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[RemyJ]

DON'T  At least not yet.

I spent all weekend trying to think of clean ways to integrate the 3 media types and couldn't think of a way that would stand a chance of satisfying even a minority of users.  Maybe it's too early in the game to think of integration.

Here's my real suggestion...  Develop support for the 3 media types separately.   Give them each their own view and import settings,  maybe their own database,  etc.  Give them each their own top level tree entry with their own playing now, media library and playlists, etc., etc.   Make them each work really well in their own areas.  When they're stable and accepted, THEN create the value add stuff like synchronized slideshows, etc.

I think this approach would make the development process a little easier and be acceptable to the most users.  Better chances of creating a stallion instead of camel.  Less chance of compromising any one area because of the other.

What do you think?

[Mirko]

I think a tight integration between music and video is important. I dream about watching a video and listening to background music. This would be a value for me.

But on the other side, you have got some good points. I would like to see different "view defaults" for different file types (maybe a new property/option of views or playlists would be usefull here), e.g. one playlist defaults to view in thumbnail mode and one defaults to the listview.

Watching picture with background music is also very important for me. Think about presenting the least vacation pictures to the family. If it gets boring, sometimes it does, play some moody music together with the slideshow and this might help the situation. Ok, beer will, too ;-)

[Doof]

Personally, I have faith in JRiver to pull this off.

The latest build of MJ does a really good job of keeping Audio, Video, and Images all seperate. From there, it's a simple task of creating 3 seperate playlist groups for the different media types, and then everything is kept nice and clean.

The playback could use a little work, as it's a little rough right now. But I'm sure that will straighten out in time.

Personally, I don't like how it will take a bunch of images as a slideshow and then if I choose to play an album, it will use those images during music playback. That kind of goes against everything we've come to expect from MJ and Playing Now.

The way I would do it is this:

If Playing Now contains images and music, then use those images as a slideshow while playing music.

If Playing Now only contains images, then only show images.

If you Play something, then wipe Playing Now and play it, just like it used to. That includes wiping Playing Now of images.

If a Video file exists in Playing Now along with music and images, play the video and then pick up on the images where you left off.

Have some way of very easily showing only music and video, only images, or all media in Playing Now that is independent of Media Library.

[RemyJ]

You both have entirely reasonable requirements but it's my feeling that if the media types don't work well on their own first, they'll never work well together.

I'd love to see music synchronized with a slideshow but before that I'd like to be able to play one of my existing music playlists while I'm organizing my library of images without them interfering with each other.  I'd like to have separate base directories for music, images, and video.  I'd like to have music show lists in the right window and images show thumbnails.  I'd like to have different database fields and sort orders for music and images.  

What I don't want is a product where images and music are so tightly coupled that their ability to do their own thing is compromised.

[Doof]

I agree. And I don't see any reason why MJ9 couldn't do that. It's still in alpha, don't forget. I'm sure there will be many changes to come as it moves into beta and then final release.

One suggestion I would make is that a View Scheme Group (even a View Scheme itself) have an option to display as either list, album art, or thumbnail.