Re: [Libreoffice] Tools - Media Player

Hi Thomas, Michael, all!

Thanks for the great discussion ... let me add a few thoughts :-)

Am Sonntag, den 13.02.2011, 19:09 +0100 schrieb Thomas Arnhold:
> Christoph thanks for the discussion link and the specs!

You're welcome. I'd love to play a more proactive role at the moment,
but referring to older discussions is what I can do at the moment ;-)


> On 02/12/2011 10:01 PM, Michael Meeks wrote:
> > On Fri, 2011-02-11 at 23:08 +0100, Christoph Noack wrote:
> > > > what the heck do we do with "Tools - Media Player"? Do we need this
> > > > within an office suite? Is anyone using this?!
> >
> >     :-) My suspicion is that ~no-one is using it.
>
> I think the same. If I add an video to a presentation I know what file I
> want to add. And if I want a preview of a specific file this should be
> done by the filepicker.

Short: I share this view ... 

Long: But, some of the tracked usage seems to say "some (strange) uses,
maybe tries, maybe clicks on the wrong menu item, but at least some
uses" (see the end of the mail). Personally, I think we don't loose that
much by removing the entry from the menu. Instead, we gain a more clean
menu layout.

Thomas, I'm not aware of that many file pickers being able to preview
videos (given our platform support). Sometimes the Media Player might
indeed be handy, e.g. to preview videos that got random names (e.g. from
a camera). And, it seems that using the Media Player, previewing the
video files seems much faster than prior embedding to the document
(subjective, of course).

However, we might rely on the operating system in such cases ... any
further thoughts?


[... Use Case descriptions - thanks to Michael ...]

> >     So - I think b) is fairly bogus (or the gallery addition code needs
> > some real work), a) is a real use-case; it seems we throw up the media
> > player for preview sounds in the shipped gallery.

Oh, the gallery needs much love in any case. OpenClipart support - to
name only one ... :-)

[...]

> I tested to create a new gallery. There is some kind of lack of user
> experience: Open the gallery, then "New theme", tab "Files" and then you
> have to click "Find files" at first to scan a directory for media
> contents. When this is done all media files get added to the list below
> and you could click "Add" or "Add all" to add these files to the
> gallery. Paradoxically, if you forget to click "Find files" and directly
> go to "Add" this is also possible, but with a very limited list of
> supported file formats (only images). That's some kind of strange.
>
> I've added ogg and mpg files and some more formats into the gallery.
> Works fine. Only lack is the list of supported formats. I manually added
> a flv-file with "Insert -> Movie and Sound" (thats the player). But you
> have to choose "All files". Within the gallery there is no such option.
> With the consequence that I can't add flv files to it, despite the fact
> that the player plays it ;)

Wow, thanks for the detailed description. I only checked the former one
- same for me.

> With "Insert" you have two possible options to add media content to the
> document: "Insert -> Movie and Sound" or "Insert -> Object ->
> Video/Sound". I think the second is deprecated as it doesn't really
> work. The gallery does add sounds and videos like "Movie and Sound".
>
> >     So - IMHO the player-let is useful, but I'd be amazed if people really
> > used it in anger; it is rather lame. Removing it from the menus in
> > everything but impress might make some sense (?)
>
> Yeah for impress it is very useful. But why remove the possibility to
> add videos and other media to the files. I think in the background in
> it's the same, isn't it?!
>
> So the question is:
>
> - remove "Tools -> Media Player"
> - remove "Insert -> Objects -> Sound" and "Insert -> Objects -> Video"

Fine from my point-of-view (as Michael suggested, keep Media Player for
Impress?). But since those objects are supported in all applications,
please keep "View - Toolbars - Media Playback".

Cheers,
Christoph

=== Usage Data ===

Data (end of 2009) ... the use of the menu bar item for opening /
closing the media player (.uno:AVMediaPlayer MenuBarManager) 
      * Writer: 638 
      * Calc: 152 
      * Impress: 594 
      * Draw: 77 
      * All Applications: 2063

Of course, these are only relative values - so here is the comparison to
the Gallery item in the same menu - All Applications: 7919

Looks strange, doesn't it? Especially since Writer seems to outperform
Impress. (???)