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[Matt]

In MC 10, we added 'Media Modes' to more cleanly separate audio, images, and video.

Right now, the switch changes the view schemes and what files show in Media Library.

We're also considering:

• media-specific menu choices
• media-specific Action Window choices
• more media-specific player bar on the top of the program
• separate Playing Now's when audio and images play at the same time

The hitch is that tuning the program to be more media type specific makes it hard to have an "All" mode that doesn't fight with this new paradigm.

You can already see this with view scheme.  People are having to configure things twice.  Solutions to show certain things in 'All' and other things only in 'Audio' and some things in both create confusion. (for us and users)

Personally, I'm either looking for images / video or I'm looking for music.  Never both at the same time.  So 'All' isn't too helpful to me.

How about you?  Would you miss it if we took out the 'All' mode?  Is this new paradigm better than MC 9.1? (which only used 'All' mode)

Thanks for any feedback.

[NoCodeUK]

I was just thinking about this in regards to HS using the Media Modes views.  If the All option was removed I think there would need to be some way of deciding whether a VS was just for Hairstyle, just for MEGA ME or for both...example:  People/Places/Events works great as a view scheme in MEGA me because you have the columns for each in the panes...it is lousy in Hairstyle...therefore I have set up separate People, Places and Events VS for HS...again they are lousy in MEGA ME...Both use different paradigms for viewing and therefore need different VS...

If this could be implemented I would have o qualms with the All mode being removed especially if it meant the interface could be customised for each media...that is an exciting prospect...my only worry would be the possibility of losing all the VS I have set up currently...Could there be some way to convert these across to the new paradigm inatct??

Thanks again for throwing this open to the floor

Adam

[sraymond]

Matt,

Thanks for explaining the background behind these changes - it certianly helps to put things in perspective.

I've been keeping things in "All" mode because I find it easier to just pick the tree branch that I'm looking for rather than clicking on an icon each time.  Maybe if the icons were closer to the library tree (instead of on the far right), I might not be bothered so much.

I really can't imagine wanting to use more than one media at a time, either - except for image slideshows with audio.

Concerning existing functionality, I haven't realized any benefit with the different media modes.  But based on the changes you've mentioned, I think it would be a great improvement over 9.1.

Scott

[gpvillamil]

I frequently build slideshows that combine multiple media - as long as there is still an easy way to do it, getting rid of the "All" mode might work. Perhaps adding a "mixed media" mode?

How about making the media mode buttons into toggles? You could then choose to display each media type on its own, or any combination.

[Doof]

I don't understand what the problem is.

The way I thought Media Mode should work is this:

• All view schemes show up in the All Media Mode.
• Any view scheme that doesn't specify a media type in its definition shows up in the All Media Mode, and each seperate Media Mode.
• If a view scheme specifies a media type (ie. Media Type : Audio), then it shows up only in the Media Mode(s) that fit that definition (and All of course).

Is there some reason these 3 rules wouldn't work? Why does this require you to set up any view scheme twice? Can somebody give a concrete example where, following the 3 rules I laid out above, you'd have to set up a view scheme twice?
 
Personally, I'd really hate to have to keep switching modes everytime I decided to look for something different.

[KingSparta]

Personally, I'm either looking for images / video or I'm looking for music.  Never both at the same time.  So 'All' isn't too helpful to me.

I Agree

[crowfan]

As for me, I would have no problem with the removal of the "All" option, because I would never use two at once. But if you do remove it, please give us an option for startup, i.e., which mode to start in. Personally I would always want it to start in Audio.

Thanks

crow

[rocketsauce]

Right now, the switch changes the view schemes and what files show in Media Library.

In the tree there are already separate groups for audio, images and video. Doesn't the view already switch to the appropriate "mode" depending on which group (or view scheme under a group) is selected? I guess I'm not really clear on why the new media modes are necessary or better or more desirable than the way MC works now. I think the way that you can specify in the view scheme properties which media to show is pretty cool and flexible. It lets people configure their view schemes to show any combination of media they choose.

Rob

[Sauzee]

What about offline CD's? These are currently only covered by the All view scheme.

It would be useful to have a new view scheme for all offline CD's.  HOWEVER, there needs to be a way to view all music or videos .... [ie. on HDD and CD] in 1 view scheme.

Too make myself clearer..

I have tons of music in many different formats on my PC, on audio CD and on data CD's.  MC currently allows me to search my entire database. I would hate to lose that ability.

NB  To do this at the moment I set up a view scheme which I called All which is the Main database plus CD database.

[Sam]

I don't understand what the problem is.

The way I thought Media Mode should work is this:

• All view schemes show up in the All Media Mode.
• Any view scheme that doesn't specify a media type in its definition shows up in the All Media Mode, and each seperate Media Mode.
• If a view scheme specifies a media type (ie. Media Type : Audio), then it shows up only in the Media Mode(s) that fit that definition (and All of course).

Is there some reason these 3 rules wouldn't work? Why does this require you to set up any view scheme twice? Can somebody give a concrete example where, following the 3 rules I laid out above, you'd have to set up a view scheme twice?
 
Personally, I'd really hate to have to keep switching modes everytime I decided to look for something different.

I think Matt is saying that by separating the modes, they'll have the opportunity to customize the user interface to each mode.  And keeping an "All" mode makes that customization more difficult.  An example might be if they have two very different player bars for audio and video.  Which do you show in All-mode?



As for me, I wouldn't miss the All mode.  But I'd like to be able to have music playing at any time - for example, when I'm organizing photos in the Image mode.


Also, if the mode system stays, you should make it obvious which mode you're in and how you can switch to another mode.  Tabs can do this well.   ;)

[wickerbill]

I wouldn't really miss an all mode, but one thing that really annoys me is how it always go back to "all" mode every time I start MC even if it was in music when I previously shut it down.  I use MC almost exclusively for music and having to reconfigure it every time I start it is a pain and pretty unintuitive.

[Doof]

I think Matt is saying that by separating the modes, they'll have the opportunity to customize the user interface to each mode.  And keeping an "All" mode makes that customization more difficult.  An example might be if they have two very different player bars for audio and video.  Which do you show in All-mode?

Well, he specifically mentioned view schemes, so my question still remains.

And I don't really understand what kind of player bar would be different between the three modes.

I for one, have been mixing audio and video in my and searches quite a bit lately. For instance, I like to collect music videos to go along with some of my albums. By removing the All mode, I effectively lose any way of mixing and matching my searches and playlists this way.

You may as well just release three seperate applications that handle each media type seperately. Or maintaining three seperate libraries. That's effectively what you'd be doing by removing the All mode. Working with audio and video all from the same library/interface was what drew me to MJ in the first place.
 
Quite honestly, I can understand wanting the Media Modes to simplify the interface based on the media type you're after. But I can't understand wanting to remove any way of interacting with all of those types at once.

[Marko]

Currently, if I pull an album out of an "all media" list, I get the audio files + any associated coverart, if I pull an artist, I get audio, images and video associated with that artist.

I like this and I use it a fair bit.

I have built some nice playlists which involve both audio and images.

I like this functionality also.

Get rid of "all" if you must, but please don't remove the functionality of it. How about something akin to the panes where we can have multiple modes selected? If you're thinking about different interfaces for different modes, then why not come up with one for multiple mode selections too?

-marko.

[_K_C_]

I for one, have been mixing audio and video in my and searches quite a bit lately. For instance, I like to collect music videos to go along with some of my albums. By removing the All mode, I effectively lose any way of mixing and matching my searches and playlists this way.

I'm with Doof.  This is very important to me.  I've started buying music video DVDs and when hard drive space gets a bit cheaper I intend to rip individual video tracks.

I'll then want to be able to use MC for playlists that combine audio and video.

Locking me into an audio-only or video-only view would go completely counter to what I want to do.

[nila]

I'm with Doof too.

I have alot of music video's as well and the number is growing - eventually (thinking long term here), I'd rather have all my music as video's rather than songs so I'd want these video's mixed with my music. Why have just the music when I can have the video playing at the same time.

I agree that music and images probably dont mix but then again - they dont mix in the way that I use it - they might in the way other people use it.

All should just have a combination of ALL the media modes. All tools that are added to each media mode should be combined in 'ALL MEDIA'. Possibly just have three right click sub menu's with the tools from each mode in that menu:   Audio/Video/Images - with each mode's tools inside the sub menu. Same idea could be done for the AW.


I also agree with the comments that hairstyle view schemes dont mix well with mega-me schemes any more since mega-me became pane based rather than tree based meaning we can ignore any of the previous columns whereas in hairstyle we cant.

I think hairstyle needs its own defineable view schemes.

View schemes just need five check boxes in them to allow us to specify what mode they belong in: All, Video, Image, Music, hairstyle.


OR

Make 'all' like an admin mode to control ALL the views including hairstyle.
When we switch to it we see 4 main view scheme groups:  Hairstyle, Audio, Video, Image - and we can control them all from this one view.
Changing any view schemes inside this parent group changes them inside that mode - but if we have any new root view schemes in all mode that aren't inside the 4 groups then they just stay in the 'all' mode.

[Jaguu]

I would welcome Matt's new ideas of media specific interfaces, which should also include the small kids TV, Web Radio, CD+DVD Library, but at the same time I would not want to miss some of the things that allow me to combine different media types.

Some examples about mixing media have been mentioned, I have one that might be illustrating the strength of the existing system:

I have a View Scheme named "Countries". When I select ie. "France" I get everything with the tag country="France", whether this is music, images, people, video etc.  I would not want to miss this functionality.

As already mentioned some of the default view schemes in Audio, Images, Video look terrible in Hairstyle. When I select Images in HS I have an endless list of years to choose from - not very practical. When creating a new view scheme I should be able to specify for which view mode I want to have it (Mega-Me, Hairstyle or both). I have quite a number of View Schemes that are pure working schemes to make tagging more efficient, others are more specific for presentation. The first ones are not needed in Hairstyle.

The current media mode icons are not far away from a tabbed interface. If you are going to extend media modes to a tabbed interface, then there is probably no more need for a Media Library tree as everything could be handled inside a media specific tab including tabs for playlists etc.

I also would like an easy way to save existing view schemes easily to some kind of xml or cvs file, so that this view schemes could be easily recreated if you change plenty of stuff. The same with column views. Don't know how many times I fixed my column views setup so far, but quite many!

As I already mentioned a few times in the past, if you create media specific view schemes, it would be very helpful to be able to select an associated "Column View" set with any view scheme. Also a "DB fields shown" set for file properties associated with a view scheme would be a real hit.

Summarizing, when you create a new view scheme, you would have to make the following extra decisions:
1) View mode to display the scheme (HS, Mega-Me or both)
2) Database fields to display in File properties (probably the need for categories would then become obsolete) for this scheme
3) Fields and order to display in column view. Only those defined in 2) would be available for selection
4) Defining sorting order for 3)
5) Maybe preset "Rename Files from Properties" and "Rename Properties from filename" rules for this view scheme
6) Maybe a default data directory for this view scheme

[Vorgod]

Personally, I'm either looking for images / video or I'm looking for music.  Never both at the same time.  So 'All' isn't too helpful to me.

I Agree

....so do I - a fair price for a better interface

[fex]

Personally, I'm either looking for images / video or I'm looking for music.  Never both at the same time.  So 'All' isn't too helpful to me.

I Agree

....so do I - a fair price for a better interface

Count me in.

[phelt]

I support the idea of media specific interface changes in the abstract, but I wonder if the removal of 'all media' might not complicate multimedia processes like slideshow creation, etc. Do you wind up painting yourself into a corner, having to make wizards or specific UI's for any future multimedia features?

[doGman76]

I wouldn't miss the "All" category, because now it is a completly separate categoriy rather then a combination of the Audio/Video/Images/TV/... modes. (I am new to MC, so maybe I didn't get it right...?).
You could make buttons to turn on/off all items of a specific category without changing the view scheme of those. These buttons should be near to the tree. When "Ctrl" Key is pressed you can turn multiple categories on. Important will be to automaticly save of the last view.

Here a possible solution:
Just Audio

Just Images

Audio + Images

[crowfan]

As an aside, I really like the positioning of the Media Mode buttons in doGman76's screenshots. IMO, that's where the buttons should be. (BTW, I didn't install 10.0.17, I'm still using 10.0.16, so if those screenshots come from 17 and this change is already made, I apologize, although I read through the changes and didn't see it mentioned...)

crow

[doGman76]

...if those screenshots come from 17...

Nope, just Photoshop...  

[nila]

Here's a pic of what I was thinking.

The view scheme is for: All Media.

http://www.hostrus.co.uk/tmp/AllMedia.jpg

• Black is what shows in Audio Mode (along with normal tree nodes)
• Red is Images
• Purple is Video
• Green is Hairstyle

Anything not in one of the colours appears only in all media mode. Items could then be dragged and dropped between modes easily and it gives a good global administration view.

Any view schemes created in ANY mode will automatically appear in the appropriate folder when going back to All Media.
When a view scheme is created in 'All Media' mode a dialog appears (with a 'never show this again' checkbox) telling the user that views created inside one of the four groups appear in that mode, anything else only shows in 'all media' mode.


Hairstyle is also put as a group level and would be TOTALLY configurable.
The users could decide what nodes appear where, how they were nested, what level they appeared at etc. Unwanted nodes (eg. TV Tuner) could be deleted from this etc.



What'd you think? For my way of thinking at least this would be extremely easy to use and very powerful but everyone thinks in different ways.

[NoCodeUK]

This is how things now work in the new version to a degree (the one that was pulled last night due to the dodgy file that I had a back up of )

Basically the All Mode now shows all the views together.  Any view schemes under the media appear when you switch to that mode.

At the moment HS is not a separate entry and it does not currently read the existing media modes either meaning that in yesterdays build there is no way to configure it at all but I would say this is defnitely the way to go.  VS from HS need to be separate due to its 2D nature whereas the VS using panes are more 3D if you like...

Adam

[nila]

Ah cool,
I was hoping to play with that build but by the time I got in to the office to download it it'd been pulled.
I'm hoping they release a version early today so I can play with it a bit today.

Hairstyle as a tree node makes a LOT of sense so we can configure it in terms of child nodes too - myHTPC only gives one level and in my opinion it's a big limitation.

Cant wait to play with this build when it's out again!

[NoCodeUK]

You might be onto something there.  Maybe "child nodes" could be the key to making some of the existing VS work in HS.  If it is a multi pane view maybe in HS it could split into separate views which are child nodes of the main scheme eg a People/Places/Events VS would appear in HS as People/Places/Events but when you select it it opens to a new screen with People, Places and Events as separate nodes...

Adam

[nila]

lol - I just meant for configuring it - nothing more elaborate than that - still browsing in the same way.

[glynor]

I've got to say ... I'm with Doof.  One of the main things that attracted me to MC was it's ability to mix different media types.  I do _not_ think that any advantage that could come from media-specific customization would outweigh this benefit.  One small example of how I use this functionality is in a party-type situation.  Often, I will set up a playlist of music (for when many people are there), with a movie, tv show, or video for later in the night.  I also will set up music as an "intermission" between pieces of a movie in a playlist.  I actually find that I am mixing and matching quite a bit now ... I am definately moving towards, rather than away, from it.

I suppose that I can appreciate that some people will not use the video or image capabilities of MC and would want them hidden, and I can see some small benefits to customizing the interface (particularly for images) ... but I think the "mode" scheme is the wrong way to go.

First of all, I think that the MC's interface needs to go in the opposite direction.  I think that the interface should be more consistant, not less.  You've got a _wonderful_ application for power users, but often it can be a bit overwhelming to novices.  Almost all of us, I am sure, have a girlfriend, wife, husband, mother, grandfather, roomate, etc who doesn't know MC as well as we do.  I think the "modes" (unless done amazingly well) will just serve to confuse them more than they already are ...

I guess I don't see why they "player" portion of the app can't tell what type of media it is playing and adjust to it at play time (if you even want to go that route).  If it can't, and if you insist on customizing the player to the type of media, I vote for the other suggestion that the "mode" be seamless based on what node in the tree-view you have selected.  This is far from perfect, but I suppose I think "All Media Mode" is perfect, so why mess with it ...  

On the other hand, when in Hairstyle mode, I don't find the current "mode" setup irritating at all.  That's because the purpose of the hairstyle display is completely different from the regular library view, IMHO.  When viewing the library on a low-res TV, I prefer to be able to narrow my choices as much as possible -- so that I am never presented with screenful-upon-screenful of choices to scroll through.

The two "skin-types" are for different purposes, and need to have different organizational structures.  If this means I need to re-define my view schemes for Hairstyle mode, that is a small price to pay ...

[eruji]

Hairstyle as a tree node makes a LOT of sense so we can configure it in terms of child nodes too

i would like to second Nila's idea of having a Hairstyle Tree Node. Right now i only use hairstyle for audio, so when run hairstyle, the first screen i get is just the menu item AUDIO then i press enter and now i have my views. If HS was its own Node then i could make it jump directly to a View Scheme.


Also it would be nice to remove some of the buttons on the Hairstyle playing now mode, VOl up/down, track next,prev. i have all of these tied to my remote and dont need the visual, (all of the buttons dont fit on my screen as is)

[DJMUK]

Yes, a separate HS node on the tree would certainly simplify things - and make it more obvious for new users.

If that is unworkable for other reasons how about using a prefix to the VS name i.e. so that any VS intended only for HS mode starts with, say, *HS*.  When switching to HS its lists can then be made to list only those VS's but preferably with the *HS* stripped off to save dispay space.

[nila]

And just a thought - any VS's made for hairstyle mode (however you finally implement the chosing method) should automatically be populated (the trees) with no option for the panes so that users get a feel for what it's going to be like in HS mode.
Building it with panes is deceptive because hairstyle cant work that smoothly and powerfully

[JustinChase]

I personally like the idea of getting rid of 'All' media mode.  But, I can certainly see where some people would be kinda 'screwd' without it.  However, it seems like this idea was overlooked as a great solution to this problem...

How about making the media mode buttons into toggles? You could then choose to display each media type on its own, or any combination.

If you could just 'add' whatever media you want to design a View Scheme for, you would have the untimate in control, without the 'All' media mode.

Also, having a Hairstyle option on the tree would be helpful to design how that mode is displayed.

I would rather see the 'tree' go away, and be replaced by icons to display whatever you want to work with.  I originally thought having 'tabs' to go to whatever area you wanted would be good, but it excludes the option to look at more than one thing at a time.  The toggleable (is that a word) buttons solves this problem nicely, I think.

PS  It's coming along very well and quickly.  Great job folks!