The feature requests thread
- Posted by bobef on April 15th, 2008 filed in rulesPlayer.next
- 4 Comments »
I am posting this so people could write comments with their feature request. I know there are some in the old forums, but this is more fun. New blog, new player, new feature requests. Everything in one place. We could probably start a little discussion (although right now I am just talking to myself). I am having some considerations. Of course everything will be skinable/changeable, but what about the core and the default layout? For example I am considering VLC player. Maybe I should use it instead of MPlayer? It seems better for embedding in thirdparty applications, but also seems slower. When I started the project I didn’t like VLC because of it subtitles with their jagged edges, but I see they have fixed that lately. Still it seems slower than MPlayer and I haven’t used it myself. Anyone with experience of both MPlayer and VLC? For example, when I play HD movies with MPlayer (and thus rulesPlayer) there is a lot of lag on my PC. The sound is left behind and the framerate is low. But WMP is fine… Is this the case with VLC too? What about rewinding? MPlayer (and thus rulesPlayer) rewinds movies almost without any lag. But VLC lags a little bit more. And after that there is something like a jump two frames back or something. I still prefer MPlayer, but I am trying to be open-minded.
I know everyone hates this feature when the controls push the movie up in fullscreen… But what about the playlist? Is it better to push the movie or to overlap it? What is the point of not pushing it if it hides half the movie anyway? …Similar things cross mind.
What about the default design? Should we try to be fancy and put glassy buttons everywhere or stick to rulesPlayer style and keep it simple? Me personally - I like the shiny vista buttons, but I don’t want to see them more than once a day. I prefer vimeo style controls. Really simple, you never get tired of them. That’s why my desktop background is black. You never need to change it, just because there is nothing to change :)
So share your opinion. Make your feature requests and suggestions. It is easy to implement features in the beginning and not so easy after everything is done. As I said, all comments are welcome.
April 16th, 2008 at 21:15
Glad to see you’re back!!! Ok so let’s see:
VLC player - used for a couple of years ago when there was no other alternative to Windows Media Player. Since then a couple of others comes up, others goes down like Rad Light, The DivX player, Light Alloy, Zoom Player couple of buggy codec packs with the famous Media Player Classic included and a lot of MPlayer GUI’s. Every time i tried one of those always i went back to VLC because for those times there was nothing better, but now it’s 2008 so i don’t see any reason why i should still use a huge, buggy player like VLC since the Wikipedia entry of VLC says very clear that:
”The standard GUI (of VLC) is based on wxWidgets for Windows and Linux, Cocoa for Mac OS X, and Be API on BeOS; but all give a similar standard interface. A Qt 4 interface is also in the works for Linux and Windows.
”VLC supports all codecs and all file formats supported by FFmpeg. This means that DVD Video and MPEG-4 playback as well as support for Ogg and Matroska (MKV) file formats work “out of the box”. However, this feature is not unique to VLC, as any player using the FFmpeg libraries, including MPlayer and xine-lib-based players, can play those formats without need for external codecs. VLC does, however, also support codecs that are not included in FFmpeg.”
The FFmpeg Wikipedia entry says:
The project(FFmpeg)was started by Fabrice Bellard (using the pseudonym “Gerard Lantau”), and is now maintained by Michael Niedermayer. Many FFmpeg developers are also part of the MPlayer project, and FFmpeg is hosted at the MPlayer project server.
So, since VLC is just another GUI for a bunch of codecs and libraries that are MPlayer & LINUX based why should i use it ? And no, i’m not a just rulesPlayer fanboy that hates VLC, i’m a Windows XP user since the begining and believe me i saw and tried maybe all the Media Players for Windows on Earth.
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Talking about the interface, personally i don’t see any reason to have a player with fancy and glassy buttons. For example let’s see who is who and who goes down on the ”market” right now:
==UP==
- Media Player Classic -> very old skool looking, very ”flexible” player
- VLC (again) -> up for the interface only. Very nice old skool interface.
- Zoom Player -> Nice player, lot of options and lot of skins.
==Down==
- BS.Player -> skinned GUI / very buggy/ also the free version comes with adware.
- DivX Player -> skinned GUI not too much to say about / very popular because is bundled on expensive notebooks like VAIO because of $$$.
- QuickTime Player -> same as divx.
- RealPlayer -> same as divx.
- GOM Player -> someone ”lost in transition” just Google for ”Gom Player and Digital Rights Management”
- KMPlayer - Google for ”GPL violation Media Palyer Classic” another GOM alike player too buggy and always a beta…
Finally to conclude - me likes to much rulesPlayer and his old skool GUI. SMPlayer is not bad also (with couple of tweaks)
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April 17th, 2008 at 9:26
Thanks for the nice review. That’s 2:0 for MPlayer vs. VLC :)
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May 4th, 2008 at 22:01
Hi,
Glad you’re back too !
I though the project was aborted so it’s fine to hear your plans for the next release !!!
My only wish will be to add this feature:
PLay entire folder like billy player does with audio files or gom player with video files (it automatically lists on the playlist the files contained in the folder you are playing) just test billy player to have a look at this feature !!!
Thank for your great work.
By the way your interface rocks, please do concentrate your means on something else more important….
Ciao !
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May 7th, 2008 at 0:02
I’ve posted my feature requests into the next blog post. I hope you take notice of it (media file type icons and update function).
Thx!
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