pause again, or something like that)
that would show/hide the details of the video, or just the plot, in an area
in the bottom of the screen, kinda like a tab that goes the whole width of
the screen. So if I do 4 rows for gallery, I press my hot key button, and
now I have three rows in the gallery, and the bottom row now is an area that
shows the details of whatever movie is selected, so as I go through the
movies (left and right remote buttons), I see those details.

My ideas basically let you find your movie faster via genre or by name, and
then when browsing, you see all the important info on one screen: 
1. "Nearby" movies
2. Cover Image
3. Plot, year, rating, etc etc


Thanks for listening/reading : )
-Steve




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