Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[park]

I loved the way that you could use the "image" window in the action window to preview images in MC11.1

Currently, we have to "play" the image to be able to see it in the new "display" window down bottom.

Ideally I'd like to see an independant "Image preview" window pop up whenever you are in an image viewscheme, or an option in the current "Display window" to be able to "Image preview current selection".

This window is great when in tagging mode. Would be even better than MC11 if the said image preview window were detachable too.

[Alex B]

The old "Image" window is integrated in the Tag window. Click the small image and it will fill the Action Window.

Marko and I asked for a detachable and zoomable full resolution image display that would be completely separate from the playback engine and queue system in this thread (now locked):

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=34388.msg234737#msg234737

I suggested that the image display could be integrated in the Image Editor, which is already a kind of pop-up window. Then the Image Editor would act as a quick hi-res image display that could also edit and save changes.

At that time also the detachble display option was not available. The first MC12 beta builds didn't have a way to direct the display output to another monitor. After a discussion the new "Detach" option was introduced.

[park]

Wow, now I know about it I like it.

Should be a way to let people know about it though. It's a very useful feature. It's cool that it launches from that little icon, but couldnt it just open automatically? That would be one way.

I'm hoping it gets detachable status sometime like it's brother, but it's usable enough for now. Thanks for letting us know about it.

[RobOK]

Wow, now I know about it I like it.

I have just started with MC 12, but I don't agree with this approach.  Too much clicking.  I would like to see the image in the Display window and the Tags at the same time.

I'm not sure if I understand the workflow they expect for Tagging and Rating images:

Open an Image view,
Select a photo,
Move to Tag window and click photo to expand it
Decide rating
Click X to close image and get back to Tag Window
Select rating
Go back to main area and select next Image.

That does not seem natural to me.

I would like the Image to automatically show above the tag window.

[marko]

when captionator is finished, it could prove very useful indeed.

[Matt]

You can also use the thumbnail size slider to see bigger versions of the image.

Or double-click to see fullscreen, double-click to return.  It's quite fast.

[marko]

Matt, I hear you, but for me, it's still not ideal.

ideally, I would like to have access to a large image preview, be able to tag it, move on to the next image, tag it, etc. etc.
==============

So, I have my 'to be tagged' images listed, my choice panes on show and the tag window open...

I double click to see large, and again to go back to the list.
Now, the AW display window has stolen focus from the tag window, the display is now showing images instead of my chosen output, and if I'm in split views, I often find my image list view has also lost focus. I reset all that and tag the image.
Now for the next image... repeat all of the above.
I can see that might work for an image, or an image there, but when trying to tag hundreds of images, it gets old quite quickly.
I kind of figured that this was not up for discussion anymore, so I piled all my chips in Doof's corner.
Have you seen captionator? A view like that, coupled with the tag window would be nigh on perfect.

[RobOK]

Matt, I hear you, but for me, it's still not ideal.

ideally, I would like to have access to a large image preview, be able to tag it, move on to the next image, tag it, etc. etc.
==============

I agree completely. 

One option would be if the Image window could be pinned open and also be detached/always on top.  You need to be able to see the list/thumbnails, be able to quickly see one pic full or at least bigger size and have the tagging close at hand.   Right now you have an either or of seeing the larger image or the tags, not both.

Rob.

[RobOK]

You can also use the thumbnail size slider to see bigger versions of the image.

Or double-click to see fullscreen, double-click to return.  It's quite fast.

Thumbnail slider --  is there any reason that you cannot allow us to grow the picture so that only 1 picture fills that area?  That would be good for me -- One big picture with still access to tagging in either the panes or the Tag window.

A different way (with similar result) is to have the Image double click not fill the whole screen, but just the list area (leaving panes on the top and the tag window and tree to the left).  If you shrink the panes, you would get a large image and still very workable tag situation.

I think this would work very well!!! 

Marko, what do you think?

[marko]

Hmmm, careful not to over-estimate how much affect what I think actually has, at the end of the day, (apart from being midnight), I'm just a customer like yourself.

In answer:
it's what PS Elements does, and essentially, that's what captionator does too.
my thoughts on the subject are there in my posts above, and also in the thread Alex linked to.

Matt and the rest of the team will be fully aware of what we're asking for, so for us now, it's a case of 'wait and see'

[JimH]

ideally, I would like to have access to a large image preview, be able to tag it, move on to the next image, tag it, etc. etc.

Isn't that what this is?  Cursor over and hit Enter and it gives you the next image.

[marko]

yes, I grant you, that might work.
but what of the music I like to listen to while I'm working?

There's this program here, I think it came bundled with windows, 'media player' or something like that. I think I read somewhere that it plays music. Do you think I should try that perhaps?

OK, so, obviously, I'm joking. But not about the audio. 99.99% of the time I'm working on images, there's also audio playing. I've tried utilising the display window for image previewing whilst tagging, but have not been able to land on a smooth productive workflow.

I've not got my head in a vice here. I really have tried just about every angle I can think of to have MC playing my music while I set about creating an image library, basically from scratch. It's working well, I'm pleased with the results, but the fact remains, that despite all of that, one of my most used context menu items is 'send to > external > acdsee' for the large preview. I would love for that to change, but atm, I don't see how.

[Matt]

Use two zones -- one for music, one for images.

[marko]

Many years ago, I wondered if it was possible to use zones to stop system sounds from coming out the TV speakers when watching a film, and that failed miserably. I figured it was because my audio card was mince and never went there again.

Zones are probably the only thing I've not tried, so, if you're not yanking my chain, I'll have a look...


update:
I looked, and first impressions are good. very good. You took your time with little nugget didn't you :p

positives in the first few minutes:

big window for viewing.
mouse wheel zooms in/out
tag window available
next brings up the next image
customised player display window text using if(isequal([media type],image),,) finally comes into its own!
audio plays away uninterupted
ctrl+t switches zones smoothly.

negatives in the first few minutes:

the playingnow plugin latches onto the active zone so no audioscrobbler submissions etc. (but you can fix that now, right?)
I'll let you know if I come across any other cons. Any caveats you know about already?
===========================
Great tip. Thanks Matt 

(what do you reckon to the playingnow thing?)

[Alex B]

Use two zones -- one for music, one for images.

I just realized this too. You posted at the same time I was making this screenshot. "Two zones" works better than anything else so far.



Click to enlarge.

In this screenshot a music playlist is running in Zone 1. The detached display is showing a Zone 2 image. In this case both zones can even use the same sound card because zone 2 does not play audio.

[Doof]

Does this mean I'm off the hook?

[Alex B]

Would it be possible to add a "Play selected image automatically in this zone" function to the zone specific options?

Then it would be near perfect. I could configure an additional zone where only one click would be needed for displaying the selected image in full screen on my second monitor.

[marko]

Doof, not completely
the pressure's right off though.
playingnow is fundamental for me. right now, it's telling me what image file is currently playing while I'm listening to...

is listeng to: 'IMG_4015' by '(Unassigned)' from the album 'Chester Zoo' [Duration:  |  kbps jpg (2.9 MB) | rated ?/5 | played twice ~ last played 23:49 ago  (11/08/06)

which is not so good.

there's no denying it though, this is pretty good, don't you think? zoom in with the mouse wheel, click and hold to drag the zoomed image around....


(click for full size view)

this is going to be interesting....

[RobOK]

Hmmm, careful not to over-estimate how much affect what I think actually has, at the end of the day, (apart from being midnight), I'm just a customer like yourself.

LOL!  I know, I just like to get a little validation of my ideas!  hahaha!



I will try the two zone approach -- I have never used zones, so it will be new ground for me.

Thanks JRiver for entertaining these ideas at least.

Glad to be participating!

[park]

I shudder at the thought of having to switch zones just to preview images. Putting the images into playing now, detaching it, returning to the library, and using the play interface to scroll through images seems like a awful longwinded way to just be able to see your picture nice and big.

If you click on an image, you should be able to see it right there and then. You should be able to just scroll through the images with the cursor and see each one nice and big, and tag it on the spot without having to leave the viewscheme (or change zones).

It's so close already, it just needs to be finished off. Have the "image" window jump up when in image veiwschemes. make it detachable just in case people want a bigger preview and then everyone's happy. it's not like you have to detach it.

for the alpha testers to need to have it suggested to them to use zones, shows that it isnt the most intuitive way, and not something a new user might ever think of.

[Matt]

I shudder at the thought of having to switch zones just to preview images. Putting the images into playing now, detaching it, returning to the library, and using the play interface to scroll through images seems like a awful longwinded way to just be able to see your picture nice and big.

That's why you can double-click to go big and double-click to go back.  Enter works too.

I do see a bug with this that it's switching to "Display" from "Tag" in the action window when you do this (which we'll fix), but otherwise this seems like a good solution.

[park]

The default behaviour on my machine is not to go full screen when you click on an image. So I suppose that the current solution is good enough. Double click on a file to see it in the display window and then you only need to detach it once. It just means double clicking to see each image big, rather than being able to scroll through them and see them straight away.

I do like the "image" window though, and using it in combination with the above described way is quite powerful. (You can see images at bigger than thumbnail size without needing to click at all. Just by scrolling through the images. And then double click on them to see them in the detached display window at even bigger size, if you need to.)
My only concern is that people won't ever find it. I still think that it'd be great if it just launched right away when you enter an image viewscheme. But if not, then it'd be great if there were some really obvious way to show that clicking on the image in the tag window will launch it. Maybe have it flash. Or a message above it saying "See Image". Or some kind of border around the image showing that it is an element rather than just  a thumbnail.

To your credit, I'm loving being able to double click on images and movies and see them in the little display action window. Fantastic. I keep that as my default and just double click on it when i want to watch something full screen.

It'd be convenient if the display window actually had a "detach" icon though.

[Alex B]

I forgot to mention that I always configure MC to not "jump on play" so the main MC window stays where it is on play command.

This makes also possible to use MC for image deejaying during music playback when both zones have a separate detached display. Zone 1 plays music and has a detached display on the TV screen. Another smaller detached display is used in zone 2 for image selections and preview on the PC monitor (like in my screenshot). The selected image(s) can be send to the zone 1 display (TV out) by the "Send to > Play (Zone 1)" command.

[RobOK]

I have been trying this...  when I am tagging a lot of images (and listening to audio), and having to double click to get a good look at an image you are tagging and double click to get back to the tagging panels..... I have tried it and it gets really old quick.  Just so the "use case" is clear, I take 20 pictures that are similar and I want to look closely at the details to pick the "winner" of the group.  So I may look at a couple of finalists several times, having to double click twice to view and then double click to get back to the tagging panels is cumbersome.

How about this....  what if when you entered TAGGING MODE, the image would blow up like this:

(click for full size view)

And when you are not in tagging mode it works as it does right now?   If someone has expressly said they are trying to tag, then the above view would be ideal.


Thanks for considering it....

Rob.

[Alex B]

Rob,

What is wrong with this?



Click to enlarge.

Just configure MC to not jump away from the current view on play. The display will show (=play) each new image (or a bunch of selected images) with a single play command. You can resize and place the detached window to a comfortable place and also configure it to stay on top.

You can even easily use a "top: thumbnails / bottom: details" view with a separate floating display for image tagging. I usually prefer to tag files in "Excel style" in a details view.

[darichman]

OT - Marko, just wondering, what is your "Where is it?" view scheme (in the root of the tree)?

It has piqued my interest

[RobOK]

Maybe I am just somehow making it too hard on myself, I don't know.

My tagging panes are a bit wider than yours, but I attempted to go to that view:



(I did it without Zones.  But I think it works the same unless I missed something with the Zone approach)

But when I page down in the Display and look at another image, the tagging selection does not move.  I think that is at the crux of my issue now that I think about it.  I would like the selection in thumbnails and the Display to be synchronized.   I think this could be a different selection under Set Display (Visualizations, G-Force, Current Image)

So in my attached image, if I did some tagging, it would not tag the big image, it would tag the little image that is highlighted in the thumbnails.

[Alex B]

You can change the big image in the detached display simply by selecting the next thumbnail and playing it. A double-click will do if you use the default double-click behavior. Otherwise you may need to use right-click > play.

MC replaces the image playback queue contents (a single image in this case) with the new image everytime you start playback. The clicked thumbnail remains selected until you click the next thumbnail for playing it.

[park]

This is the way I do it at the moment:



You can see that I am playing one image, but can still preview other images without having to double click on them, using the image window.
All of this is perfect for me. As I said previously, my only concern is that people will never find the image window instinctively.

By the way, I think the reason you cant scroll through the images in playing now using page up/down (or the "next image" in the right click menu) is becuase it is broken at the moment. That's what I assumed anyway.

[marko]

if there's only one image being played, then there is no 'next' or 'previous' image.

[RobOK]

Marko (or others) --

Did you ever come to a good workflow for Previewing and inital rating or tagging of a large batch of images with music playing.

I really struggle with working MC into my Image Workflow.

So I have the pics off my camera, in the right directory.  MC has put them into date based Albums, which is okay -- this helps to identify what needs to be rated.

What I would like to quickly do is go through them FAST and rate them 1-5.  I just don't have a natural way of doing this and must be missing something.

[Alex B]

From the 12.0.226 thread:

Hello. I just updated to MC 12.0.226 and was able to moderate everything to where I had it before. Everything except the visualization in the action window. In previous versions, that could be different from the main visualization window in "playing now." Is there any way to have a different visualization from the main "playing now" visualization in 226? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

No, sorry.  A lot of users (me included) found it confusing to set a visualization and switch views only to see it change right back.

I had not noticed this change earlier. I disagree strongly. I have never cared much about the small Playing Now display in Action Window, but the possibility to use separate simultaneus displays with different zones was one of the great new features. Now you have removed that feature.

I wrote this earlier in this thread:

This makes also possible to use MC for image deejaying during music playback when both zones have a separate detached display. Zone 1 plays music and has a detached display on the TV screen. Another smaller detached display is used in zone 2 for image selections and preview on the PC monitor (like in my screenshot). The selected image(s) can be send to the zone 1 display (TV out) by the "Send to > Play (Zone 1)" command.

[Alex B]

Use two zones -- one for music, one for images.

Also this is not possible anymore. When the zone is changed to the music zone the image slideshow on the other zone disappears from the detached display.

EDIT

Actually, I am not sure how this works now. At first a detached display didn't keep the other zone's display when switching the zone and I couldn't open a second detached display for another zone, but after trying several things I have now two separate displays that show PN from different zones.

EDIT 2

I think I found it. If the Zone 2 display is detached first then MC allows displaying different content in the Zone 1 display and detaching it so that two detached displays can play different content. If the Zone 1 display is detached first then the displayed content follows the zone change.

[Alex B]

So the following is still possible, but the user cannot detech the Zone 1 display first and after that try to display something else in the other zones.

Also, as you can see, the main display in Zone 1 cannot show a track info visualization when other detached displays exist. MC shows a cover art display instead.




Only if also the Zone 1 display is detached the visualization seems to work:




Please make the Zone displays independent from each other and once a display is detached keep it in the same zone.

[Alex B]

A gentle bump.

I am surprised that no one has commented on this after my recent posts. Does anyone actually use detached displays with multiple zones?

Edit

If this wasn't already clear, the new screenshots are not mockups (except the red text) and the previous post should be taken as a bug report, not as a feature request.

[park]

I never liked the idea of playing music in one zone and tagging images in another. I understand that you need this for DJing, so I guess it's quite important to you.

I'm still holding out on a having a big screen preview of images without haivng to "Play" them. That image preview action window sure would be handy if it were detachable  Nudge, Nudge.

[Alex B]

I never liked the idea of playing music in one zone and tagging images in another. I understand that you need this for DJing, so I guess it's quite important to you.

I'm still holding out on a having a big screen preview of images without haivng to "Play" them. That image preview action window sure would be handy if it were detachable  Nudge, Nudge.

As already said some of us asked the same thing immediately when the MC12 beta cycle started. As I have used ACDsee and its excellent preview features long before MC had anything similar I agree that a nice quick way to preview images in a bigger size would be good.

However, effectively the detached display works quite well. You don't need to know that the images are "played". Just use your imagination and replace the word "play" with the word "preview". The important thing is that you change the "jump on play" option to "none". Then your current view stays where you are and the previewed image (or a slideshow of more than one image) appears in the detached window.

I am not sure if configuring MC to do this is more complex than configuring some other advanced program to do similar things. For example, I still can't use all possible features of ACDSee (though, probably I could if I had used it daily and discussed about it in a user forum like this during the last few years).

Typical DJing is one possible usage model of the detached windows & separate zones, but the possibilities are endless.

Here is an example:

You want to do some image tagging and organizing. You use the standard PC monitor for MC's main GUI. You have detached the display and use it for previewing the images in the same monitor.

During your image tagging session the rest of your family can watch a video in the second zone that has its own detached window. This detached display can run on a big screen TV or projector and audio output can go to a HT receiver.

Possibly you want to listen to some music at the same time. For this you can have a separate Playing Now list in the third zone and use headphones for the audio output (you need to have a second soundcard or you can split the channels of a 5.1 or 7.1 soundcard between the zones). A third detached display can display a Track Info visualization for this zone.