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[Doof]

I was jus thinking about how confusing it is to have music, video, and images all in the same Playing Now. There are all sorts of different actions that can lead to different results, and it's really hard to remember what action has what result. This really needs to be straightened out, IMO.

So here's my idea.

Get rid of the idea of "Play" in the context of Images. You don't "Play" an image, you "View" it.

Now, if you have an empty Playing Now, the right click on a music or video file gives you the "Play" option, and a right click on an image gives you the "View" option, or "View Slideshow" if there are multiple images selected.

If Playing Now already has images in it, then a right click on music gives you two options : "Play (with slideshow)" and "Play (no slideshow)". A right click on an image can give you "View" (or "View Slideshow") and "Add to Slideshow".

If Playing Now already has music in it, then a right click on music gives you the same options we already have, "Play" or "Add to Playing Now". A right click on images gives us "View (with music)" and "View (no music)".

As for what's displayed in Playing Now, I would ONLY show images if Playing Now ONLY had images in it. If Playing Now had even one music file in it, then Playing Now doesn't list images. The image list is moved to the right click Image List. Currently there are actions that can leave you with 3 different possibilites, one of which has Playing Now display a list of both music and images, that play in order just like that rather than overlap.

Also, Playing Now wouldn't wipe the list of images and stop Slideshow when it hit a video, but rather just suspend the Slideshow and resume it once the video was finished.

To me, this seems to be much more orderly than what we currently have. What do you all think?

[Matt]

Thanks Doof.  We know this could be better, but it's pretty tricky.

With your idea, what will right-click menus show if I have several media types selected?

[Doof]

Well... if it's music and images it could be "Play (with slideshow)".

If it's video and images... well, theoretically you can't have playback of just video and images, at the same time so maybe just "Play"? Although that does break my idea of using "View" for images, and "Play" for music and video. You could just have "View" for everything but music. That would still fit. Although it may be easier to just leave it as "Play" in this case (for reasons I'll get into below) But I guess the real question here is... what to list in Playing Now? Maybe then, and only then, Playing Now would allow images to be listed along with something else, and they just play in order?

For music, video and images, it could also be "Play (with slideshow)" as you could have Playing Now list the music and video files, and dump the images to the Slideshow display.

And obviously for just music and video, it would be just "Play".

So...

-Empty Playing Now-

Music    : Play
Video    : Play
Images : View (or "View as slideshow" if multiple)
Music & Video : Play
Music & Images : Play (with slideshow)
Images & Video : Play
Music, Images, & Video : Play (with slideshow)

And then the only difference would be that if there was already music or images in Playing Now, that a couple of the options would change to give you the option for slideshow or no slideshow.

It sounds confusing when you write it down, but I think in action, it will work a lot better.

[nila]

I agree and would like to see this taken one step further too.

If I'm in the 'playing now' screen and am playing a video, the chances are I'm not going to want to see a track info template, I'm going to want to see the video and am going to want tools like:

• fast forward (while watching visually like a video machine)
  
• zoom in/out (50%, 100%, 200%)
  
  if it's an imagine I'll want to be able to zoom into a drag defineable area etc.
  
  
  I'd also like to see the Properties toolbar adapt depending on what media type we click on so that if we click on audio it can have one setup with specific fields, if we click on images it'll have another one, video another etc.
  
  This seems a natural corelation to sticky views whereby we'll only want to see specific columns, we'll also want to only edit specific fields without being over whelmed by all the fields we have made for all the media types.

[Doof]

Yeah, that's kind of unrelated to the intent of this thread, but I agree. MC handles 3 broad media types now. It shouldn't be too hard to add a property to a data field that specifies what media type it belongs to (obviously this property would have to be 3 checkboxes) and then display only those fields that fit with a certain media type.

[Matt]

I'm getting terminology and functionality changes muttled in my head.

I see what you're saying about wording in the menus.  Most people double-click or hit the play button though, so I think functionality is more important. (not to say the terminology can't be improved)

To make sure I get it, how are you proposing we change the functionality?

Thanks a lot!

[Doof]

Ok, I'm actually finding that it works a little better if you JUST use the play button or double click. Except for when you have double click set to Add to Playing Now (to end). If you have images in Playing Now doing a slideshow (with no music) and then you double click a music playlist, then you end up with a Playing Now that has a bunch of images doing their thing, and then at the end is a list of songs to play. This behavior makes no sense to me. Why would you want Playing Now to show a bunch of images as a slideshow, and then once the images are done, start playing music with visualizations?

This sort of thing occurs whenever you do anything to Playing Now other than Replace what's already there. Whether it's to the end, as next to play, play now, etc. You end up with a broken slideshow, where images play in silence, and music plays with visuals.

My whole thing before is that the right click menu (which as you've probably realized, I use for just about everything) is where the confusion really comes in. It's much easier to create a situation like I described above using the right click menu.

[Doof]

While I'm on this... what's the difference between Add to Playing Now -> Replace, and Add to Playing Now -> Add (replace)?