[Libreoffice] Tools - Media Player

[Thomas Arnhold]

Christoph thanks for the discussion link and the specs!

On 02/12/2011 10:01 PM, Michael Meeks wrote:
> On Fri, 2011-02-11 at 23:08 +0100, Christoph Noack wrote:
>>> what the heck do we do with "Tools - Media Player"? Do we need this
>>> within an office suite? Is anyone using this?!
> 
> 	:-) My suspicion is that ~no-one is using it.

I think the same. If I add an video to a presentation I know what file I
want to add. And if I want a preview of a specific file this should be
done by the filepicker.

>> Without adding too many thoughts, here is the corresponding thread with
>> some answers and the original specification (linked). Maybe this helps
> 
> 	The link to the spec. is:
> 
> 	http://specs.openoffice.org/appwide/media_player/MediaPlayer.sxw
> 
> 	Which (on reading) suggests to me that the only useful uses of this
> beastie is two fold:
> 
> 	a) to allow playback controls to appear / be used when playing
> 		+ presuambly we can / should do this for embedded media
> 		  anyway in some suitably tasteful way.
> 
> 	b) to allow video files to be previewed from the gallery
> 		+ cf. the difficulty of building galleries, and the
> 		  fact that I've never seen any video in one
> 		+ cf. the fact that I just failed to add an mgp
> 		  or ogg to a gallery, via the properties dialog.
> 
> 	So - I think b) is fairly bogus (or the gallery addition code needs
> some real work), a) is a real use-case; it seems we throw up the media
> player for preview sounds in the shipped gallery.

Ah, I didn't see that sound files in the gallery use this player. I my
opinion we could remove "Tools -> Media Player" from the menu and let it
act in the background for the gallery and embed media in documents.

I tested to create a new gallery. There is some kind of lack of user
experience: Open the gallery, then "New theme", tab "Files" and then you
have to click "Find files" at first to scan a directory for media
contents. When this is done all media files get added to the list below
and you could click "Add" or "Add all" to add these files to the
gallery. Paradoxically, if you forget to click "Find files" and directly
go to "Add" this is also possible, but with a very limited list of
supported file formats (only images). That's some kind of strange.

I've added ogg and mpg files and some more formats into the gallery.
Works fine. Only lack is the list of supported formats. I manually added
a flv-file with "Insert -> Movie and Sound" (thats the player). But you
have to choose "All files". Within the gallery there is no such option.
With the consequence that I can't add flv files to it, despite the fact
that the player plays it ;)


With "Insert" you have two possible options to add media content to the
document: "Insert -> Movie and Sound" or "Insert -> Object ->
Video/Sound". I think the second is deprecated as it doesn't really
work. The gallery does add sounds and videos like "Movie and Sound".

> 	So - IMHO the player-let is useful, but I'd be amazed if people really
> used it in anger; it is rather lame. Removing it from the menus in
> everything but impress might make some sense (?)

Yeah for impress it is very useful. But why remove the possibility to
add videos and other media to the files. I think in the background in
it's the same, isn't it?!


So the question is:

- remove "Tools -> Media Player"
- remove "Insert -> Objects -> Sound" and "Insert -> Objects -> Video"

Thomas