[Kdenlive-devel] UI

[Jason Wood]

Ok, let's try again now....

My current plan for how a project holds clips is as follows.

A clip can consist of simply a video file, or an audio file. It can also 
consist of both, which would be what you would expect with video which 
contains audio. The user can of course specify if they only want the audio or 
video of a clip for a particular purpose.

But it can also potentially consist of many hundreds of clips, with 
transitions between them, spread over multiple tracks, etc. The user should 
be able to use this type of clip and a clip containing a single video file 
without distinguishing between them.

Why is this necessary? Consider that you are editing a show together. You have 
a nice, tightly edited title sequence, consisting of lots of short clips, and 
then the rest of the show is much more loosely edited, in clips that are more 
like 30 seconds in length. Let's say that we are editing 6 episodes, and each 
needs different credits in the title sequence, and for arguments sake, let's 
say that our equipment is capable of rendering everything that we do in 
realtime.

Since we need to modify the title sequence for each show, we keep it around as 
a project rather than rendering it down to a seperate sequence. However, if 
we can only use clips which contain one video/audio file then we have one of 
two situations :

1. We need to modify the title sequence in it's own project, and then render 
it down to a single clip. This is ok, except for two points. Firstly, we have 
suddenly started using multiple projects on a single edit, and secondly, we 
have to make sure that the render is of maximum quality so that the final 
output is also of maximum quality.

or

2. We import the project onto our timeline, and have to be careful not to 
accidentally move around any of the hundreds of small clips whilst we are 
moving other things. Moreso, if we decide to move the title sequence from the 
beginning (say, to add a 10 second clock countdown before it), then we need 
to be very careful to move _all_ of the clips.

By having clips as containers which can potentially hold an entire project, we 
could simply import the entire title sequence project into our project, and 
handle it as a single clip. If we need to then modify the title sequence, we 
would "expand" the clip somehow (I have yet to determine the best way to do 
this), which would allow the contents of the clip to be edited. Once that was 
finished, the clip could be "closed" again. 

Why is this particularly different from editing the title sequence as a 
seperate project and rendering down to a single clip? Partly because it means 
that the user doesn't have to change focus - they are working on the main 
project, they merely double click the title sequence (or some other well 
defined command to "expand" it), modify it, and then go back to working on 
the original project. Partly because the title sequence "clip" can be 
modified seperately for each show, and will be stored in the relevant project 
file. Finally, the user does not need to remember project names on the disk, 
which quite often end up swamped in the .avi, .wav, etc. clips.

What do you think?