DVDpedia V4.2, Coverflow, direction of DVDpedia

[FromOZ]

Hi Conor

Just upgraded to 4.2 - saw new version in MacUpdate RSS feed so loaded it up straight away!

Well done with CoverFlow view, it's quite snappy (well I am using a Mac Pro) and nice to use. One comment (and this is not by way of complaint but encouragement ) it would be nice if the coverflow view was 'bouncy' like in iTunes. What I mean is that when you spin through the movie list the image display has sort of effect of 'stopping dead' instead of slowing down and rolling to a stop like a wheel which is spun, which is effect in iTunes. The iTunes effect feels more 'alive' - if you can understand my thinking.

Also would be nice to see horizontal scroll bar at bottom of coverflow view to scroll and get idea of position of where you are in browsing the library.

With the coverflow view and the steady enhancements you have been doing on the database side when I do my "Ian Holm" test (remember that posting ) it works very nicely, don't need to use smart collections anywhere as much. In DVDpedia spotlight I just leave selection criteria on "All Fields" and type - "Ian Holm" - and immediately up come the related movies. If I do the actor (cast) and director (crew) test (type in name like 'Eastwood') also works fine.

How can I do AND / OR queries in the DVDpedia spotlight search bar? For example I have genres such as 'Drama/War' or 'War/Drama', depending what is main focus of movie, if I wanted to (using 'genre' as filtering criteria) search for movies which had BOTH drama and war how can this be done. If I type "drama AND war" or "drama & war" I get nothing. Is there an operator/method for this?

[Conor]

Thank you for the feedback. I understand what you mean with the deceleration of the animation towards the end. With the scroll bar we thought about it, and found it functional for release especially sorted by title as you can tell where you are in a collection (the scroll wheel helps with fast scrolling). We would like to add a bar similar to iTunes, but we have to make our own as this is not available in the Apple framework so it might take some time.

I am happy your test went well. The internal search does not have the OR capability yet and is always AND, so "War Drama" should get you the results you are looking for in this case.

[FromOZ]

Thank you for the feedback. I understand what you mean with the deceleration of the animation towards the end. With the scroll bar we thought about it, and found it functional for release especially sorted by title as you can tell where you are in a collection (the scroll wheel helps with fast scrolling). We would like to add a bar similar to iTunes, but we have to make our own as this is not available in the Apple framework so it might take some time.

I am happy your test went well. The internal search does not have the OR capability yet and is always AND, so "War Drama" should get you the results you are looking for in this case.

Out of the above I would rate:

1. deceleration as good to have because it feels quite funny if you are used to coverflow elsewhere in OS X & iTunes
2. scroll bar as nice, not critical, to have.
3. Spotlight type enhanced search criteria as being very desirable to have. That means a function and syntax similar to Spotlight in OS X, details of which can be found by searching for "Specifying criteria in the Spotlight search field" in Leopard help.

That would mean in the DVDpedia spotlight search field one could type something like:

Code: Select all

Director:Eastwood Genre:Drama

or

Code: Select all

Director:Eastwood Genre:Drama OR Genre:Western

That would be cool.

[TheMatador]

Hi, I was searching the internet for a Core Animation Tutorial and found this CoverFlow example , showing how to acces the private API's for Cover Flow and Quicklook. Maybe it could be helpfull to improve Coverflow in the pedias. But I guess you allready know how to do this , the only reason you don't do this that way is that it isn't documented and Apple could change it any time.

http://smackfumaster.com/cocoa_programming/

[Conor]

We did know about IKImageFlowView, it's part of the Apple Image Kit framework. We are hoping it will join its other public API brothers such as IKImageBrowserView in the near future. Then we will be able to use it without having to maintain our own (as much work as it was to create our own, we did learn about Core Animation so it was not wasted time re-inventing the wheel). We did stop short of making the scroll bar as well in the hopes that we can let IKImageFlowView do it.

We don't use private APIs as it's not a good habit to get into for a shipping application, even though one could adapt quickly enough to stay ahead of any changes it limits the ability of the Apple engineers to make IKImageFlowView great. As long as developers don't use private APIs Apple can continue to change the interface without concern of compatibility, once it becomes public the feature set becomes very static. We have filed a feature request to make IKImageFlowView public.

Thank you for pointing out the resource in case we had missed it. It's always good to be informed.

[cableguy]

Hello All,

Love the coverflow in 4.2, any way to get this implemented into the full screen view?


Keep up the good work!!

Cableguy (whos real name is also Conor)

[Conor]

Hi Conor,

Thank you for the feedback. We plan on having a full screen version as well, but since it's Leopard only we have to wait a while for more users to migrate to Leopard.

[thopunk]

could be cool to just have it as an option in the preferences. "use coverflow in full screen".

[cableguy]

would it be possible to have the option with (ONLY FOR LEOPARD) and not let it enable if they have tiger?

[Conor]

Would be possible, but it means maintaining two versions of the full screen. Probably sooner rather than later cover flow will make it into the full screen mode so look for it in a future version.

[thopunk]

i also think it would be cool to have the mass thumbnail view in full screen. much easier to get to movies with a remote when you have a lot.

[agtjones]

I only use a remote control for accessing movies and have a collection of over 400 movies that I am slowly transferring onto DVDpedia. It is a nightmare trying to find the movie you want to watch as you don't appear to be about to press and hold the arrow keys to scroll through the movies quickly in any mode (fullscreen, coverflow etc). Am I doing something wrong or is it possible to add this as a feature.

Like the idea about have a thumbnail fullscreen option too, I'd prefer personally to view 10-15 movies per page.

Keep up the great work guys.

AJ

[Conor]

In full screen by pressing up you can move 5 covers at a time. Thank you for the feedback, will keep it mind when improving those views.

[agtjones]

If you use the keyboard you can scroll through really nicely and quickly, something like this as a press and hold on the remote would be great. I was aware of the up and down arrows skipping 5 movies, but this does still take a will when using large libraries.

Please don't take this as criticism I think the system is great and you guys seen to take feedback onboard too which is nice.

AJ

[Conor]

We truly appreciate the criticism, no program is perfect and the feedback helps us a lot. I just mentioned the up arrow on the off-chance you were not aware of it, since it reads like you took the program for a good spin and test of the navigating options. It's good to know you think it will make a great program greater.