GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 569941
padding around thumbnail items
Last modified: 2009-02-19 22:02:29 UTC
Currently, timeline video clips are tedious to look at, because each individual thumbnail item (ie: each "square" on a clip "filmstrip") is directly adjacent to another. There is no visual separation. For scenes where there is not much movement, it looks like a very long serie of the very same image, and is actually less useful than having no thumbnails at all. I suggest adding a ~3px padding around thumbnail items to allow the eyes to discern them properly.
Created attachment 127605 [details] proof of concept comparison between the current PiTiVi thumbnail strips (top) and Vegas (bottom)
I think different users are going to have different preferences when it comes to this. Perhaps this should be adjustable, along with the width/height of the thumbnails themselves and the amount of space to reserve for caching them.
I personally think that a "sane default" (not a huge padding, but one nonetheless) would be better for enhancing usability than just adding an option for something as unsignificant as this. An option to toggle between "no thumbs or waveforms", "waveforms only", "thumnails and waveforms" would be much more useful, in this case. To some extent, it also slightly replicates the look of a filmstrip, (though nobody uses film anymore, most people have a visual representation of it). Also, for what it's worth, FinalCut shows only one thumbnail per clip. See also http://mystilleef.blogspot.com/2005/12/just-add-option-to-turn-it-off-or-on.html (can't find the few other articles in this line of thought that I once read, but this one is still a nice example)
Note the feedback in the comments, though. There will always be a few people that still prefer having the option. Sane default or no, some people aren't going to want to adjust the spacing. I, personally, would favor a very thin 1-2px border between frames. There is something 'imprecise' about wider gaps that I don't like. As far as replicating the film strip look, actual film strips only have a very small line between frames (I have at this moment, several hours of 16mm films sitting in my room on which I base that claim).
Seems we pretty much agree on the direction of this thing, unless I misinterpreted your last comment :) > There will always be a few people that still prefer having the option. To turn off the borders I guess? If it's a 1-2 pixels border, I can't figure out a reason someone would want to turn it off, since it makes it easier on the eyes. > Sane default or no, some people aren't going to want to adjust the spacing. Agreed on that, that's what I said in comment #3: a thin border that is not adjustable The only option I would be proposing would be something that toggles thumbnailing+waveforms on/off for performance freaks, but that's a separate issue, actually.
A small 1-2 px border seems useful. Add to that the fact that, dependin on whether it's a very bright or very dark content, we might want to have a non-uniform background (so you can actually spot the borders/thumbnails).
I have added a configurable padding (default is basically 1 pixel) around thumbnails. Note that 1) audio previewer ignores this. You can change this in pitivi.conf by editing the following: [thumbnailing] spacing-hint = 2.0 Change the spacing hint to 0 to disable completely. The value is somewhat misleading, as the thumbnailing has a built-in 1-pixel overlap primarily to help make for seamless waveforms.