Advanced control support for VLC skins

[kopi]

I'd love to see advanced control support for VLC skins. That, or a nice clean, slick looking skin for the default VLC engine. I tried several skins tonight and was very disappointed that I couldn't access the advanced control features. Had to go back to the original engine to get those controls.

Thanks a bunch.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

You mean record, frame-by-frame and a->b ?

[kopi]

Yes, the frame-by-frame option would be one example. I, personally, don't use frame-by-frame or the record function. But I do use the looping function quite a bit. I also use the slow down playback function all the time. I can't remember if that one is an advanced control or not. I was mainly looking for the looping function last night on the skins I had installed. But both functions are indispensable for me. I simply can't live without them. So if I can't get those when using skins, then I'll just have to use the default engine. Last night after I had tried skins on my VLC player, I saw another thread in the forums where a guy was asking the same question about skins and advanced controls. The answer given was that skins don't support the advanced control functionality because the engine (skins2) is a different animal from the VLC standard engine. Anyway, would love to see that functionality or else, like I said, a slick looking skin on the default engine.

Thanks so much:)

[erwan10]

Almost all features mentioned in these previous posts are supported by the skins2 engine (frame-by-frame, record, loop, slow down, ...). The only one that is not supported is the a->b feature.

Btw, the concept of "advanced controls" solely makes sense within the qt4 interface. There is no such "advanced controls" concept within the skins2 engine.

Also, Keep in mind that the skins2 engine is only a tool box. Each skins developper/maintainer can integrate or not these aforementioned features in their own skins. Loop and slow down are often provided since they are quite old features. Record and frame-by-frame are less common, since they have only been available from vlc1.0 on.

[kopi]

Almost all features mentioned in these previous posts are supported by the skins2 engine (frame-by-frame, record, loop, slow down, ...). The only one that is not supported is the a->b feature.

Btw, the concept of "advanced controls" solely makes sense within the qt4 interface. There is no such "advanced controls" concept within the skins2 engine.

Also, Keep in mind that the skins2 engine is only a tool box. Each skins developper/maintainer can integrate or not these aforementioned features in their own skins. Loop and slow down are often provided since they are quite old features. Record and frame-by-frame are less common, since they have only been available from vlc1.0 on.

Thanks for the quick reply. You state that loop and slow-down functions are supported by skins2 but then you state that the advanced controls concept doesn't exist in the skins2 engine. This sounds contradictory to me. Are loop and slow-down not considered advanced controls? Sorry to be so thick here. You don't have to flesh out an answer on that if you don't want to. Just curious about that and want clarification.

Bottom line, I would like to have a nice skin which allows the loop and slow-down function. Since you state that Loop and Slow-down are often provided with skins, would you mind listing some skins which have those features. I tried about ten different ones last night and I couldn't see the loop feature on any of them. The slow down feature I'm unsure of. It was late. I was tired and I wasn't really paying attention to see if the skins I looked at had the Slow-down feature. I need both features if I'm going to use a skin for VLC. Otherwise, it's back to Qt4.

Thanks again for your response.

[erwan10]

You can use the default skin for instance

- loop is referred to as "Toggle playlist/song repeating"
- slow down is "play slower"

[kopi]

Okay, I found the "play slower" button, but there's no looping feature as with Qt4. When I use the term loop, I don't mean doing a repeat play on the media file. I mean setting a loop within the song itself. I'm a guitarist, so this is very helpful when working out difficult parts of songs. I can hit the loop button once to indicate where I want it to begin and then click it again to mark where the loop will end. Then it will just play that part continuously. I don't see this anywhere on the "default" skin. Only on the prepackaged engine for VLC. Every time I apply a skin it disappears. At least I'm half way there with the slowing down playback feature. So I should be thankful for that.

I appreciate you taking the time to try to resolve this for me. Have a great day!

kopi

[Spyme]

Would a extra window, that you can manually open, with all available functions within skins have a influence to use a skin, for you?

One part that prevents me to use a lot of the native controls is the missing space. If you would make a skin that is clean and simple, but have the advantage of the native player, takes you to a problem. The "customize controls" option isn´t available to skins, so even you try to provide it, you cannot customize the controls at your desire. As i designed my skin, i build some questions, what the user like the native player for, and what may the hate on it. Then i did a look an a lot of available skins and what they do wrong or why they are used less often. You make take a look an my Advantage.VLC Skin, i hate it for the overflow and size, but i don´t want to cut features missed in other skins or that are provided by the native player.

[kopi]

Would a extra window, that you can manually open, with all available functions within skins have a influence to use a skin, for you?

Sure. It would make a difference either way to me. If it was something where I could click and the extra features opened in another module, that would be fine with me. That would certainly be preferable to what I've seen so far with skins options. However, my perfect skin would allow any extra controls I wanted to add from the advanced features available in the native engine right on the player. The skins I've sampled so far look incredible, but without the option of adding that functionality they're pretty much worthless to me. Means if I want to just listen to music or watch a movie, I can use skins and when I have to do some "work," I'll have to switch back to the native VLC engine. I will download your skin and give it a try and let you know how it went.

Thanks so much.