Some Suggestions and Ideas

[xain09]

Hi,

First of all I'm very impressed with your work so far. Being alpha it's amazingly stable and full of neat features not found any place else. I've been using Xhub, XMBC, Plex, Media Central and Front Row for the last year now. I've seen it all and tried it all. Currently I'm using Front Row. Below are some suggestions:

1. iTunes and iPhoto integration. No Mac user is gonna use Boxee instead of Front Row if all the stuff is not in there. xHub was able to read the database files and Front Row does it too. So it's possible. PLEASE make this happen. Just auto-import all the stuff that's in there including playlists, albums, cover art, events. Also keep the option to select a seperate folder for the few who don't use iPhoto or iTunes.

2. People who are going to use this have large collections of films, pictures and music. A lot of them will have files spread over different drives on a network or connected via usb or firewire. I imported all my stuff into it. it took about a day before it was complete more or less. In the meantime I could barely use Boxee. Importing should be done in the background. Also there's no progress bar of activity viewer. It would be nice to see what's going on.. is it crashing is it busy?

3. When done with importing some movies have "" and others don't. What's going on?

4. It would be very handy to separate TV shows, Movies and Podcasts. Now they're all mixed up.

5. The video sorting is a bit messy. My sources, volumes and ad-source are all in the same screen. What about keeping the management stuff separate under preferences and not under video, music and pictures again?

6. Some films get totally wrong cover-art. The coverart fetch and imdb info is a real treat when working of coure :)

7. It would be nice to select a start-up screen. Go to Movies by default for example.

8. I like the fluffy green/white thing. But it is sometimes difficult to read the white text on a green background.

9. Choose your own background in the main-menu?

10. Videoplayback is EXCELLENT! Even .mkv and .m4v files play correctly over a network. FrontRow has some serious issues with that.

11. I love the subtitles option! Ab subtitle? Shouldn't that be Ad subitile or am I missing something?

12. Movies in the mainscreen have imdb info. When I go to my sources and browse my files there's no info? (same file) when I try to fetch new info nothing happens.

13. I found that 2-row browsing works best on a 32 inch TFT.

14. The settings for videoplay back are also fantastic. Wanna strech it? No problem etc.. not may apps do this correctly.

15. The icons and art works are done very well. Keep it simple, abstract, clean and nice. Don't do photo-realistic icons.

16. One user. Auto-log-in?

17. I accidently deleted the one friend it has by default. How do I add friends?

18. Just an idea.. Watching multi-page .PDF files or .cbz or .cbz files would be very nice. I would like to read comics and magazines on the bigscreen.

19. Have you seen http://www.cooliris.com/ ? If not check it. It would be nice to browse media locally at this speed and with that view. Just thinking out loud.

20. An iPhone/iPod Touch app or web-interface for Boxee would be very nice! For the moment I use remote buddy to control Front Row. You might want to check out DVDPedia. This database app for Mac has a nice iPhone cousin. It transfers all the info and images of your movies to your iPhone so you can browse the movies you have. It would be nice if Boxee would transfer all this info to your iPhones and when selecting a file it would play on your Mac. This would be a DREAM! Even nicer would be realtime transcoding to your iPhone :)

21. Some movies are split into two parts. It would be nice if Boxee would merge them into one entry instead of two.

22. That sums it pretty much up I guess :)

Keep up the good work and I'm looking forward to using this nice piece of software every day of my digital life ;)

[belovedmonster]

Lots of good points there. I especially echo the comments about the lack of information when importing media. There needs to be more feedback to tell you what is going on and how long it will take.

[Gamester17]

May I suggest that you split up all the feature request and start a new thread for each unique feature (after searching, as some of them have already been requested). It is much easier to track and search if each unique feature is discussed in its own thread.

;)

[xain09]

I'll try to do that asap :)

[Gamester17]

Great! Note that a verbose and clear topic summery already really help when browsing or searching. Just do a search for "mythtv" in this forum now and you will know what I mean, (if the topic is "I have an idea" or similar then people will not have an easy time finding it if they search).

[tsella]

First of all I'm very impressed with your work so far.


i'm impressed with your comments



1. iTunes and iPhoto integration. No Mac user is gonna use Boxee instead of Front Row if all the stuff is not in there. xHub was able to read the database files and Front Row does it too. So it's possible. PLEASE make this happen. Just auto-import all the stuff that's in there including playlists, albums, cover art, events. Also keep the option to select a seperate folder for the few who don't use iPhoto or iTunes.


i agree. there is a workaround for daap at this point at http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=243&highlight=daap

for iphotos, you can add your iphoto directory to boxee as a source for now.

also, if you are will to contribute, if you can find python code to access either, you may be able to craft a plugin pretty easily.



2. People who are going to use this have large collections of films, pictures and music. A lot of them will have files spread over different drives on a network or connected via usb or firewire. I imported all my stuff into it. it took about a day before it was complete more or less. In the meantime I could barely use Boxee. Importing should be done in the background. Also there's no progress bar of activity viewer. It would be nice to see what's going on.. is it crashing is it busy?


well, first, you can always access your content, regardless of what boxee has already indexed, by going to My Sources.

importing is being done in the background, constantly. every path you have added is being looked at for changes, hence, there is no "indicator". boxee is always scanning and indexing.



3. When done with importing some movies have "" and others don't. What's going on?


the indexing is quite a complex mechanism, which is pretty good, but not perfect. in some case we may fail to identify, or even add a specific item, in which case we would love to hear about it - email us at support at boxee tv with reproducible examples, and we'll solve them.

you can also manually ask to recognize a mis-recognized item.



4. It would be very handy to separate TV shows, Movies and Podcasts. Now they're all mixed up.


when under videos, go up to Options, go to Filter, and separate away



5. The video sorting is a bit messy. My sources, volumes and ad-source are all in the same screen. What about keeping the management stuff separate under preferences and not under video, music and pictures again?


it used to be separate, and unclear what a new user is to do. we think it works better this way.



6. Some films get totally wrong cover-art. The coverart fetch and imdb info is a real treat when working of coure


see above regarding misrecognition.



7. It would be nice to select a start-up screen. Go to Movies by default for example.


while it may make sense for a media player, under boxee the social features are in the home screen (at least for now), so that's the destination for now.



8. I like the fluffy green/white thing. But it is sometimes difficult to read the white text on a green background.


agree, we are working on it



9. Choose your own background in the main-menu?


weird.. we had this and its gone from the settings. i think its a bug. reported.



10. Videoplayback is EXCELLENT! Even .mkv and .m4v files play correctly over a network. FrontRow has some serious issues with that.


tnx, we think so too. hard work from the guys at ffmpeg, team-xbmc and boxee.



11. I love the subtitles option! Ab subtitle? Shouldn't that be Ad subitile or am I missing something?


tnx. Ab is an icon symbolizing them.



12. Movies in the mainscreen have imdb info. When I go to my sources and browse my files there's no info? (same file) when I try to fetch new info nothing happens.


its a bug. please send examples to support at boxee tv or open a thread in the forum.



13. I found that 2-row browsing works best on a 32 inch TFT.


tnx for the info



14. The settings for videoplay back are also fantastic. Wanna strech it? No problem etc.. not may apps do this correctly.


as one mutual team-xbmc and boxee member says - these features were written in blood :) they were made by users, so they make sense, and cover what would be missed by users.



15. The icons and art works are done very well. Keep it simple, abstract, clean and nice. Don't do photo-realistic icons.


we like graphic language as well, that's why we chose it.;



16. One user. Auto-log-in?


true, true.



17. I accidently deleted the one friend it has by default. How do I add friends?


search for them at http://app.boxee.tv/home/friends



18. Just an idea.. Watching multi-page .PDF files or .cbz or .cbz files would be very nice. I would like to read comics and magazines on the bigscreen.


i think cb are supported. its the unzip/unrar which are broken imo, which will be solved.

pdf, not so sure. we're a media center.



19. Have you seen http://www.cooliris.com/ ? If not check it. It would be nice to browse media locally at this speed and with that view. Just thinking out loud.


indeed. we love it too and think about it.



20. An iPhone/iPod Touch app or web-interface for Boxee would be very nice! For the moment I use remote buddy to control Front Row. You might want to check out DVDPedia. This database app for Mac has a nice iPhone cousin. It transfers all the info and images of your movies to your iPhone so you can browse the movies you have. It would be nice if Boxee would transfer all this info to your iPhones and when selecting a file it would play on your Mac. This would be a DREAM! Even nicer would be realtime transcoding to your iPhone :)


i agree.



21. Some movies are split into two parts. It would be nice if Boxee would merge them into one entry instead of two.


we do under our library. not currently supported in folder mode (i.e. under my sources). added request.



22. That sums it pretty much up I guess :)

Keep up the good work and I'm looking forward to using this nice piece of software every day of my digital life ;)

thank you so much for all this! its a great feedback, and i look forward to hearing more.

[xain09]

Thanx for the reply as well :)
Via sorting I can indeed filter out the TV Series. Good enough :)
I found that the "" means it's not recognized by the online database.
I'm not a programmer :( So I'll have to wait for the iPhoto/iTunes option.
For the moment I use the "originals" from the iPhoto library.

I found out that most films are actually in the correct order in the film library.
The "" where films not tagged. I went back to the finder and renamed the files in a correct format like fireball xl 01x01. But the wrong one is still in Boxee and the correct one doesn't show. I can delete the entry of course and wait for the new one to pop-up. I waited a couple hours but it still wasn't there.

I also found out that some films where not in the library and also not under the " " listing. There where in my sources and once recognized this way they showed up. They where under a sub folder. All my files are also on the network. example: science fiction/alien/ and here we have alien, aliens, alien 3 etc... they where not scanned it seems or is Boxee still scanning the files and hasn't seen them yet. I do have around 2.5 TB of movies/series..
My recently added tab doesn't ad movies anymore so I guess Boxee is done with them. Although sometimes it ads all of a sudden a music album.

Okay now I'll try to sort my post out and re-post a specific things if they're not mentioned somewhere else like gamester17 asked.

Any news on when a new version will be available?

[marcel]

Hi xain09

Welcome to boxee..


Great post and some excellent valid points...looking forward to your re-posts :)

Regarding the next version it should be out soon no exact date but stay tuned to the forum for the announcement .

the scanning/indexing in boxee is pretty good, but still not perfect(still working on it). Sometimes boxee fails to identify, or even add a specific item this is still work in progress and i believe we will solve most of the issues in future versions.

If boxee does not resolve some of the media content you can also manually ask to recognize a mis-recognized item.

[xain09]

Thanx guys for all the good feed-back.
Surprise of the day: new version seems to be out. Will check it later.. little time here.

[marcel]

Hi xain09

Looking forward to the feedback of the new version..:)

[tsella]

Thanx guys for all the good feed-back.
Surprise of the day: new version seems to be out. Will check it later.. little time here.

we are really seeking feedback on the new version, please let us know what you think.

[xain09]

Do I make a separate thread for this version?

[marcel]

You can carry on with this thread if you want ...:)

[xain09]

Okay here we go with the Boxee 0.9.3024 impressions (yes I deleted the whole user folder):


1. Seems less slow when importing a massive amount of media. The interface is now workable when this is going on. Before it was not.

2. It seems that thumbnails are only created when browsed to under my sources they are not generated automatically.

3. Is it ready or done with scanning my library? After 2 days it still comes up with files recognized. I don't get the logic in what order this happens so I don't know if it's done or not. It does not seem to be in the order that I added the sources nor does it seem alphabetically.

4. The Sorting order of sources in the sidepanel and normal view is different. Wouldn't it be simpler if they where in the same order? Like: Add Source, Network, connected volumes and than the sources.

What I now have is add source, action, adventure,.... network, new movies. So my sources and the general options are mixed. They are alphabetic of course. This is a bit inconsequent. Okay I'm nagging here :)

5. It takes still about 20 seconds before I see any of my media under movies. Same when going back from my sources to the library again.

6. Something I didn't have before: sometimes I have no video when playing a video file. Quit Boxee and do it again problem solved. I do hear sound though. I cannot find the logic in it. Just happens sometimes. Same file plays fine next time.

7. I had a couple of crashes (reports send). This only seems to happen when Boxee is importing stuff and I'm browsing through my library.

8. Still have a lot of files with totally wrong cover art. Example :Warlords Of Atlantis gets the artwork for 300?

9. All of a sudden I had a TV series called Action. It turns out that it grouped Hostage (the one with bruce willis) part 1 and part 2 and Kill Bill (complete) into one Tv series that has absolutely nothing to do with both. It seems Boxee really doesn't like films that end with (). Or it doesn't recognize it and classifies it totally wrong. It would be nice to manually name a movie if it's not recognized or at least adjust the name into what it is. Example : Aliens (director's cut) instead of just Aliens. From the My Sources view I can of course see this but everything should be correct in the library view to makes easier.

10. When browsing through my sources I get no movie info. Same movie does have info in the library mode.

11. When a 2 part movie is not recognized by itself it will keep showing up as two movies. I now have Hostage and Hostage in my library. Adjusting the name would already help a lot.

12. Some artists show up in different versions. I now have Siouxie and the Banshees and Siouxie & the Banshees.

13. I noticed that when I quit Boxee my OS X screensaver was active behind it. Could this be a problem?

14. It would nice if there was no artist art the album art would be used instead.

So in short:

All works like before. I noticed a speed bump while importing stuff in the background. I would really like to know when it's done since it takes days it seems. Finding stuff back is maybe the most important thing when using a media center so with wrong movie info/album art it is very difficult. And Oh yeah I still love it :)


Update:

a. I figured out what files are not recognized : Alle files with : and () and part 1 and 2. Example: 2001 A Space Odyssey is not recognized it needs to be 2001 : A Space Odyssey. Alien 3 (director's cut) not found. Alien 3 is found. Hostage part 1 and Hostage part 2 not found, Hostage is found. It would be very nice to manually correct any file names in Boxee.

b. I removed the file Doctor Who Confidential only to find it being imported later in my library again.

c. It seems that I have a lot of files in my sources but not in the library. When they have a thumbnail instead of a poster it is for 90% of the cases not recognized. This way I can recognize them.

[xain09]

Update: after 5 days it still manages to find a movie from time to time. My MacMini is also turned on 24/24....

[Gamester17]

Sorry but I still feel that you are thread hijacking yourself by not following the norm; one topic per thread.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_hijacking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netiquette

If everyone posted threads like these then it would be impossible to search the forum :rolleyes:

Again I suggest that you split you ideas and reports into a separate thread per topic.

No offense but IMHO, Boxee needs to get some forum moderators that take charge of stuff like this :p

[marcel]

@ Gamester17 valid points but partly my fault ...have not had the years of knowledge that you have had at xbmc forums :)...

@xain09 please could you split your ideas and reports into a separate thread per topic also make please create a clear topic summary for people to be able to search it ..

Thanks

[xain09]

Hi,

I have already searched the whole forum and most problems where already reported elsewhere so there's no real need to make new threads since they have all been posted somewhere before. Unfortunately I don't have that much time so I will keep my input to a bare minimum from now on.

[Gamester17]

@ Gamester17 valid points but partly my fault ...have not had the years of knowledge that you have had at xbmc forums :)Trust me, it going to be chaotic at best if you guys let everybody post anything in any thread, at the XBMC we have a few simple guidelines that we ask everyone to follow so that all will get along with each other (and if and when they do not follow the guidelines we ask them to change their ways so they know for the next time), check them out here:
http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=XBMC_Forum_FAQ

See what I did there, I just hijacked your thread ;)

[marcel]

@Gamester17 stop hijacking the thread...:)

@xain09 you feedback is important to me(and i 'm the admin) and the boxee team so feel free to carry on with this thread with your great reports ...

[xain09]

Back with a re-hijack ;) I don't want to piss off anybody here of course so I'll try to keep it clean from now on.

[marcel]

no problem...:)