GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 725488
Do not force users to manually set project settings when creating a new project
Last modified: 2015-10-20 12:54:18 UTC
It should work like this: - Startup wizard starts, user creates a new project, the main window is shown and the project settings have some default values (for example 4/3 DAR, 1:1 PAR, 640x480, 25 FPS). - When a video file is imported and no other video files have been imported yet, the project settings are changed to match. - (Optional) Display a dialog with a "Don't show this anymore" option: "We set the project settings to match the imported video settings. You can change this behaviour in Preferences > Startup Wizard. [Project Settings] [Got it]". - (Optional) We could have a preference to disable this behaviour "Set the project settings to match the first imported video clip" Advanced users can customize the project settings, but usually if all the clips have the same resolution, this should work great.
There are a few ways we can tackle this in terms of workflow: - A button "set from clip" in the Project settings dialog, which basically means presenting the exact reverse flow of the Clip Media Properties dialog. Probably not optimal for users. - Automatically setting project settings based on the 1st clip imported. This has been suggested before, but I don't like this approach... Users should be in control, and there is absolutely no guarantee that the 1st clip they import is representative of the project globally (could be some soundtrack, or a screenshot, or a sample from the net, etc.) - When importing a clip (discovery is done for all clips), and there are no errors, replace the initial media library's infobar by a new infobar that says something like: "Would you like to set your project settings to match the properties of <b>$last_clip_name</b>? [Set automatically] [Edit manually]" ...but this would be a bit too big for an infobar. So I'm thinking this could warrant a standalone dialog window, with a more educational purpose. Something like: "You finished importing clips, but you have not set the project's settings. You can do this by selecting a clip in the media library and clicking the [¶] button to copy its properties to the project settings. You can also set the project settings manually through the […] menubutton in the titlebar. [Understood] [Remind me later]" ...where [¶] would be an real button with the same icon as the one used in the media library's toolbar (although insensitive), and […] would be the same button as the one in the headerbar (also insensitive). I think this would cover the "educational" purposes by forcing people to learn the trick the first time, without forcing everyone to use (or cancel) the Project Settings dialog on startup. The "remind me later" button could either be a dumb "I'll show it again next time" or it could be a sneakier "I'll show it again in 5 startups". Partly related: bug #728230
Note that in that dialog's text above I forgot to explain why this is important (maybe we could have a [Why?] or "Help" button that points to the exact manual page that talks about project settings, and their relation to the viewer and the rendered output.
This bug has been migrated to https://phabricator.freedesktop.org/T3161. Please use the Phabricator interface to report further bugs by creating a task and associating it with Project: Pitivi. See http://wiki.pitivi.org/wiki/Bug_reporting for details.