DefaultMediaPlayer

Default media player

Overview

Title

Default media player

Blueprint

Assignee

GridCube

Detailed specification

It has been brought by some users that the default media player for Xubuntu comes with some particular desing dessision that don't follow the popular, or expected behaviours.

Here is an analysis of the user experience with gMusicBrowser.

First opening presents users with two panes, one called "Queue", that somehow stands for a tradicional playlist. The second pane its a tradicional Media Library, it obviously comes empty, because it doesnt have a preset of watching folders, this is fine, not all users will save their music on ~/Music, the media library invites you to add some watching folders on the "Settings Dialog", wich I will suppose its the gear icon on the top. There you have a "Colection > Add music" option, that wont add folders to your watching list.

These are simply two ways of adding stuff to your library, if you do it via the settings-dialog re-scanning will scan those paths. If you just add music by drag-and-drop it will be and stay in the library, but the path won't be scanned. It's the same with the "Collection > Add Music" menuitem. I agree this can be improved. -- Simon

You have to know that the real way of adding music to your watching list, so to populate the Media Library, is going to the "Settings" option on the "Settings Dialog" and then you can manually add them. Then you have to scan the collection. When it ends you have your music collection nicely ordered, so you decide you want to hear a particular artist, you search for it and double clic to play, but suddendly the volume is too high so you search the interface for a volume button, but you wont find one.

There is a good reason not to expose a volume button in an application: PulseAudio manages sound/volume per application, so by going to the "Sound Settings" in indicator-sound in the panel you can change the volume for gmusicbrowser (and any other app!) separately and it should even remember the volume-states (which is particularly useful for e.g. flash or in-browser sound). -- Simon

So you finally end up using the global sound menu to down it, and now the artists song you just searched has suddendly changed to any other artist, randombly, even if you dont see the playing song anywhere in the program, Why? because of this:

You didnt filtered anything, you just searched the collection, what you should have done, and no one tells you this, is grabbing the songs you just searched to the Queue list, else you will just be playing your whole collection, and it is presseted to work in random mode. Yes.

Setting default playback and sort-modes is a simple matter of settings, so this should be easily fixable. -- Simon

double clicking an artist name wont send it to the queue list, double clicking a song wont send it to the queue list. The queue list is just there if you happen to want to use it. Ofcourse none of this is told to you, nor is standard media players behaviour. And remember, if you paused a song, or even stoped the program, and you select a new song from the media library and clic on the play button, it wont play the selected file, it will continue from the last point it was. because again, the media library is not a playlist, neither a queue, but still you are playing from it.

Double-clicking an item in the list means "play". This is true for most audio-players I know, just to name a few: Winamp, iTunes, Rhythmbox etc. I don't see how this isn't standard. By the way: the "queue" is a dynamic playlist that removes songs after they have been played, so you can e.g. quickly shuffle in one song without changing your playback-mode/order. Selecting a file with single-click and then pressing "play" after having paused another song will continue to play the currently paused song in every music-player I know. Right-clicking an item in the list gives you manifold options to enqueue a song, an artist or an album. -- Simon

So its proposed a change to a simplier, yet functional, media player, or if possible a change to this design decision on gMusicBrowser.

Changing gmusicbrowser is really simple, there is also another layout called "Exaile", just in case you happen to prefer that player. Gmusicbrowser's customizability is its strength, but it can also be considered a weakness if defaults aren't sensible/intuitive. -- Simon

Desired Features

Here we do a simple comparison of some known and popular media players for linux, most of them are in the repos, the set of minimal desired functions are:

  • Having a functional Media Library
  • Having a separated playlist (or queue) from the Media Library
  • Having the ability to search the media library without affecting the playing list
  • Having the ability to search the playing list to rapidly jump to a song
  • Having the posibility to save playlist to share them or backup them
  • Having the posibility of playing podcasts or other streams formats

Other considered characteristics are the installed size, toolkit and presence in the repos.

Desired Set of features an behaviors

Software

Music Library

Playlist separated from music library

search only music library

Search only playlist

Save playlists to file

Streams reproduction

installed size

in the repos

toolkit

note

gmusicbrowser

(./)

(./)

(./)

(./)

(X)

(./)

2962 kB

yes

gtk

has multiple skins

exaile

(./)

(./)

(./)

(./)

(X)

(./)

4681 kB

yes

gtk

Rhythmbox

(./)

(./)

(./)

(./)

(./)

(./)

866 kB

yes

gtk

guayadeque

(./)

(./)

(./)

(./)

(./)

(./)

5692 kB

yes

gtk

Randomly adds songs to the queue, unknown reason

Audacious

(./)

(./)

(./)

(./)

(./)

(./)

1424 kB

yes

gtk

Quodlibet

(./)

(./)

(./)

(./)

(./) *

(./)

92 kB

yes

gtk

*it can save playlists adding an extension, but it wont load them.

Listen

(./)

(./)

(./)

(./)

(./)

(./)

2824 kB

yes

gtk

musique

(./)

(./)

(X)

(X)

(X)

(./)

1265 kB

yes

gtk

decibel-audio-player

(./) *

(./)

(X)

(X)

(./)

(X)

1776 kB

yes

gtk

With this all considered we will rule out all media players that are not gtk, not in the repos, do not have gui, and dont have preseted media libraries.

  • Why ruling out media players with no media libraries?

Because Xubuntu already comes with another media player (parole) to reproduce videos that already has a simple playlist ability that allows users to play single music files. So having a secondary media player would only be justifiable because it brings characteristics that are desired and elemental on a modern system, such as managing ones music library.

So, for the sake of clarity and time consumption, we will reduce the comparison list to a few programs:

  • gMusicBrowser
  • program2
  • program3
  • program4

Comparison

First screen, adding files to the library

Using playlists

System resources usages

Development status

Conclusions

  • WORK IN PROGRESS

Comments

Xubuntu/Roadmap/Specifications/Quantal/DefaultMediaPlayer (last edited 2012-11-11 09:39:29 by nblzone-227-162)