My strong request is that there should be an option for thumbnail preview mode in the listing of files.
:idea: Tracker should also support Cut,Copy,Paste options in the toolbar
Absolutely! Thumbnails are great to browse the picture folders.
Yes, thumbnails are great. If Tracker is to support them, the only logical way to store the thumbnail is in the image file’s icon attribute. This means that all you have to add to Tracker is a framework for generating the thumbs. I say framework because adding new thumbnail-creators for filetypes should be possible and simple.
This is a task for the OpenTracker project however.
There is already thumbnail support in the Tracker.NewFS (3.0 beta 5 and up). It is done by translators. This way it is very compact (code-size-wise) and there is no need to write additional thumbnail-plugins.
The only problem here is stability. A buggy translator takes the application that uses it down. For normal application’s this isn’t that much of a problem. But for such a core application like the Tracker it may be an issue for the end user. I may “out-source” the thumbnail creaton in the Tracker.NewFS to make sure that this doesn’t happen (some gifs on my system crash the GIF-Translator and the Tracker with it).
If there is interest in my work, I would be glad to commit it to the OpenTracker project.
BTW: If SVG-Support is an issue for the future, this can be integrated easily into the “framework” of the Tracker.NewFS through the libbsvg (svg.mlotz.ch). So if it would be integrated into OpenTracker, this issue would be solved, too.
I’m glad to hear that. Using translators to support all the image formats is of course the right way to do it, but I have one question: What about file types that are not images? Some file managers for X11, like ROX-Filer (rox.sf.net), can make thumbnails of movies and PDFs (almost) as easily as for image files. If the thumbnail creation was out-sourced, maybe it could be possible to add new helper programs? One program utilizes the image translators, while new helpers can be created for other file types. I guess this solution will complicate things a great deal, but please consider supporting files that are not images.
Cheers,
-bogo
bogomipz wrote:
but I have one question: What about file types that are not images? Some file managers for X11, like ROX-Filer (rox.sf.net), can make thumbnails of movies and PDFs (almost) as easily as for image files. ...Cheers,
-bogo
I think generic icons would be fine for non-image files. If you thumbnail a movie, you usually end up using the first frame and that is generally black or an fbi warning.
I could live without non-image support for thumbnails, really. In fact most likely I’d turn them off. Especially previewing sounds in KDE is a nightmare for usability, which was default back then. Although I guess they’ve come to their senses with the latest release and it was not default.
Suppafly wrote:
That's why you don't use the first frame. Here are two images from the screenshot section of rox.sf.net showing video thumbnails:
I think generic icons would be fine for non-image files. If you thumbnail a movie, you usually end up using the first frame and that is generally black or an fbi warning.
The question is, is it really worth the trouble? How much easier is it to identify a movie or PDF by random cross-section thumbnail than it is to just find it by name?
If anything, you’d want to use custom icons for each movie, but even then, you’re adding an extra layer of association that you don’t really need to learn.
What you should really do is grab a frame once per couple of second, and run it as a really quick fast-forward version of the movie file 
I am being non-serious by the way - it’s vital for me that videos are identifiable as different from images, so if there is a frame grab, there definately needs to be the icon overlayed in a corner or something.
Look at this screenshot again. The way it’s done with the VideoThumbnail helper program for ROX, a frame is taken some length into the movie (actually it’s 5% of the way in, but not more than 60 seconds) and a film strip effect is added. I think this helps recognizing the different movie files and it looks kind of impressing.
For other file types I can agree that it could be less useful. A thumbnail of a PDF for instance must be extremely big if you want to really see what it’s about. How about supporting image and video translators, and have an option to turn one or both kinds off?
I think video and audio are essential for a media OS.
or BeOS and Haiku are not media OS.
The first frame method is workable I think.
Irfan view can thumbnail several Gb of video quite fast in Win2k…
…do we want a old heavy desktop/server OS to beat us on Media ? 
Tenzin
Never use IrfanView, but the built-in WinXP thumbnail viewer will display a frame from hundreds of movies in a split second - storing those images in a database for the next time you open the folder.
If you have another folder in the directory of thumbnails, it even displays mini-thumbsnails in the icon of that folder.
As was pointed out, a product that markets itself as a media OS cannot afford to be outdone by a heavyweight workstation OS on managing media files.
BeOS is not great at media, it was more a failed marketing ploy.
I think picking a random frame grab from a movie file is hit and miss whether it will actually help in identifying the file or not. Might be worthwhile though.
I see nothing wrong with taking the first frame.
Most movies on a HD are small snippets, not feature length Disney productions, and most snippets do not have an FBI warning.
A random frame is a hit & miss, and risks being useless; especially if several files are cuttings from the same feature.
If BeOS wasn’t good for media, what was it good for? 
BeOS was/is great as a Desktop OS - simple, fast, responsive. It was never that special when it came to media really, partly because the media kit was always buggy (of course Haiku’s won’t be :)), but also because media generally needs quite a lot of processing power, whereas BeOS splits the CPU power a bit more, in order to make the rest of the system seem more responsive. On my old system videos always played more smoothly in Windows than in Be. Open 4 at once and it’s slightly different, but then how often do most people do that?
I wouldn’t go that far in criticising BeOS and the MediaKit. I’m working on a native VideoPlayer (using BeOS codecs), and I’ve never seen anything as responsive yet on other platforms (simple things like seek, resize, zoom etc). BeOS still feels extremely fast compared to the others.
Stay tuned…
tb100 wrote:
BeOS is not great at media, it was more a failed marketing ploy.I think picking a random frame grab from a movie file is hit and miss whether it will actually help in identifying the file or not. Might be worthwhile though.
This isn’t true. Back when R5 was just released it was great for the media that were available then! It’s all a bit outdated now, lack of new codecs and such. But the OS itself is very responsive and lightweight, great for media. Also audio and video operations are very low latency. Try on any Windows machine to get almost zero latency with a SB Live! And not use ASIO drivers as a workaround.
tb100 wrote:
BeOS was/is great as a Desktop OS - simple, fast, responsive. It was never that special when it came to media really, partly because the media kit was always buggy (of course Haiku's won't be :)), but also because media generally needs quite a lot of processing power, whereas BeOS splits the CPU power a bit more, in order to make the rest of the system seem more responsive. On my old system videos always played more smoothly in Windows than in Be. Open 4 at once and it's slightly different, but then how often do most people do that?
On my P3 500 Mhz laptop divx plays smooth in Beos R5 using VLC. When I boot win2k ont the same laptop video doesn’t play well using MS Mediaplayer or VLC.
How hard would it be to integrate the code (BDS/MIT License) of the Album application (photo icon viewer) written by Matjaz Kovac into Tracker?
http://haikuware.com/directory/view-details/multimedia/graphics/image-viewers/album
It’s really nice to see thumbs of image files:
- it has a slider to adjust the thumbnail size
- it has an auto columns feature so that if you resize the window the thumbs are moved down (so you only have to scroll in one direction to get to the thumbs that are off-screen.
- you can drag the thumbs out of album (e.g. to drop into an email as attachment).
Just my 2 cents.
Thanks,
hey68you