Why do media players have such complex interfaces?
Posted by ajt on Sat 9 Jul 2005 at 10:14
Once upon a time one started a media player picked a file, pressed play, and music came out of the speakers. The interface was simple and inobtrusive. Time passes. MP3s arrive. Time passes. Media players aquire graphic "skins". Interfaces degenerate into complex goo.
Although I've been fighting with media players on my new Debian Etch/AMD64 system, this rant applies to all other Linux and even Windows systems. I'm not even ranting about buggy mediaplayers, or MP3 patent and licence problems.
Why is it so difficult to create a media player with a easy to use interface?
I've eventually found Zinf which I like on Windows, and with the right skin I can see what the buttons are. I find the Debian version of Zinf somewhat unstable, so on Debian I use amaroK which I've found to be stable. Xine is okay for video but I find it quite wobbly, it crashes when playing MP3s on Etch/ADM64.
See also: muttley hates software: media players.
All work great for me.
sno
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I'm currently using MPD and NCMPD on my low power embedded system - an advantage of which is that with only the 2.5" hard drive to make noise it's quieter than this keyboard which also adds to the musical enjoyment. A good front end to MPD would be nice - perhaps a plugin for Amarok, though Amarok would need changes to its catalog management too which may be fiddly as I expect it assumes a filesystem. NCMPD is effective as vim is effective, though features such a queueing would be great.
- Richard
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Command line tools are okay, but not for "normal" people like my better half, she needs a clear simple GUI, even if it's only driving the same backend non GUI application.
However I will have to investigate MPlayer more, just for myself.
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
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GUI-wise, amaroK tries to be different and IMHO si very good, stable and all. They are still behind on networking support though, streams and "web" playlists regularly stop without any notice.
Kaffeine also is not bad, simple and essential, but v.0.6 on my Sid crashes every time I try to open a single file (?!).
KPlayer is a no-frill MPlayer frontend, similar to the original Windows Media Player; you obviously need to install MPlayer first (packages are available in the Marillat repository), but then you get its full decoding power in a basic Qt fashion.
XMMS, well, it's a Winamp clone, so you really need to find a skin that can suit you. However, in my experience, it's the best player for the Net; when it comes to internet radio stations or playlists full of links to publicly-available files, XMMS beats the crap out of any other player.
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I've tried Kaffeine since I posted this rant, and it's not bad, nicer looking that the plain xine-ui. However xine and hence Kaffeine still crashes when playing MP3.
I've not tried KPlayer.
XMMS is okay, but only with the right skin, the default is pretty horrid.
I don't play web streams much so I can't comment, mostly I play my own CDs that have been ripped to Ogg.
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
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The daemon continues to play music even if no client is connected to it. I.e., if your X session crashes for some reason, the music will still play.
Even more goodness comes from having the daemon on a different computer than the client ;)
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and the xmms2 project is working on a client-server model too.
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Even more goodness comes from having the daemon on a different computer than the client ;)"
Forgive the ignorance, but in a situation w/the daemon on one box and the client on another, which box is actually generating the sound?
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I disagree, up to a point. This whole chaos of different interfaces with different menu's and icons blows usability to hell. But some programs just need a different interface. There is no Gtk or Qt VU meter widget, as far as I know. Traditional programs with big anti-aliased fonts and huge buttons take up too much space.
I still use xmms, and I have the habit to shade the playlist, equaliser and xmms itself, so it fits on the title bar of maximised programs. This way, it doesn't waste any space on my desktop. It stays right on top of all windows. I can see which song is playing, I have the controls and volume slider right in front of me, and I can unshade the playlist with one click to jump somewhere else in my way too long playlist.
Xmms' interface is build out of pure pixels, and this makes it possible to have so much functionality in so little space. You can not do this with a bulky Gtk or Qt interface.
In general I agree with your article, but there are exceptions -- like the shade mode I just talked about -- that need a different approach to be useful.
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With the right skin xmms et al are okay, the problem is that you have to go and find it. amaroK works out of the box.
I've been playing with Superkaramba, which does some cute things and stays out the way, but I'm not convinced it's useful once the novelty wears off. It has a amaroK plug-in, but it's more intrusive than the player alone, or FoxyTunes.
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
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For Audio, I tend to use Winamp 5.x with the "Classic" (2.x) skin's Windowshade mode, set to Always on Top. So, it sits next to the Minimize/Restore/Close button on maximized applications.
For Video, I tend to use Media Player Classic 6.4.x. This allows me to use the same codecs that Windows Media Player uses without the horrid interface WMP has developed since WMP7 came out.
P.S. I'm still trying to figure out what the worst media player interface is... WMP9 on W2K or Quicktime on any Windows version. I haven't seen XMMS's, so maybe it's in the running, too!
--
R. Bemrose
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I believe for Windows Media Player version mumble, Microsoft hired a "usability consultant", whose idea of usability was to make the interface totally unlike any other Windows application. There is an artical on the chap and what he was trying to achieve, try Google.
Fortunately they made it skin-able, and included a classic skin, so those of us who can use computers, but dislike learning a new layout for every application we use can make it work more or less like every other Microsoft Windows application.
Other than that, the need for a fullscreen mode, and a desire this actually give you all of the screen in that mode, demands a few extras. And video and audio are quite complex beasties if you want to get the absolutely best quality, and people who work on these things see that as a point of competition.
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