GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 651844
Disable visualizations by default
Last modified: 2012-04-23 17:54:39 UTC
I've always found the "visual effects" or "visualization" animation that is shown when playing audio files to be the kind of thing Windows Media Player is the only software fool enough to do. ;-) More seriously, it seems that with the removal of screensavers, GNOME has gone a step further in the direction of being a beautiful-because-sober, or does-the-right-thing-without-distraction desktop. So I suggest we disable (not remove) the visual effects by default. Rationale is: 1) All users I watched starting with a GNOME desktop found it quite out of place. People that love these effects will easily find them, and they'll be happy to use something different from default settings. 2) It's eating CPU/GPU with to no real purpose, especially if Totem is in the background, or the screen is blanked (likely after a few minutes), while OTC PulseAudio tries very hard to avoid waking up the CPU too often. 3) That's not in key with the image it seems GNOME is trying to promote. OK, much discussion for such a small change! But guess what, I'm even willing to provide the patch if you support this change... Thanks for your attention. ;-)
I agree. The visualization is a waste of CPU. Additionally a bug makes it impossible to disable visualization in the browser plugin. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/totem/+bug/273490 I'll create a separate ticket for it ...
(In reply to comment #0) > I've always found the "visual effects" or "visualization" animation that is > shown when playing audio files to be the kind of thing Windows Media Player is > the only software fool enough to do. ;-) > > More seriously, it seems that with the removal of screensavers, GNOME has gone > a step further in the direction of being a beautiful-because-sober, or > does-the-right-thing-without-distraction desktop. So I suggest we disable (not > remove) the visual effects by default. Why are you playing audio in a movie player? > Rationale is: > 1) All users I watched starting with a GNOME desktop found it quite out of > place. People that love these effects will easily find them, and they'll be > happy to use something different from default settings. Why are you playing audio in a movie player? > 2) It's eating CPU/GPU with to no real purpose, especially if Totem is in the > background, or the screen is blanked (likely after a few minutes), while OTC > PulseAudio tries very hard to avoid waking up the CPU too often. Why are you playing audio in a movie player? > 3) That's not in key with the image it seems GNOME is trying to promote. Huh, what? > > OK, much discussion for such a small change! But guess what, I'm even willing > to provide the patch if you support this change... Thanks for your attention. > ;-) I don't :)
(In reply to comment #2) > Why are you playing audio in a movie player? As Walter said, the default way to play audio files in a Web browser is the Totem plugin in GNOME. And there, you cannot even disable visualizations. A second reason is that Rhythmbox doesn't allow playing an album that isn't in its library (more precisely, it only plays the first opened file). So if you need to read a few files you have on an external disk, or that you prefer to store separately (e.g. files associated with a project), Totem is better. That's clearly a bug in Rythmbox, not in Totem, but the whole debate is moot, because of my strongest argument: Why is a movie player shipping with visualizations if it's only meant to play, ehm, movies? ;-) > > 3) That's not in key with the image it seems GNOME is trying to promote. > Huh, what? We got rid of screensavers in part (I think) to look clean and sober, without useless eye candy and glossy looks like other environments. I think one of GNOME's principles is about reducing visual noise as much as possible (we even removed icons in menus and buttons, remember?). So I consider that showing big and useless visualizations on 2/3 of the screen in Totem is really contrary to this spirit. > > OK, much discussion for such a small change! But guess what, I'm even willing > > to provide the patch if you support this change... Thanks for your attention. > > ;-) > > I don't :) Why?
commit 001b0441452ac9ec54022f6bc0c627883a67f314 Author: Bastien Nocera <hadess@hadess.net> Date: Mon Apr 23 15:10:09 2012 +0100 data: Disable visualisations by default We'll focus on providing cover art for audio-only files instead, and just display the totem logo otherwise. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=651844
Great! Cover art is much more likely to interest users that random visualizations.