Author Topic: Mouser's Media Browser v2 - Dec 30, 2019 (Read 89,251 times)

mouser · « **Reply #50 on:** December 17, 2019, 11:09 AM »

The virtual date tree system I am going to write would make it pretty easy for me to filter things into different virtual folders..
Theoretically I could add a feature that created virtual folders for images based on the keyword "tags" in the (png/jpg) image files, plus add a feature that let you add keyword tags to images.

However, it would *incredibly* slow down the program to scan the files for tags (loading each image), and the only way to make that acceptable would be to cache information for unchanged files between runs, would would involve using a kind of persistent cache/database system.. And i'm not so keen on going down that road. If there weren't so many good heavy duty image management tools out there it would be worth doing..

tomos · « **Reply #51 on:** December 17, 2019, 05:54 PM »

^would it be any easier if it just stuck for one session -- or even for one viewing of the folder.
Here's a scenario:
scroll through a few hundred images, finding a couple here and there you want to e.g move or edit or both. Tag them as you view them. Before moving on to another folder, you copy/move/whatever tagged images.
You move to another folder, those images now no longer tagged.

mouser · « **Reply #52 on:** December 17, 2019, 11:06 PM »

Let me think on it..

mouser · « **Reply #53 on:** December 18, 2019, 05:54 PM »

So I've finally got my virtual date tree working -- this it the main feature I had planned for this program when I first started coding it. Still needs a bit of tweaking but here's a screenshot to show the basic idea:

The left hand tree is *NOT* a directory structure.. It has scanned the root directory specified and then created a virtual folder tree organized by year/month (i could do by day too for heavy photographers).
Clicking on a year will let you browse all images from that year, or click on a month to narrow down by that).
The numbers on the right are the number of files in each "virtual" collection.

tomos · « **Reply #54 on:** December 18, 2019, 09:14 PM »

^ That looks very impressive mouser

mouser · « **Reply #55 on:** December 19, 2019, 06:01 AM »

New version uploaded.. let me know what you think!

mouser · « **Reply #56 on:** December 19, 2019, 01:40 PM »

Btw, if people didn't know, Screenshot Captor comes with a "tool" menu item for Mouser's Media Browser, so if you install this program you can trigger it from Screenshot Captor to browse your screenshots more easily.

mouser · « **Reply #57 on:** December 19, 2019, 02:15 PM »

Updated with options for showing a virtual date node for each day of the month.. Might be useful for people with big image collections who want finer grain browsing.

mouser · « **Reply #58 on:** December 19, 2019, 03:00 PM »

A few words about the way that MMB works with large folders.

MMB lets you set a root folder path, and shows the subfolders under it. You can choose whether clicking on a folder shows the recursive contents of that folder, which can be very useful.

For paths with only a couple hundred images, everything will happen fast enough to not worry about details.

Things become slightly more complicated when you are dealing with folders containing thousands of images.

In this case, clicking on a folder node (or the root folder note), can take several seconds (minutes even) to scan the recursive contents of that folder and all of it's subfolders.

After scanning is complete, exploring and clicking on any of the virtual date folders will NOT trigger a need to rescan the directories, and so should be very fast to drill down into the virtual date folder.

HOWEVER, clicking on a sub-directory currently DOES trigger a re-scan of that subdirectory. Because of this, drilling down into a subdirectory and then BACK UP to the top node, or refiltering based on keywords, could present some annoying delays.
The benefit of this is that the program is happy for you to jump around without having to first rescan the entire path (aborting the initial scan, etc.)

What I will probably try to add soon, is a feature that will be a little smarter about rescanning -- so that if you have a giant folder you are working with, AND you let it do an initial completed scan of that folder, it will thereafter (on the same run) not have to rescan as you pop in and out of subdirectories.

That may be a little confusing.. To summarize: Each time you click on a subfolder in the DIRECTORY tree, or change the keyword filter, the program rescans that directory; each time you click on a node in the virtual date tree hierarchy, it does not rescan files, it simply filters them to show only those from the matching date.

tomos · « **Reply #59 on:** December 20, 2019, 01:12 AM »

At the moment I'm focused on -- and loving, the virtual date hierarchy.
This does sound great though:

Quote from: mouser on December 19, 2019, 03:00 PM

What I will probably try to add soon, is a feature that will be a little smarter about rescanning -- so that if you have a giant folder you are working with, AND you let it do an initial completed scan of that folder, it will thereafter (on the same run) not have to rescan as you pop in and out of subdirectories.

As said I'm loving virtual date hierarchy -- finding amazing screenhots of images (older photos mostly) that I made years ago.
Also, for what this is doing, it's really fast

I currently have the virtual hierarchy in a narrow column on the left; I increase the size of the thumbnail pane to most of the screen, leaving a small token column on the right for the actual preview/viewer pane.

Reproducible bug:
Using that slider I reduce the size of the thumbnails to below 30. The thumbnails go from showing maybe 25 thumbnails to showing just one image in the pane.

FWIW using keyboard to navigate gets confusing:
when focus is in thumbnail pane, focused file is highlighted blue -- this remains the same when focus is moved elsewhere (via tab key) which makes it difficult to know where one is when nothing else is highlighted. I can see when focus is in the hierarchy -- virtual or real, also when in one of the filter fields and the root but then I lose it and find I have to use the mouse to get back to the thumbnail field.
In fact I dont think I can tab to the thumbnail pane at all(?)

mouser · « **Reply #60 on:** December 20, 2019, 04:25 AM »

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I increase the size of the thumbnail pane to most of the screen, leaving a small token column on the right for the actual preview/viewer pane.

You could try grid mode, which has no image view panel, and just double click to view image using an external viewer.

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Using that slider I reduce the size of the thumbnails to below 30. The thumbnails go from showing maybe 25 thumbnails to showing just one image in the pane.

Will check into this.

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FWIW using keyboard to navigate gets confusing:

Will look into this.

mouser · « **Reply #61 on:** December 21, 2019, 12:51 PM »

Updated with some improvements to thumbnail sizing.

tomos · « **Reply #62 on:** December 22, 2019, 12:19 PM »

Quote from: mouser on December 21, 2019, 12:51 PM

Updated with some improvements to thumbnail sizing.

looking good -- that resizing thumbnail bug is fixed

tomos · « **Reply #63 on:** December 22, 2019, 12:26 PM »

I preume it's intentional that the thubnails are a lot smaller in the grid view as in the thmbnail panel. (Seems logical to me.)

One thing I'm not a fan of is the pop-up message in the tray on start. This can be a helpful reminder when the software is starting minimised (e.g. with windows) but otherwise seems gratuitious to me. It steals the focus and forces the taskbar to display.

EDIT//
OTOH maybe the logic is if the browser is called from one of your other apps?

mouser · « **Reply #64 on:** December 22, 2019, 12:29 PM »

Quote

I preume it's intentional that the thubnails are a lot smaller in the grid view as in the thmbnail panel. (Seems logical to me.)

Yes, but...

The trackbar scales the values in the options, so you can adjust the baseline starting size of thumbnails in the different modes in the options:

The settings are unintuitive, I acknowledge, but there is some logic to it.

Essentially the trackbar lets you tweak the resizing of thumbnails, but the Automatic resizing mode will also mess with the size of the thumbnails in order to use the space efficiently..

For example. the idea of minimum and maximum sizes in the options is what helps MMB decide how many rows and columns to show in grid mode.. It will try to find a number of rows and columns so that the thumbnails are between min and max widths. Again the thumbnail sizing trackbar on the main window scales these min and max values..

mouser · « **Reply #65 on:** December 22, 2019, 12:35 PM »

Quote

One thing I'm not a fan of is the pop-up message in the tray on start.

I don't think there should be any pop-up message in the tray.. what does it say?

cranioscopical · « **Reply #66 on:** December 22, 2019, 12:47 PM »

Quote from: mouser on December 22, 2019, 12:35 PM

what does it say?

"Oh boy, I thought this was an Apple!"

mouser · « **Reply #67 on:** December 22, 2019, 02:56 PM »

I think the only time you might see a tray message is if the program is already running in the system tray when you launch it again -- and it reminds you that it was already running.

tomos · « **Reply #68 on:** December 22, 2019, 03:47 PM »

I'll make a separate post per topic:

so that's where the options are

I saw File > Edit and moved on to the next item

You gotta admit though that normally an 'Edit' is not added before Options/Preferences/whatever :p

I'll look through them when I get a chance. Note the text is very small:
FHD screen (1920 x 1080)
Text etc. is @ 125% (default)

Here SC options on the left -- not a big difference but SC is near my limit (but good), the other is a strain

EDIT// for some reason that screenshot shows (here) a lot bigger that the actual size of those dialogues. But at least the comparision is helpful

tomos · « **Reply #69 on:** December 22, 2019, 03:51 PM »

Quote from: mouser on December 22, 2019, 02:56 PM

I think the only time you might see a tray message is if the program is already running in the system tray when you launch it again -- and it reminds you that it was already running.

I think it shows that greeting message once in a session (after reboot or login) -- it hasnt shown it since.
A couple pics explain:

I'm pretty sure CHS also shows that message on login, not sure about SC etc.

mouser · « **Reply #70 on:** December 22, 2019, 03:54 PM »

Yeah CHS by default announced itself; you can disable that in options.
The others shouldn't. But I can see in the MMB code that it does display that "Greetings" message if started in the tray; I'll disable that.

smaragdus · « **Reply #71 on:** December 24, 2019, 10:36 PM »

@mouser

First- I am glad that Mouser's Media Browser is still in development. I tested version 1.15.01 and I think I foumd a bug when switching between view modes, example:

Switch either from View mode: Thumbstrip left or from View mode: Thumbstrip top to View mode: Grid;
Try to switch back from View mode: Grid to View mode: Thumbstrip left or to View mode: Thumbstrip top and see what you get;

If needed I can apply screen shots.

I will repeat some of the suggestions I made earlier (here):

Option to save folders as favourites;
Support for animated GIF and PNG (APNG) images;

I work regularly with animated images (mostly APNG) and support for animated GIF and APNG files is essential to me, examples:

Animated PNG:

Animated GIF:

Happy holidays!

mouser · « **Reply #72 on:** December 25, 2019, 12:00 AM »

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Option to save folders as favourites;

It will auto add folders to the GoTo menu as you use them..

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Try to switch back from View mode: Grid to View mode: Thumbstrip left or to View mode: Thumbstrip top and see what you get;

I see it does not remember the size of the thumbnail strip, is that what you are talking about?

mouser · « **Reply #73 on:** December 25, 2019, 12:51 AM »

Happy holidays to you too!

smaragdus · « **Reply #74 on:** December 25, 2019, 12:57 AM »

@mouser

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I see it does not remember the size of the thumbnail strip, is that what you are talking about?

Yes, the thumbnails become very big. The only workaround I could find to restore the thumbnails size was to delete settings file ('MousersMediaBrowser.ini').

Also, while using 'View mode: Thumbstrip left' and 'View mode: Thumbstrip top' the thumbnails orientation is according to Exif, while switching to 'View mode: Grid' the thumbnails orientation is not according to Exif. Can you confirm that?

Quote

It will auto add folders to the GoTo menu as you use them..

I am not sure I understand how to use 'GoTo' - I have browsed many folders containing image files and 'GoTo' menu is always inaccessible (Windows 8 here).