How to handle video support

[hadess]

One of the reasons why GNOME Videos (né totem) got a speed selection menu item was so that it could be used for transcription:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=417141#c65

It's not as good or complete as parlatype for audio but it's better than nothing for video. What do you think the best way to add video support would be? Add parlatype feature to totem, or add video features to parlatype?

[gkarsay]

First I'd like to say that the code quality of parlatype is not too bad but not very good either and definitely not on par with totem. I'm flattered you even had a look at it as neither my education nor my daily work are technical. I wrote it as a solution for my own workflow.

Actually I already thought of adding video support for parlatype but it was not my top priority. At the moment I'm in a pure maintenance mode but I plan to add also new features, at a slow pace.

Adding video should be easy in theory, but experience tells me it's never easy. At the moment you can open a video file and it will play the audio part but doesn't show the video. In an earlier version I used gstreamer's playbin element and it did show the video. If you would close the video window, it crashed. This should be manageable, but that would be a really simple solution: no aspect ratio, language chooser, subtitle support and all the other things totem has. The truth is I don't want to make it too complicated to keep it maintainable.

If you'd want to include features in totem, the relevant features for me are: 1) write and read time stamps via DBUS. Parlatype has no built-in editor, it needs plugins for existing editors like LibreOffice or gedit that interact with parlatype. The same would be true for totem. 2) The wave form, not only to see it, but also to be able to select parts. You can't select from a GtkScale. The wave form generation is rather slow and you probably don't want to wait for it if you don't need it. I think it would be too specialized for a general video player. You would have to hide those features for those who don't need them.

[gkarsay]

With commit 7cc3775 I added experimental video support. Parlatype will open and play videos (in the open dialog you have to select the filter "All files", "Audio files" is preset).