[Kdenlive-devel] GUI

[Jason Wood]

Hi,

I had a chance to go through the list of GUI stuff you (Rolf) posted, and I've 
now committed it to CVS  :

Couple of points before I go through Rolf's points one by one :

If you get poor performance whilst dragging the timeline cursor around, you 
are probably running kdenlive from a terminal without piave and are getting a 
*huge* number of error messages as soon as the pipe is full ;-) Try running 
kdenlive from the run Command box, or run piave.

You need to do a make install for the various menu changes to take effect.

> - on startup I get a one minute wide slider in the monitor window,
>   even if I have not yet inserted any clips to the timeline.
>   I would expect either an empty project, or no project at all.

OK, it should now start with a project that is a single frame long - I am 
avoiding a zero-length project for the moment, because the Fixed Ruler on the 
monitor can't handle the divide by zero yet ;-) Also, I haven't figured out 
what the ruler should look like if it is displaying nothing.

> - What is the difference between 'Close' and 'Quit'. I would expect
>   'Close' to close the current project, but it has the same effect as
>   'Quit'

Ask KDevelop :-) I really have very little idea, except that it is in the KDE 
UI guidelines.... I'll have to read up on it.

> - I find it not very intuitive, that the 'File' menu handles not
>   arbitrary files, but (as far as I understand it) is only ment for
>   project files

I've added it so that you can, but it doesn't feel quite right - you can only 
insert one clip at a time using it (it doesn't make sense to open multiple 
project files), and I think the file gets added to the "Recently opened 
files" list, which is a bug.

> - I would like to see 'Projects' and 'Files'
>   menues to be separat items in the main menu bar. Like in KDevelop:
>
>   File           Edit     Project     Settings
>   -Open                   -New
>   -Open recent            -Open
>   -                       -Open recent
>   -                       -Save
>   -                       -
>   -Quit                   -Close
>
>   or at least be separated by labeling:
>
>   File               Edit         Settings
>   -New Project
>   -Open Project
>   -Save Project
>   -Close Project
>   -Open File

This is not that essential at the moment - it is _very_ easy to fiddle around 
with the layout of the menus and toolbars in a KDE application - you don't 
even need to recompile! So we can try different layouts and see which works 
best.

>   Hmmm... while thinking about it.... who says thet the first entry
>   in thze main menu bar must be 'file'? Can't that just be named
>   'Project'? Then again.. maybe all that is not so important ;-)

The KDE ui guidelines says the first menu should be the file menu, unless you 
have a _very_ good reason otherwise :-)

> - "open recent" does not seem to work.

Noted, I am completely baffled as to why this is though. I need to look into 
it some more.

> - saved project files do not get an extension. Also the filter widget
>   does not show what kind of extension I should give to the file in
>   order to see it later in the open dialog.

Fixed (and the extension for the moment is ".kdenlive")

> - the label says  0:01:00:00 . What does the last :00 mean? I would either
>   expect .00 (if its frames) or .000  if its milliseconds. Best would be
>   to make this an option.

Ah, so that's what was wrong with it - I knew it didn't look right! It's fixed 
now. (It's meant to be frames)

> - The current position is not displayed anywhere.

It is now displayed on the status bar. I think it would be useful for the 
current mouse position to be displayed as well, but that is not yet 
implemented.

> - the tick marks on both sliders (monitor and timeline) could be much
>   more fine grained. Also, when I choose, e.g. '5 Seconds' in the
>   timeline I get major tickmarks every 10secs and minor tickmarks
>   every 2 secs. What was the '5 seconds' supposed to mean?

The various zoom ranges are essentially the time duration that should fit into 
a set number of pixels on the timeline (currently 100 pixels, I think). It is 
difficult to make the numbers displayed on the timeline relate to the value 
specified in the scale box because of the algorithm I use to (hopefully) make 
the ruler look uncluttered at any scale. I've tweaked the numbers a bit so 
that you will get a much higher granularity with the "small" ticks - let me 
know what you think.

> - I really like the slide to zoom in the timeline and that the zooming
>   is centered around the cursor, that works great!

Great :-)

> - the scenelist does not get send to piave, I only see empty
>   scenelists. Is this a bug ot just not yet implemented?

Erm, it was a bug. It is now fixed.

> - the size in the Filelist is alway 0

Fixed.

> - I could not find a single flaw in the undo function.
>   Even selection operations are undable, great!

Great :-) 

There might be a couple of problems with the newly added razor tool - 
sometimes it will appear as if it has resized the clip instead of chopping it 
in half - I know what is causing this, and it is most assuredly a bug :-).

> - In the timeline I would expect clips to be deleted when they are
>   selcted and I hit the >delete<-key. A popup context menu would be
>   great, too.  At present the only way I found to remove a clip from
>   the timeline is to drag&drop it to the filelist. Note, that I can
>   also drop it to the 'From'/'To'/'Current'/'Length' input lines. I
>   guess they should not accept alpha umeric input anyway ;-)

OK, I haven't added a delete button yet, but it should be along shortly, along 
with cut, copy and paste. Also, the context menu should, like all other menus 
in Kdenlive, be easy to customise.

I am not too worried about the From/To/Current/Length input boxes - they need 
to either be replaced with a custom widget anyway (one that can accept and 
edit time at frame accuracy), or they need to be removed. For the moment, 
they are just there for show :-)

>
> - Are the three buttons 'Add Files'/'Delete File'/'Clean Project'
>   really necessary? They seem pretty redundant. I really like the
>   right-click context menu. Why not add 'delete file' and 'clean
>   project' to the context menu and get rid of the buttons?

Done.

> - The monitor slider seems to by as wide as the whole project. We need
>   a possibility to trim in and out points of clips (other than
>   resizing in the timline). Either we change the behavior of the
>   minotor slider or we need a trim-modus ot trim-window. 
<snip>
> - How about to use the monitor window also to preview selected
>   clips/images in the file list? A double click and ...

This all needs discussion, I am a little unsure as to the best way to handle 
the monitor from this point on. The way I see it, there are two possibilities 

1. Have the monitor have two modes. In one mode, it displays the entire 
timeline for previewing purposes. IN the other mode, it only shows the 
currently selected clip, which can be trimmed and dragged to the timeline.

2. Have a separate monitor for each mode.

Which do people prefer? Are there any other options?

> - Why are there so many Video Tracks in the timeline even if I just
>   use one? Isn't one more than currently in use enough?

Just because ;-)

If you want to change it, take a look at the newDocument() method in 
KdenliveDoc - it is pretty self-explanatory as to how it is set up ;-)

Cheers,
Jason

-- 
Jason Wood
Homepage : www.uchian.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk