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Idea #23576: Totem has a giant, useless box right in the middle.

Written by ekspiulo the 5 Feb 10 at 22:26. Related project: Totem Movie Player. Status: New
Rationale
http://imgur.com/AQ9g8

There is a lot of wasted space in Totem's interface: it could be used for something helpful.

* There is a large black rectangle which serves only to contain Totem's logo and to give the window and undesirable minimum vertical size.
- Pros: The video play area is exposed to the user. Totem has a Big F-ing logo, so all the other applications know who's boss and don't forget it.
- Cons: Totem consumes a lot of space that can't be recouped. Totem is over 80% useless by surface area.
- Indifferent: This makes Totem look like a video player and not an audio player.

* The side pane's default view is of a Playlist, which spends most of its time being empty.
- Pros: The playlist functionality is exposed to the user.
- Cons: Totem consumes a lot of space that can't be recouped until the sidebar is closed. The playlist is usually empty, so this is useless.
- Indifferent: This makes Totem look like an audio player and not an video player (Most people don't queue up several video files in a row to watch).

-32
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Solution #1: A media browser in the middle of Totem.
Written by ekspiulo the 5 Feb 10 at 22:26.
http://imgur.com/VlAsc

The video play area could be a media browser which shows the user's videos. Default to the user's Videos folder, it would show a file browser of files that Totem can play with thumbnails and perhaps richer meta-data than is normally shown in nautilus. In a perfect world this would also allow simple video previews by hovering over a thumbnail and having the file start playing in the thumbnail icon (something that would be awesome in nautilus as well, but I digress).

The video play area is currently used for nothing while the user is not watching a video, so this would involve no sacrifices in the current UI. Additionally, a toggle button could be placed next to the sidebar button to show/hide the media browser while a video is open.
-15
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Solution #2: Hide Video Panel
Written by Akerbos the 6 Feb 10 at 17:23.
When no video is displayed, hide the area to save place.
59
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Solution #3: Move the 'Time' bar
Written by alms66 the 6 Feb 10 at 22:07.
What really is a wasted piece of real estate in Totem is the area between the forward button and the volume buttons. You could move the time bar down into that area, allowing the video display to be the same height as the sidebar's height and having a continuous row of buttons and controls instead of dead pixels.
25
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Solution #4: Adapt interface depending on what's in the playlist
Written by Jacotb the 13 Feb 10 at 23:26.
Totem is being used mainly for 2 purposes: Playing music and playing video.

Playing music:
When playing music, the user plays a single file, or more commonly assembles a playlist of multiple audio files. If Totem is opened to play an audio file, it should hide the video panel. The playlist should be moved to the area where the video panel is now.

Playing video:
When playing video files, the user almost always only plays one file at a time, therefore the playlist is useless in this situation. The playlist should be hidden, and the video panel should be shown like it is in the current interface.

In both situations, the sidebar is unnecessary. For the rare event where the user wants to use the playlist and the video panel at the same time, the interface should be manually switchable between playlist and video panel.

Propose your solution

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Comments
Ssdg wrote on the 7 Feb 10 at 12:02
#3> what about really small videos (like the ones taken by phones) that could make totem show only the buttons and not the progress bar.

alms66 wrote on the 8 Feb 10 at 03:04
Yes, really small videos might pose a problem. That could be solved by having the time bar move up onto it's own row if the video size falls below some threshold though.

ergbigred wrote on the 11 Feb 10 at 08:18
when there is no video feed with audio input, Totem should default to the audio visualization in the video area, no 'wasted pixels'. Also a previous pet peeve was inability to record streamed audio in certain formats. That's how it is designed to stream, but Soundblaster cards include windows software that allow recording and modification of "what you hear". If they would just adapt that software for linux users, a lot of features could be directly accessed with a seamless interface.


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