From an earlier thread:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=39943.0I like number 7
1. Video encoding. Support for major codecs, including newer mp4 standards. 'Nuff said.
2. Video Editing. MC is perfect for organising my photos, videos and music. They are all in one place and are easily found and organised. What better program to offer a "Movie Maker" mode or similar? Basic slideshows, timelines, text overlays, transitions, effects and encoding to a variety of output formats would be fantastic. Ability to then burn projects to DVD would make MC a nero killer
3. Online Reference Database. Kingsparta's Datamaster has come close to what I'm thinking about here. We have YADB. We have coverart lookup and submission. At the moment this is only really for audio, and at that rate, only audio CDs. The lookup isn't all that useful if I'm dealing with files already on my hard drive. What we need is something like allmusic.com's database, which contains extended data such as genre, style, mood etc. aTagger when it was around was perhaps the most useful thing I've ever used in MC.
What we really need is the ability to submit more information than standard artist, album, track, name etc and to choose which information I wish to receive from other users. Any fields we can create in MC should be available to submit and share with other users. If User X has a custom field for his classical music, I would like to see this in the lookup dialogue and add it to my library if I want. What would be ideal is a universally agreed upon standard for submission (yeah contentious I know...) Standard fields for each type of media that we agree on. Like composer, performer, conductor etc etc for classical music ~ or Series, Network, Season, Episode, Name for TV shows.
4. Streamline expressions. Expression editor is great and the applications of expressions are almost limitless. What would be great is a more user friendly interface for entering them. I'm terrible with expression language ~ have managed to write a few that are over a page long in word and it was a logistical nightmare. Something along the line of excel's "point and click" way of doing it would be ideal. If i want an IF expression, I should be able to click on IF and select the fields and enter values I want. Ability to save expressions is a must, and integration into all aspects of the program, including fields, views, renaming, filters, searches, theatre view would be great. We're almost there. Some way to share our expressions with other users would be useful and quickly expand the functionality of the program. And hey you guys could kick back and let your users code the program for you! haha
5. Document handling. The organisational capacity of MC (at least as far as I can see) vastly exceeds that of windows... I've started using MC to organise documents and journal articles as well as eBooks. The ability to create fields and have multiple list entries is great for cross-referencing. More intimate support of documents could help MC to create useful and functional databases for research articles, personal files, projects etc. At a minimum, would we'd be looking at text searches, preview thumbnails of major formats (office, pdfs, html etc) and reading metadata (author, etc etc).
6. Dammit I lost my tags! I can't count the number of times I've had to move my library or parts thereof to a new machine and, oh no, the metadata from my avi, mov, flac, mp4, bmp, tiff, document files is gone. Crap. I know it's stored in the database, but it's not always possible to retain that data if you're a) moving your files somewhere else b) sharing your files with a friend. It's just not practical to migrate the database in pieces just to retain tag information. If MC can't write metadata to a file, we should have the option to save it to the folder as a separate .tag file or something. Just like saving a coverart file. Each folder, if we choose, could have it's own .tag file which contains all of the field entries for the files in the folder. When the folder is imported on another machine, this data could be recovered. I know, I'm excited too.
7. Hierarchical Database. This one's my favourite, but I don't know if that's necessarily the best way of describing it... at the moment we have fields, but these fields have no relationship to each other. Fields are only linked to the file. What would be ideal would be the ability for certain fields to be linked to each other within the database. For example, bio is generally a field that we use to describe the artist. Each time I get a file from artist X, I have to manually add the bio. Again and again. We should be able to make [Bio] a tag that is linked to [Artist]. A "tag for a tag" if that makes sense. That way every new file for "The Beatles" will have the same bio tag, and this will happen automatically. I could also do this with things like [Artist Nationality] or [Artist Members] etc etc. Think about it, this would be incredibly useful... and would save incredible amounts of time. The data could still be written to the files, it just wouldn't have to be done manually each time.
Examples: For photos, we have the field [People]. My name is Chris. Imagine the possibilities if I could make a field called [Birthday]. I could tag the entry "Chris" with a birthday of "1984". I could then use this in a custom field (using expressions) to calculate my age in any given photo. Each new person can be tagged with their appropriate birthday. And best of all, this would only have to be done once, as it's the [People] tag we're referencing, not the photo. I hope this makes some sense.
Another example: [Movie] (a custom field) could be linked to [Director], [Studio], [Cast] etc etc
This could be done in the options menu under create new field dialogue. We could have the option when creating or editing a field to "Make a child of...." and select the field we want it to be linked to. Done. Then in the Tag AW, under [Artist] for example, there could be a little dropdown with the child fields underneath. Make sense?
9. A direct line to Jim's Office. This is essential. MC should be able to dial up J River HQ so that customers can impart their useful ideas and random musings at any random hour.
So.... any hugely ambitious / unrealistic / impossible ideas out there?
Where do you guys see MC going in the next few years?
Other issues for discussion: Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, PS3/XBox Support, DVD ripping and encoding, Home Theatre Solutions, MC Portable, better photo acquisition and editing, theatre view improvements
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Topic: Idle Gossip of what you'd like in MC13 (Read 18283 times)