Hi,

We had a little discussion about UI stuff in Cin3, some points raised
were rather interesting, so I'd like to put a little attention on
those. :-)

The first Part of the Mail is a little ranting, so scroll down, if you
are not into flamebaits. ;-)

Some of the suggestions of different People were into totally opposite
directions, like for example:

Stefan de Konink <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> says:
> If in your perception we are making an 'office like' application that
> edits video, I might be wrong. But we probably can stick with what
> already exists. I am hoping we will design a GUI that is thought
> 'out-of-the-box'. As a toolkit and not some application, something you
> will focus on 100% when you use it.

Artem Baguinski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> says:
> A "Serious" reason to reuse widgets wouldn't be lazyness of
> programmers, but satisfaction of users. The less skills user has to
> forget each time s?he starts another application - the better.
>
> What you really want is to make sure the same things are done the same
> way, similar things are done similar way, and things that are unique
> to your application are kept to minimum.

I am with Artem in this case, because I don't think we should try to
outsmart everyone else by making something totally crazy and
unconventional. I think we are going for a solid, stable and reliable
tool, and I don't think that this is the place to get sidetracked by
experimenting with to many new ideas.

I am open to apply novel and innovative interface concepts in isolated
well defined use-cases. But for the overall application and Interface, I
strongly vote for and suggest to go the way of boring, well proven and
familiar concepts.

Other than that, and this is just my opinion and observation. I do not
think that Stefan de Koninks Comments are moving us forward very much.
Stefan, while I value your willingness to discuss, and to contribute
your thoughts and Ideas, I also hope that I can point out some flaws in
your arguments, not to offend you, but to encourage you to make even
better suggestions. :-)

This is going to be a serious App, and somehow compromises are
necessary. I am not saying that there is no room for freewheeling and
unconventional ideas, but lets assume that we do have some limitations
both in the resources that we have and in the problems that we want to
solve. Try to think inside that box. ;-)

Stefan de Konink <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> says:
> I'm sorry developer time is more expensive? Where do you come from? We
> are not starting a NewCinelerra company and probably want to have the
> best (not the optimal) solution for the system.

Yes, developer time is actually expensive, why? Because we only have
very little of it. I guess most of us are hobbiests, working in our free
time. So better use that time efficiently, and not waste it.

Sure we do not have any deadlines, we can take as much time as we wont
to, but if it takes 10 years to write a better cinelerra, then I don't
think this is going to make anyone here happy. Think about it, if we can
come to a resonable implementation in 1 Year, we have 9 more years to
play around with crazy innovative concepts. ;-)

The Point is, that we will use an existing well proven toolkit, because
it will save us Time and Headache. There is no serious alternative. BUT:
This does not mean that there is no room for fancy stuff. We just have
to deal with it that all the basics are standard of the shelf Widgets,
Like: Buttons, TreeViews, TextEdit Fields, File Open Selectors, and so
on.... While it might look like trivial stuff, creating all those basic
things will take time, and if you want to do it right, it will take a
long time! So better don't do it ourselves.

So I repeat myself:
GTK as well is Qt are well up to the task provide a
Widgetset for a Video Editor. Period. So don't even think about
recommending your personal favorite niche Toolkit.

===========================================================
===========================================================

So after all that Ranting, I'll move on to less Fluff, more Stuff. ;-)


Ichthyostega <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> says:
> When working with the current "state of the art" in any real world
> project, I constantly have *too much* tracks, *too much* effect
> windows open, *too much* sliders, *too much* knobs, I need to scroll
> around all the time, poke through endless tabs/lists/bins, while
> actually working at any time with only a limited focus set of
> entities. The problem being, this focus is not constant, it doesn't
> fit with the systematic hierarchy and is not known in advance.
> We should try to improve things here!


This of course is a problem that is very disconnected from the "Core"
Video Editing Problem, and therefore an ideal candidate to develop
individually. But it is also a very difficult Problem, because it is
what I like to call a "Workflow" Problem. The Problem varies widely
between people, because everyone has a different Workflow, some people
might shoot lots of footage for a particular project and want to
organize that information, others already have a large pool of stuff
that they tend to reuse again and again in a remixing fashion, others
might have lots of takes of the same scene and want to single out the
best shot, etc.... There are plenty of use cases that I can think of
here, and all of them are different.

This is also a problem that is not so technical but much more about
Perception, and Information Categorization and Organisation.
Implementation will probably not too difficult, so whoever wants to take
up on that task should be willing to do lots of Screen Mockups and
Detailed Workflow Examples and Explainations. ;-)

I suggest to look at the following applications to get some inspirations
about footage organization:

http://picasa.google.com/
http://macslow.thepimp.net/?p=125
http://f-spot.org/

If you have more links, please add them. If you are interested to work
on that problem, send in your proposals. :-)

Cheers,
and have fun,
-Richard















_______________________________________________
Cinelerra mailing list
[email protected]
https://init.linpro.no/mailman/skolelinux.no/listinfo/cinelerra

Reply via email to