[XviD-devel] Re: new gui proposal

Ronald Duim su014295 at tiscali.nl
Tue Apr 29 21:50:49 CEST 2003


Hi,

I don't know if discussion about a new GUI is still open, but I read this
mailinglist only sporadically so I didn't see these posts sooner. My proposal
is somewhere between gruel's and suxen_drol's, maily because I think there
are only two target audiences for XviD.

1) Average Joe who doesn't know what every setting does and just wants to
get good quality videos without messing with a myriad different settings.
2) The people who "know" what they're doing and like to be in full control
of things.

Now, even group 1 is -not- completely ignorant of everything. Giving them
a slider for quality-speed is not enough. For this group I propose something
along the lines of DivX 4/5, because most likely that is what those people
are used to (since newbies first start with DivX, then move on to "harder"
stuff i.e. XviD). Basically provide the "standard" options that they're familiar
with. 
- Checkboxes for: B-frames, QPel, GMC, Interlacing, Adaptive Quantization
- And other things like: Credits stuff (whatever you're planning for them),
general quant ranges (a single range for I/P/B frames), decision between
H.263/MPEG matrices, fewer Motion Search Precision options (like low, medium,
high).
The idea is to give them -some- control over what they're doing without requiring
them to know a lot. Estimating that they don't know anything is underestimating
them in my opinion.
For the settings that are not available to them implement values that are
thought to be fairly conservative.

The 2nd group should just have everything available to them. This will mostly
add customizations to the basic settings of group 1. So in addition to the
group 1 settings:
- Custom matrices, max # of B-frames and ratio/offset, Chroma ME, Chroma
Optimizer, VHQ, full Motion Search Precision list, seperate quant ranges
for I P and B-frames, Curve Compression and Alt. Curve Compression, etc.

I haven't really thought about specific placings for all the settings, but
I just wanted to give you these outlines. Right now most people believe DivX
is easily configurable, while XviD is for experts only. Splitting the GUI
in these two parts gives them one part as simple as DivX and one part meant
for the experts. More than two parts are really not needed, but there should
definately be a newbie-friendly part to it.


Regards,

Ronald Duim aka Acaila
(Mod at Doom9's)



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