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Author Topic: I'm bored....whats next?  (Read 3496 times)

jmone

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I'm bored....whats next?
« on: April 22, 2009, 02:27:52 am »

So what the next "big thing" for MC that we get to test (moan), play with (suggest) etc etc?
Thanks
Nathan
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Alex B

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Re: I'm bored....whats next?
« Reply #1 on: April 22, 2009, 09:15:33 am »

At some stage it would be good to concentrate to details, usability and quality control. This could be the right time for that (assuming the major development goals are now accomplished).

There are lots of small things that could be smoothened/bettered/finalized/etc, including the documentation and website.

For example, some features would benefit greatly of things like a more logical placing of the controls (right-click items, buttons, etc), a more harmonized appearance, and additional feedback (status messages, tooltips, etc). Many of the new and changed features are not included or explained in the wiki. Or like I reported, the plugins & skins site does not contain MC13 at all.

I admit that giving finishing touches isn't a very exciting task, but it should be necessary. The development of MC12 already didn't quite continue to that stage and there is now even a bigger need for polishing up.


As discussed elsewhere, one of the difficult areas is to make potential new users understand the beauty and power of MC. It may well be that occasional test runs during the 30-day trial period are not enough for that.

We, who know our MCs thoroughly, may not always realize how different the user experience may be when you are a newcomer. And I am not speaking about grannies who have never used a PC before. I mean newcomers that can be quite computer literate and have mastered other programs for years or decades.

A somewhat more polished and better documented product could be one step towards that goal.


We could help JRiver by pointing out the places that need polishing. JRiver could help us to do that by specifying the areas they are working on, preferably one at a time.

For instance, it could go like this:

-- JRiver announces here that they are now going to polish the CD ripping features.
-- Then the beta team members would continue the discussion by posting suggestions and observations, either new findings or things that have been discussed elsewhere, but not yet fixed or revised. These comments should be mainly limited to existing features, not feature requests. Regarding CD ripping my first reply would be as follows:

Quote
It isn't enough that MC can connect YADB more reliably and gets existing data when available (I hope that problem is fixed now).

In my tests I noticed, that a newcomer would have very difficult time understanding when and how the submission occurs. No one can easily find the "tree > CD icon > right-click > ..." command. And when it is executed the interface does not provide any feedback. A message like "Thanks for successful submission" would be appropriate.

Also I don't see that any automatic submission occurs and in any case it is not clear when it is supposed to happen (at least my firewall does not indicate a connection attempt when I add or change tags in the ripping details window).

In any case, in order to obtain correct data, the decision to submit should be up to the user. I'd like to see a message like:
"Would you like to submit your added or changed info now? Please verify that all fields are correctly filled. Thank you."

If the submission system is not working logically and properly YADB is doomed to be worse than it could.

-- And while the ripping interface is tweaked we could check how well the related documentation in the wiki works and suggest or make changes and additions.
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rjm

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Re: I'm bored....whats next?
« Reply #2 on: April 22, 2009, 09:32:49 am »

Quote
We could help JRiver by pointing out the places that need polishing. JRiver could help us to do that by specifying the areas they are working on, preferably one at a time.
Very good idea.
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modelmaker

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Re: I'm bored....whats next?
« Reply #3 on: April 22, 2009, 11:18:04 am »

One of my pet peeves are the shuffle controls, to me this was never polished up.

You've got the shuffle on/off at the top of the GUI and for most of the rest, you have to drill down into the player menu, then shuffle menuto find all but one option; shuffle. I know it's around somewhere, but I usually only find it by chance.

My suggestion would be to put it all under the shuffle on/off button and make it a hover-click operation, much simpler and easy to find and use.

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Matt

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Re: I'm bored....whats next?
« Reply #4 on: April 22, 2009, 12:09:40 pm »

One of my pet peeves are the shuffle controls, to me this was never polished up.

You've got the shuffle on/off at the top of the GUI and for most of the rest, you have to drill down into the player menu, then shuffle menuto find all but one option; shuffle. I know it's around somewhere, but I usually only find it by chance.

My suggestion would be to put it all under the shuffle on/off button and make it a hover-click operation, much simpler and easy to find and use.



I wonder if all three of those buttons should show a menu.  Currently I have to click, then read the tooltip, then click again.  And the DSP Studio button has a right-click menu, which only about ten people in the world know about.
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gappie

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Re: I'm bored....whats next?
« Reply #5 on: April 22, 2009, 03:43:38 pm »

And the DSP Studio button has a right-click menu, which only about ten people in the world know about.
wow.. didnt know or forgot about it, could be handy, so make that 11.  ;) 8)

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modelmaker

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Re: I'm bored....whats next?
« Reply #6 on: April 22, 2009, 11:58:55 pm »

I wonder if all three of those buttons should show a menu.  Currently I have to click, then read the tooltip, then click again.

I think you're exactly right!

Btw, it's nice to be back and see many of the ol' regulars are still around, (this was the first forum I ever joined, way back in the MJ7/MJ8 days!), other business took me away for a while, Jay.
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dcwebman

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Re: I'm bored....whats next?
« Reply #7 on: April 24, 2009, 07:48:54 am »

We could help JRiver by pointing out the places that need polishing. JRiver could help us to do that by specifying the areas they are working on, preferably one at a time.
This is definitely a good idea. There are so many features that trying to test and suggest improvements to all of them is difficult. Concentrating on one area at a time would make those areas solid.
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Jeff

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Re: I'm bored....whats next?
« Reply #8 on: April 25, 2009, 06:17:36 pm »

jmone,
We're bored too.  But last week we took a break.  We've been pushing really hard on a long term project and it was suddenly more or less finished, so we kicked back.

We spent some time talking about Our Future.  A few things bubbled to the top.

1.  Polishing the interface.
2.  Building a shell that makes MC easy to control.  Think Theater View on another device.
3.  Hardware Department #1 -- a remote that controls a PC and your receiver. 
4.  Hardware Department #2 -- recycled iPods and Sandisk MP3 players with Rockbox installed for $30 to $50.

There were a few other promising areas, but it's Saturday night here....
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jmone

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Re: I'm bored....whats next?
« Reply #9 on: April 25, 2009, 07:45:24 pm »

jmone,
We're bored too.  But last week we took a break.  We've been pushing really hard on a long term project and it was suddenly more or less finished, so we kicked back.

Enjoy the break!  Now….back to business
Quote
1.  Polishing the interface.
Many would agree with you one this and I’m sure if you raised a thread for this you would get more imput than you could poke a stick at.

Quote
There were a few other promising areas …
Every now and again I do a post comparing MC with Team-Media Portal (and to a lesser extent MS) as a feature comparison....as being a HTPC user in the whole it is a good yard stick fo me.  MC has come a looooong way since I first joined the JR camp in this area and I’m very pleased!  The following are a couple of things where there is a competitive gap (Note:  this does not presume I want or thing these are required features, they are just a list where Media Portal has an advantage) as listed in http://www.team-mediaportal.com/content/view/42/117/
• General:  TheaterView Skins work well but with little professional artwork.
• MYTV:   
  o Missing support for DVB-C / DVB-S. 
  o Transcode TV Recordings to WMD, XVID or MPG (we are stuck with the proprietary JR Container)
  o Grab DVB-EPG & MHW-EPG directly for DVB
• MYVIDEO / MYDVD:   I know that work has progressed recently but there is still a way to go to integrate the automatic collection and presentation of Video Art / Info in JR
• MYRADIO:  Support for FM, DVB radio
• PLUGINS:  There are 100’s of plug ins but the main one I notice is that they have integrated the Arcsoft TMT MC Plug-in for Blu-Ray playback into MP.
• OTHER:  MC is still a limited MediaServer as it does not offer transcoding for streaming of video files.

I’m sure there is many more suggestions / comparisons that could be made….
Thanks
Nathan
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leezer3

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Re: I'm bored....whats next?
« Reply #10 on: April 25, 2009, 08:11:07 pm »

Theatre view isn't bad in it's current state, but IMHO the skinning engine & the underlying interface still needs rebuilding in many places.
Silly little things, for example there is no real way to move a skin component effectively at the moment- Everything relates to the menus, whose place seems to be fixed.
I alluded to this issue in the non-roller theatre view skins thread ( http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=51457.0 ), but it's impossible to move skin components properly.

I'll also punt up a thread of very minor tweaks/ polish I posted a while back, AFAIK all of these still apply-
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=48474.0

-Leezer-
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fitbrit

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Re: I'm bored....whats next?
« Reply #11 on: April 26, 2009, 10:29:04 pm »

jmone,
We're bored too.  But last week we took a break.  We've been pushing really hard on a long term project and it was suddenly more or less finished, so we kicked back.

We spent some time talking about Our Future.  A few things bubbled to the top.

1.  Polishing the interface.
2.  Building a shell that makes MC easy to control.  Think Theater View on another device.
3.  Hardware Department #1 -- a remote that controls a PC and your receiver. 
4.  Hardware Department #2 -- recycled iPods and Sandisk MP3 players with Rockbox installed for $30 to $50.

There were a few other promising areas, but it's Saturday night here....


All of these would be very appealing!
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jmone

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Re: I'm bored....whats next?
« Reply #12 on: April 27, 2009, 06:10:01 am »

I know I've tried to talk up interest over the years in many many threads to get JR to take MediaServer seriously for the transcoding/steaming of Video using UPnP/DLNA but failed... :'(

.....anyway you have to check out http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/  ;D this puppy just works out of the box with the PS3 and I've been able to transcode/stream ALL files types to the PS3 - everything....something I could not do with TVersity and certainly not with MC.  MPG Containers with DTS Audio, DV Type 1 / Type 2 in AVI containers by instructing PS3MediaServer to "Force transcode of following extensions..." including MPG and AVI.

JR - with MC's organisational ability and great control over filter selection you should be able to expand the Media Server section of MC13 and eat these guys alive!

Thank
Nathan

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jmone

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Re: I'm bored....whats next?
« Reply #13 on: April 27, 2009, 06:42:39 am »

We spent some time talking about Our Future.  A few things bubbled to the top.
1.  Polishing the interface.
2.  Building a shell that makes MC easy to control.  Think Theater View on another device.
3.  Hardware Department #1 -- a remote that controls a PC and your receiver. 
4.  Hardware Department #2 -- recycled iPods and Sandisk MP3 players with Rockbox installed for $30 to $50.

Jim, I've reread this post over and over for the last couple of days hoping that I've missed some subtle humour (I'm only Australian after all) and trying to come up with a positive spin BUT REALLY if this is the most creative thinking at JR for the future direction of MC then you really need to up the LSD in the drinking water a tad. 

While, you will get no arguments about #1 (all apps needs continual polishing), I've already got a RC that does #2 / #3 (but I'm sure there can be other devices), and good luck with #4 (the market segments that understands cooked firmware will happly flash it all on their own)....Whats the next BIG THING for MC, is it
- Support New Media Formats (Blu Ray)?
- Central Media Hub (transcoding/streaming of all file types including Video!)?
- New Platforms (Windows Home Server / Windows Mobile / Mac / Unix etc)?
- Something else???
- OR are the product offerings in this market reaching maturity and we are down to incremental improvments?

Anyway.....thanks for listening!
Nathan
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pank2002

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Re: I'm bored....whats next?
« Reply #14 on: April 27, 2009, 07:01:14 am »

Hello.
Generally more polishing is probably a good idea.

Here is one of my greatest needs:
Since a couple of weeks ago I store media on a NAS so I can get it from both computers.
Music is generally not a problem since they have mp3tags.
Pictures, on the other hand is a problem. Are tags stored in the pictures? What happens if I tag a bunch of pictures? Will they show up tagged on her computer? Last time I checked the only thing that connected a given picture to the tags in MC-DB was the file location. A Photo-ID would be nice.

I would be interesting with a simple tag sharing mechanism to reflect changes, i.e. tag changes, in one MC to another. A small text file with tag changes, read and wrote by MCs, would be great.

Generally, I fell that the picture view could need an overhaul. There are lots of great suggestions on the picture view -- primarily by others -- but also a few by be.


Regarding the burning CDs: Burning CD is very easy! I think the interface is great. What I don't like is the CD Labeler. I don't think it has been updated since v9 when I bought my first MC! It is very bothersome that the set up of track lists are hard coded, especially for people who do use English as their primary language.
Every time my girl friend burns a CD she has to manually edit the track list to a form of
[artist] -- [name] ([duration]).
In MC, this could easily be automated but not in CD Labeler.

Other polishing up: Videos are not supported by the facebook uploader last time I checked. However, Facebook seems to be supporting video.

Cheers,
Rasmus
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glynor

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Re: I'm bored....whats next?
« Reply #15 on: April 27, 2009, 10:03:02 am »

2.  Building a shell that makes MC easy to control.  Think Theater View on another device.

YES!!!
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park

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Re: I'm bored....whats next?
« Reply #16 on: May 07, 2009, 01:22:36 am »

YES!!!

That would be good. I want to access MC from my mac and iphone. Loading bootcamp just for MC is getting tiresome.

Also, how about finishing off the following features:

1. Showroom. This had everyone excited when it was introduced, but now months later it still remains hidden and unfinished.
I'd like one or all of the following:
  • Ability to choose which category gets used for the list of thumbnails
  • Ability to move "through" a thumbnail to see the next (filtered) category
  • Info panel on the thumbnails, or a link to info

2. Yadb for movies, and movie posters. This is halfway there with it's support for DVDs at the moment, but why not let us submit data for all of our ripped movies too. One drawback I see is that the submitted info would need a lot of pruning, merging etc. to make it more relevant, but it might be a good investment for the future.

3. OSD. Harmonize the user interface. The way of selecting subtitles, audio and video streams is different from the way of changing other options, such as position, volume, play item etc. Group all the audio streams into one OSD item, all the video ones into one item, and all the subtitle languages into one item, and use left/right to switch.

4. Stacks. More overlay options on thumbnails, or an action window for stacking tools, and a proper place for all stack related options on the gui.

5. Radio mode. iTunes is annoying in how it thrusts genius onto the user, but effective. MC is a little too shy about it. A better balance would be good.

I'm sure there's more, but these stand out in my mind the most.
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MrHaugen

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Re: I'm bored....whats next?
« Reply #17 on: June 11, 2009, 09:17:25 am »

• General:  TheaterView Skins work well but with little professional artwork.
• MYTV:   
  o Missing support for DVB-C / DVB-S. 
  o Transcode TV Recordings to WMD, XVID or MPG (we are stuck with the proprietary JR Container)
  o Grab DVB-EPG & MHW-EPG directly for DVB
• MYVIDEO / MYDVD:   I know that work has progressed recently but there is still a way to go to integrate the automatic collection and presentation of Video Art / Info in JR
• MYRADIO:  Support for FM, DVB radio
• PLUGINS:  There are 100’s of plug ins but the main one I notice is that they have integrated the Arcsoft TMT MC Plug-in for Blu-Ray playback into MP.
• OTHER:  MC is still a limited MediaServer as it does not offer transcoding for streaming of video files.

You hit the spot. This is my top requests as well. Interface polishing and better Video/series viewing, more DVB support and better media server handling of Video. The plugin and radio parts I don't use that much though :)
If the plan of an better multi client to server relasionship is improved, the next thing would be to support better transcoding of video imo.
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taklamakan

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Re: I'm bored....whats next?
« Reply #18 on: July 06, 2009, 10:08:41 pm »

Great thread. Tidying up some UI inconsistencies and writing proper documentation are needed.

An UI example: Panes, Categories, View Scheme Item.

Right-click on a pane and you'll see options to add a "pane to" the left or right.
Go into Customize View and there is a box to Show "Categories".
Click the Add button and suddenly you're creating a "View Scheme Item".
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