GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 413379
Profile names are ambiguous
Last modified: 2021-06-11 15:31:40 UTC
That bug has been opened on https://launchpad.net/bugs/87363 "Binary package hint: gnome-media Now that there are AAC and MP3 profiles in gnome-media, the names have become ambiguous. There are 2 lossy "CD Quality" codecs specifically named, and one that doesn't say what the actual codec is. Since this is actually important (some media players can only play some subset of the codecs) I suggest renaming them: CD Quality, FLAC (lossless) CD Quality, AAC CD Quality, Ogg Vorbis CD Quality, MPEG1 layer 3 Voice, PCM/Wave (lossless) Voice, Speex ... > Thank you for your bug. What do you think it's not clear enough? What changes do you want to do exactly? What locale do you use? ... Well, they're currently as follows: CD Quality, AAC CD Quality, Lossless CD Quality, Lossy CD Quality, MP3 Voice, Lossless Voice, Lossy So I have 4 codecs that might I know are lossy, but I don't know what two of those codecs actually are (so I have no idea if they will work on my portable media player, for example). I also have two lossless codecs; given that there are dozens of lossless formats and probably around 5 common ones, the distinction "CD Quality" and "Voice" is not very helpful here. I suggest changing the codec names as described in the initial bug report. It would also be helpful to somehow indicate what "CD quality" and "voice" mean, but I have no suggestions on how best to handle that. I use locale en_US.UTF8 or 'C' depending on which machine I'm using."
Created attachment 102971 [details] [review] Change the names of the default audio profiles to be less ambiguous This patch clarifies the meaning of each of the audio profiles.
(In reply to comment #1) > Created an attachment (id=102971) [edit] > Change the names of the default audio profiles to be less ambiguous > > This patch clarifies the meaning of each of the audio profiles. > Hi Alex! While I understand and agree with you that those descriptions are not complete, I'd also think that current naming is better for a beginner/novice user. Please notice that there is longer and more complete description under the "Edit" window, for advanced users who need to know details about format/encoder.. However, we could maybe display the longer description under the list. What do you think? The current profile editor is far from being perfect and will be reviewed hopefully, soon (by Ross Burton, if he can find the time to do it :-)
I would tend to agree with you, but for a few points: 1. The "Profile description" field doesn't actually say what codec is used. It's also not displayed consistently in the applications which use these profiles. Rhythmbox just displays the "Profile name". Sound Juicer displays the profile name, as well as a description which doesn't appear to be editable with g-a-p-p. S-J's display would be fine if it were used in other apps as well, and if g-a-p-p could edit the parenthetical portion. Including it in the name seems the best method to accomplish this. (and it seems like S-J's method is a workaround for the problem this bug discusses) 2. Novices need to know which codec they're using. I previously used the example of portable players with limited codec support. A novice user can see AAC, Ogg, MP3 listed on the packaging or documentation of their player, but they have no obvious way to know which one of those is being used by their ripping software. (OK, trial and error, but I don't think that's something we want to promote) 3. Ambiguity. "CD Quality, Lossy" and "CD Quality, AAC" do not make a useful distinction for either the novice or the advanced user. Neither do "Voice, Lossy" and "CD Quality, Lossy", nor "Voice, Lossless" and "CD Quality, Lossless". The advanced user simply has the advantage that they can use g-a-p-p to discover what the various options mean, while the novice may not.
Can the needinfo status of this bug be changed?
What I miss is a simple MP3 CBR profile. To make it easier for beginners I propose at least one of: Profilename: "MP3 128kbit/s" GStreamer: "audio/x-raw-int,rate=44100,channels=2 ! lame name=enc bitrate=128 ! id3v2mux" Profilename: "MP3 160kbit/s (optimal)" GStreamer: "audio/x-raw-int,rate=44100,channels=2 ! lame name=enc bitrate=160 ! id3v2mux" Profilename: "MP3 192kbit/s" GStreamer: "audio/x-raw-int,rate=44100,channels=2 ! lame name=enc bitrate=192 ! id3v2mux" See also: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-media/+bug/178586/comments/6
Would that help if we would have a secondary description for advanced technical details? CD Quality, Lossless | FLAC CD Quality, Lossy | Ogg Vorbis 160 kbit/s CD Quality, MP3 | MP3 CBR 128kbit/s ... What do you think?
No, it wouldn't. Anywhere the codec is displayed now would need to display the "technical details" to disambiguate. You might as well put some of those details in the name. (I do think the bitrate is overkill though, unless there were to be as Oliver suggests several MP3 profiles) It's already the case that there are "AAC" and "MP3" profiles added by the corresponding gstreamer codecs, but as far as I can tell those are not the responsibility of GNOME directly. However, if those are not inappropriate, I don't think "FLAC", "Ogg Vorbis", or "PCM/Wave" would be either.
But there is already the extension that gives you a hint (at least for common codec/containter), ex: "CD Quality, Lossless (.flac type)" I guess another way would be to use the current long description and put it as a hint in the profile selector.
[Copy of my comment on https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/87363] I would prefer one descriptive name per profile with codec name and specs in brackets. Even novices cannot ignore the codec because of compatibility with their playback devices. Mentioning codec names twice is against the DRY principle (don't repeat yourself). It opens the possibility of inconsistency for translations. Furthermore these profiles set cornerstones for zillions of megabytes, so they should be chosen carefully. After what I've read and compared myself, CD Quality needs at least 160kbit/s MP3, whereas with OGG 128kbit/s would be enough, IMHO. So my preference would be something like: Lossless (WAV uncompressed) Lossless (FLAC compressed) High-end (MP3 VBR Q=6) High-end (QGG VBR Q=0.5) CD Quality (MP3 160kbit/s) CD Quality (OGG 128kbit/s) Normal (MP3 128kbit/s) Voice only (SPEEX VBR) Nice to see changes ahead here. This will make apps like sound-juicer more usable out-of-the-box.
@8: Hmm. That's changed in since I reported this bug, apparently. It's less ambiguous than it used to be, certainly. I think this way is less user-friendly than naming the codec (FLAC, Ogg Vorbis) would be. (see your comment #2)
Mass move to new component.
libgnome-media-profiles is not under active development anymore. Its codebase has been archived. Closing all its open tickets as part of housekeeping. See also https://gitlab.gnome.org/Infrastructure/Infrastructure/-/issues/595