QT4 Consolidation Thread - VLC's New Interface

[CloudStalker]

Here's an alternative for now: Here

And yeah I guess it would take a little while for it to be implemented considering there are only a handful of developers currently working on the project.

They welcome patchs and their source code is available, don't know what that means for most of us regular people though.

[MetalheadGautham]

hey cloudstalker, howcome you managed to reach the 100 post milestone on this thread while my thread of a similar nature is still unnoticed?

[CloudStalker]

Well if you change your name to "CloudStalker #2" the number of replies will shot straight up .

[ Serious CloudStalker]
I'm not really sure, maybe it has something to do with the fact that people are more interested in the new design of VLC and a little less interested in the technical side of things, that, and I supply a plethora of pretty pic...pretty COOL pictures that just make it more interesting to view, I guess.

Most of the things that I add aren't even part of the player . Sadly though from the way it's going they may never be .

[3breadt]

Let me see if I understand it. If you test with "grrrrr" Windows media player you should be able to right-click or something to bring up a 'find album art' directory which should allow you to use any JPEG or PNG as an album art, at least that's how I think it works. It would make it a little easier then having to go through some process of converting or adding to the JPEG/PNG so that it's read as album art by VLC. It will become obvious soon that I apparently don't know what I'm talking about.

I gave you a reply on the other theme were you asked for how to put album art into music files viewtopic.php?t=34082

[CloudStalker]

I gave you a reply on the other theme were you asked for how to put album art into music files viewtopic.php?t=34082

Well I was just explaining what was mentioned earlier, I haven't had the chance to try out the link anyways but I will soon.

[CloudStalker]

[#21] Find Target of Item in Playlist

Awhile ago someone mentioned something about deleting the actual files from the computer when they're deleted from the playlist. An alternative to this might be a "Find Target" when the user right-clicks on an item in the playlist which will bring them to the directory in which it is stored.

"Find Target" pop-up menu:



Might this be possible?

[3breadt]

I would call it much rather "Open containing folder", Find target doesn't tell the user anything about what this function would do.

BTW: is it normal that the duration and current position when playing flac files is not displayed?

[CloudStalker]

I would call it much rather "Open containing folder", Find target doesn't tell the user anything about what this function would do.

eh...it would be too long to fit within the menu without making a second line.

BTW: is it normal that the duration and current position when playing flac files is not displayed?

I don't think so. It might be the way in which VLC handles it. There's is a ticket on it already so I guess we'll just have to wait and see. There was a somewhat similar discussion about this here: WMAL and FLAC

[MetalheadGautham]

hey cloudy, do you mind if I use your thread?

i think the playlist must not block view of the playing window. it must extend downwards instead. and we need a seperate library and playlist.

[pvdeejay]

Hello all,
This is not directly related to the QT4 interface development, but I've found the info upcoming version of VLC media player 0.9.0 will include QT4 based UI as default. Will WX interface be available as a choice or is it going to be removed at all? I am asking this because current WX interface is perfectly accessible to people using screen-reading technologies under windows. And as a negative thing I haven't found any QT4 based gui accessible to this group of users. So if WX interface will be removed We cant use VLC any more besides using it from the command line. Can anyone let me know what are the plans please?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

The plan is to stop distributing WX for Windows.
However the Qt4 GUI will look a lot like WX, so I don't really see the problem. If you want to test, there are development versions available.

[CloudStalker]

Hey j-b, I just wanted to mention that you may have missed something in the preferences > Video > Output modules > DirectX:

Where's the Refresh button.



Maybe I'm missing something (don't say it ).

I havent checked into this thread for a while (stupid computer problems ) but I'll post some more ideas later.

[pvdeejay]

The plan is to stop distributing WX for Windows.
However the Qt4 GUI will look a lot like WX, so I don't really see the problem. If you want to test, there are development versions available.

Hello,
please don't do that. It is not a look problem but problem of accessibility for blind people. Trolltech claims to support accessibility apis on windows but I have never seen a QT4 based application accessible to the assistive technologies like freedom scientific's Jaws for windows is. I have downloaded today's nightly and I cant use QT4 guy at all. The only thing I can see it's window title.
Please think about it more. There were no people going to ask for such features because wxWidgets is perfectly accessible so you even don't know howmany blind users VLC has. And now in the time of new standards when IBM has brought IAccessible2 what is going to be supported by mozilla firefox and thunderbird 3 this is another option for VLC but I think some work is involved. And keeping wxWidgets may not hurt anyone I believe. Making QT4 gui more accessible requires creating custom QT plugins or subclassing some classes. Can you look into it please if there is no way to keep wx there? Here is some info on accessibility features which I cant manage to get working so something from the application's side is required.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

I'll give an eye on it. But you must understand our decision too. Compiling and adapting old modules takes a lot of time.

In fact I don't have any idea of what should be done for example. I'll do what I can do, but this is not prioritary. It can be done, once we accomplished the new GUI.

If we need to code more to get an accessible GUI, so be it.

For 0.9.0, I plan to distribute wx as a separable plugin that you can use instead of Qt4. But the problem will be for future.

[pvdeejay]

thanks, I am happy that you are open for the discussion on this and perhaps able to help. I know nothing about QT4 development but generally I as a developer of NVDA (a free and open source screen reader for windows) can do some basic programming If you can please at least try to figure it out perhaps I will be able to help then. The problem is that I can find no examples or further documentation except of the link I have posted. If there is wx interface planned for 0.9.0 then this is not so critical but is good to know that it is time to start looking and counting all the possibilities.

thanks once again for your support

[CloudStalker]

hey cloudy, do you mind if I use your thread?

i think the playlist must not block view of the playing window. it must extend downwards instead. and we need a seperate library and playlist.

Sorry I missed this post. All will be handled once the media library is complete. If you want for the playlist to be visible while still in the video window mode try going to "Playlist" in the menu bar and select "Undock from interface" (Ctrl+U).

[CloudStalker]

Hey j-b, is it too late to add more buttons to the interface? I have an idea, nothing fancy, and I just wanted to know if it's possible, otherwise my idea will be dashed into millions of pieces and scattered throughout the universe with no hope of ever being recovered. I'll post it today before you get the chance to say no.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Yes

[CloudStalker]

um...yes it's too late to add them, or yes I can submit my idea so that you can say no anyways? Come on I'm almost done with it.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

DOn't be a fool. Submit it.

[CloudStalker]

Too late, I'll submit it anyway.

[CloudStalker]

I'm almost finished. In the meantime I have a few questions (don't worry, much): Will the drag and drop ability be fixed for the QT4 interface, I mean so that it functions like it did in v0.8.6b? Unlike the current version whenever I drag and drop a folder into the playlist it always gives me error messages, I'm not sure if something has changed or what but I like the way is was, is, for 0.8.6b.

Edit: The only other things I can think of that would make this better for 0.9.0 is some sort of refresh, that way when files or folders are dragged and dropped we won't have to play them individually to display the meta data. Another thing that would be great is if we could also drag and drop rar files the same way we do folders, but I'm not sure if that's handled by you or the QT4 interface.

Because I like to load entire folders of videos and there seems to be a slight bug with the preview window to video window ([#9]) I was wondering if you were going to add the "Open directory..." to the Media menu so that I don't have to switch to the playlist first, start a video, switch back to the video window (click the playlist button again), stop the video, since it's only a thin black line, and play it again to get it to work. Thanks.

[CloudStalker]

I have yet another question about the latest nightly build. There seems to be some really nice progress going on with the "Media information" menu. Will it work like I think it's going to work in that you can select an item or group of items and apply meta data to which you can then save it all in one file and throw it into the folder where the videos/songs are held (phew). If not then how is it supposed to work?


Edit: will it work like this:


Track before adding meta from VLC:


Changes made to media information:


New media information:


Does it matter what format the file is? I hope this is how it works because it would fix a lot of problems.

[CloudStalker]

OK OK OK, I finally finished my "project". It's simple actually, maybe. If you didn't get the chance to read any of my previous posts then...you're missing out. Anyway, here it is (don't laugh! ):

[#22] Extra GUI Buttons - Image Clone and Image Split

That's it!!! how do you like the idea?!?!

NO NO NO, there's more. How do you feel about adding two more buttons to the interface as well as a couple more options for each button? I tossed the extra options in there because, well, I like to make things more
difficult, you know, to challenge your skills. *cough* Ignore the strangeness. Warning! despite some more strangeness this post is really long, so whip out some coffee, tea, jamba juice, whatever.


Now, I've made the buttons myself with a very advanced state of the art program: MS Paint , so if you decide to add functionality to them feel free to use em, however, I'm sure that even a monkey with a banana deficiency could've done a better job then this. Again, ignore the strangeness.

Alright, here's the first image of just the interface with the new buttons:

Clone & split buttons:


Pretty basic, but they look decent enough and they kinda blend in with the interface, eh?

Now there's something I've noticed about the "Clone" and I'm hoping that some here could be changed. If you were to open up two instances of VLC and open the same video in each one, you could actually move the second video over to the second monitor without having to turn off the "Overlay video output", both will actually display in fullscreen. The first video to play is the one that will take on the overlays while the second plays without overlays but the plus to this is that you don't have to go into the preferences and turn off the overlays, and when you want overlays back on go back... This is much better because the video card decides which video will have overlays and there's no black screen when running dual monitors, with one on an extended desktop.

This couldn't be easier, click on the "clone video image" button and it'll send the clone to the second monitor (display two) (there's more about that later).

Function of the clone button:


So there's one of the extra options, actually sending the the clone to the second monitor/TV and also maximizing to fullscreen automatically. And you use these buttons to toggle this ON and OFF. You're probably looking at this wondering how the are you supposed to implement this.

Now despite how complicated that might sound the "split video image" is probably even more difficult.


When you click on the "Split video image" button, which works similar to the "Video wall" filter, it'll split the left half of the video to display #1 and the right half to display #2. Here's a screen shot to better explain what I mean:

Function of the split button:


And when both are in fullscreen you'll get the full effect:

Split video image in fullscreen:


Yeah yeah I know, the image is a little squished, but that's because they're both on 4:3 monitors.


Well you'd think I'd be done by now, but no. About those couple of other options. How about using some of the other functions that are already in VLC but also have them work for these specific buttons, like the option to automatically go to fullscreen when a video starts, or in this case when the clone or split buttons are clicked.

Clone image properties (under the "Clone" filter):


In this picture it shows the option to start the cloned video in the second monitor/Display #2, and to start in fullscreen.

This one's pretty much the same:

Split image properties (maybe it should be somewhere different ):


Right when you think I'm done, I am. Sooooo...impossible? crazy out of my mind for thinking this? Just plain out of my mind? Don't answer that.

That's it for now. MAN THAT WAS LONG!!! Well maybe not.

Have fun, and sorry for all the smilies.

[CloudStalker]

Well I don't know how well this is going but I'll add to it anyway. If this does make it maybe the buttons could become visible only when a video is detected, kinda like the buttons that appear when you play a DVD.

I'll do some more updates later.