GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 592081
Disable countdown and flash in burst mode
Last modified: 2010-08-13 15:17:34 UTC
I think the countdown should be disabled by default when taking pictures in burst mode. It's quite odd to set the timer of the burst mode to 1 sec and trigger everytime a new countdown. Most of the burst mode use cases are: the user wants to take rapid shots or shots over a long period. For the first use case the countdown is much to slow, for the second nobody cares about the countdown because the application is out of focus anyway. The same with the flash...when taking a rapid series of pictures the flash is to slow and you happen to make blind shots (because you don't see the preview because of the flash). when taking pictures over a long period of time I think its very annoying to get flashed while you are working on something else...
Completely agree about the countdown, mind providing a patch? About the flash, don't forget it's not just some UI fanciness, it really tries to lighten the subject you're shooting at. If you're taking a quick series of photos I don't think you really need to see the preview (you're capturing a motion sequence), having a bright scene is surely more important. On the other hand, if you're scheduling a series of photos at a long time interval you'll need the flash as well because you want to light the subject of your photo. I'd prefer an option to completely disable the flash, instead, as you might have a webcam that's not mounted on the lid and you're shooting something that it's not in front of the screen so having it flash doesn't serve anything. Again, a patch for this too would be more than welcome.
No patch is required. Just Untoggle Cheese->Countdown. It may be the case that there's no countdown but there is a discernible delay (longer than your chosen delay) between taking pictures in burst mode. This delay is necessary as some cameras seem to take a while to capture and store the image. You must do Capture then Store before calling Capture again. If you call Capture, Capture (before storing the preceding photo) you don't get the first photo stored. As for the flash. It _should_ be optional.
Created attachment 157739 [details] [review] Adds menu item to toggle flash
Review of attachment 157739 [details] [review]: hi...sorry for the late and only quick review. as I already said, I'm not really up to date with the cheese code... overall I have to say: nice patch, there are only some minor issues. in my opinion we should still disable the countdown _by default_ when taking a series of pictures...just in case you want to provide another patch ;) I did not test the patch, this is a code review only...sorry! ::: libcheese/cheese-gconf.c @@ +386,3 @@ + NULL, + FALSE, + G_PARAM_READWRITE)); shouldn't the flash be enabled by default? ::: src/cheese-window.c @@ +1449,3 @@ } + why the blank line? you can check the patch with git diff and see if you added blank lines or trailing whitespaces or something...
Created attachment 157913 [details] [review] Adds menu item to toggle flash
Fixed the default issue. I let the blank line slip by though I tried git diff --check. Is there some sort of automatic pre-commit hook I can use to help me out here? And I'm not sure that disabling countdown for Burst mode is the way to go - does that mean we change countdown depending on what mode we're in? Wouldn't that be confusing?
Similar bug in lp about the countdown: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cheese/+bug/522283 The problem is two-fold here: 1: If countdown is ON , the photo interval is minimum 5secs and cannot be lowered by selecting the interval to anything less than 5 , which is confusing. Because 2: Countdown is ON by default , and it is not be obvious that the countdown is the cause of this delay. Disabling the countdown to take the multiple shots isnt the right way, since it *is* useful before taking a shot[s]. What can be done here is: 1: Move the countdown option to the Preferences window. 2: Allow an option to disable countdown *between* shots 3: Allow the interval to be lesser than 5secs [ie:3secs] when countdown is selected.
as you can see here http://imgur.com/56dm2 , yuvi added countdown and flash options to the preferences dialog. this should fix this bug
Comment on attachment 157913 [details] [review] Adds menu item to toggle flash just committed on gnome-2-32 branch