2013-02-13, 07:23
Intro
I have an idea for a supplemental tool that I think may be useful to many users in the community, and to date I haven't been able to find an existing tool that can do it. I decided to create a couple screen mock-ups to solicit feedback from this group to see if there is actually an existing tool that can do this, or if not gauge how much interest there might be in getting something like this built out. I'm not an expert UI designer, but hopefully the screetshots help convey the concept (I used OSX just because I had better templates for mock-up not because I'm implying this has to be a mac-based tool).
The Idea
A challenge often faced my media collectors is the difficulty in quickly and easily comparing media libraries. Using traditional file name comparison tools obviously doesn't work because people rarely use the same naming convention. For those who use external media management tools like Ember you could always generate a report of your collection, but using that to compare collections is a pretty manual process. The idea is to build a tool that facilitates the ability for users to easily compare their media collections with others.
Screen 1
The opening screen allows a user to decide what step of the workflow they are in when they open the tool.
Screen 2
This screen allows the user to create an export of their library that they can share with others. My thought is that this would be a simple XML file. This file could then be opened by another user with the tool as input for the Compare Collections function which is described next. I'm thinking that this function could scrape local media info data IF it exists to enrich the meta data in the XML file, but I'm thinking it shouldn't be mandatory that a user has a perfected organized collection to participate in comparing collections.
Screen 3
This screen is the main function of the tool. The flow would be something like:
Screen 4
This screen is the request processing screen. The purpose of this screen is pretty straight forward. It allows a user to open a Process Request generated on the last screen, select items from the request, and then transfer them to specified location (such as an external drive).
If read this far, thanks for entertaining my idea! I' have lots of ideas of about how the features could be implemented, and expect things library locations would of course be better managed in a settings area. I'm also thinking there is probably quite a bit of existing code that could be used for much of the functionality of the tool (i.e. scrapers, stream inspectors, XML library formats, etc..
All feedback is welcome, let me know what you think!
I have an idea for a supplemental tool that I think may be useful to many users in the community, and to date I haven't been able to find an existing tool that can do it. I decided to create a couple screen mock-ups to solicit feedback from this group to see if there is actually an existing tool that can do this, or if not gauge how much interest there might be in getting something like this built out. I'm not an expert UI designer, but hopefully the screetshots help convey the concept (I used OSX just because I had better templates for mock-up not because I'm implying this has to be a mac-based tool).
The Idea
A challenge often faced my media collectors is the difficulty in quickly and easily comparing media libraries. Using traditional file name comparison tools obviously doesn't work because people rarely use the same naming convention. For those who use external media management tools like Ember you could always generate a report of your collection, but using that to compare collections is a pretty manual process. The idea is to build a tool that facilitates the ability for users to easily compare their media collections with others.
Screen 1
The opening screen allows a user to decide what step of the workflow they are in when they open the tool.
Screen 2
This screen allows the user to create an export of their library that they can share with others. My thought is that this would be a simple XML file. This file could then be opened by another user with the tool as input for the Compare Collections function which is described next. I'm thinking that this function could scrape local media info data IF it exists to enrich the meta data in the XML file, but I'm thinking it shouldn't be mandatory that a user has a perfected organized collection to participate in comparing collections.
Screen 3
This screen is the main function of the tool. The flow would be something like:
- First point the tool to their media collection. From there the tool will scrape their media (ideally based on existing local data, but support for IMDB scraping could be added too) to create an inventory of titles AND the quality of the video and audio for each title.
- Next, the user has two choices to select from for comparison. First would be to import an XML file created by another user in the screen 2 function. The other would be to point directly to a file directory (such as an attached hard drive). The tool would then scan the external collection using any meta data that is available.
- Once the comparison is complete, the user can then make a guided selection of items. As you can see in the UI mock-up I'm imaging allowing users to select titles they don't currently have, titles where the external copy is of higher quality, filter by years, etc...
- Next, the user has two choices. If the external collection is a connected file system, then the user would have the option to select "Transfer" and the tool would copy the selected items to a specified location. If the external collection is remote (meaning read from an XML file) the user will have the ability to select "Create" which will generate a request file (once again an XML file) that can be sent back to the other user for processing (see next screen for details).
Screen 4
This screen is the request processing screen. The purpose of this screen is pretty straight forward. It allows a user to open a Process Request generated on the last screen, select items from the request, and then transfer them to specified location (such as an external drive).
If read this far, thanks for entertaining my idea! I' have lots of ideas of about how the features could be implemented, and expect things library locations would of course be better managed in a settings area. I'm also thinking there is probably quite a bit of existing code that could be used for much of the functionality of the tool (i.e. scrapers, stream inspectors, XML library formats, etc..
All feedback is welcome, let me know what you think!
