The Next GUI?

[weaver4]

If my wife was going to hand me a DVD for a backup/conversion she might say something like this.

"Can you compress this, I need it to run on our Stand-Alone Divx player, I want it to fit on a DVD, it is a concert so I need good sound."

or she might say

"Can you compress this, I need it to run on our Stand-Alone DivX player, but I need for it to fit on a CD, fair quality video and sound are OK."

or she might say

"Can you compress this, I need it on a CD, and it must play on the Windows-Media-Player on a plain-jane PC"

She would not say that she needs XviD codec, single pass, quantization of 3, lame audio coder at 160kbps. Huh...??

Why should a user need to know video codecs, audio codecs, bit rates quantization, cropping....ect. Why would simple-sue know what rate she should use for MP3 audio coding? Why should it be harder than using DVD shrink?

IMHO the next generation of tools need to be much less geek like.

You should select your input:

Output method:
- SAP
- Plain-Jane WMP
- WMP, MPC or such with upgraded codec.

Output Medium:
- DVD
- CD
- Hard Drive

Video Quality:
- fair
- good
- very good
- great

Audio Quality:
- fair
- good
- very good
- great

And then hit "Go".

Just a thought.

[communist]

AutoGK ;)
It doesnt ouput Video DVD but it covers pretty much of the rest (the XviD/DivX SAP aspect).

[unskinnyboy]

Isn't this kind of what AutoGK does anyway? Codec selection, resolution settings & audio type is in the Advanced Options. So if simple-sue doesn't want to make a choice regarding those or doesn't know what choice to make, then she doesn't need to go into Advanced Options.

For video and audio, you cannot just bluntly classify them into good, great etc because they are very subjective. Which is why something like a target quality percentage helps, so she can decide "OK, I want about 70% quality of the DVD".

For playback, simple-sue would need an MPEG-4 decoder anyway, so it's not as plain-jane as playing back MPEG-1 even. As for WMP, it is just another DShow app (bloated, I may add), like BSPlayer or ZoomPlayer. If the output play fine on any other DShow based player, it will play fine in WMP too. So no output needs to be tailor-made for WMP per se.

I think simple-sue should stick to a DVD Player. :p

[mod]

IMO the problem isn't the app, is the wife :D

[buzzqw]

well... my wife has been so accustomed to good quality rips that i can go lower then 1CD (for SAP) :D , and audio must be dolby or 160kbps mp3 at LEAST !

seriusly any so GEEK software cannot be used because anyone would be something different. Better to have open application that can be adapted to multi pourpose encodings

BHH

[weaver4]

For most people I don't think it is subjective. Sure some may say "this is not fair it is poor", then the next time they would select good knowing they would get fair.

It use to be that when you did HTML you started with a text editor and it was beyond the capability of most people. Now those same people use Dream Weaver or FrontPage, sure the purist still use the HTML editor, but easier tools opened up that market to everyone.

AutoGk and avi.net are good programs, but still they could hide more of the details away. For example there is a whole paragraph in the AutoGK document that tells you what the correlation is between quality percentage and quality of the content. Why do that? That quality percentage means absolutely nothing to the newbie.

I don't like WMP either; but it does ship with the computer and everyone knows how to use it. I would like to see all the content that is generated include a link to a location on the web where the appropriate codec could be downloaded; and have it downloaded and installation automatically. Just like web browsers do for plugins.

[Sharktooth]

M$ transformed computer users into brainless zombies...

when you buy a home theatre system, or a router, or a car stereo, or even a freezer, or anything that requires a certain user interaction that's more than pushing a button you have to RTFM.
It's the same for software: AutoGK is a one click solution with almost no user interaction... for other softwares with more user interaction you have to RTFM!

[Sirber]

Shark, you RTFM only if it doesn't work. You are a man, act like it :sly:

[buzzqw]

Sorry Sirber , i have to disagree

If manual/readme is present i (and i hope many others) read it before lauching application

I have learn that without reading i can use only few parts/aspect of a program, or at least not at fully capabilities

I suppose that if a RTFM is present than is a good thing to read it

BHH

[berrinam]

The problem here is that this is not simply a user-interface discussion: while it's all well and good to say, 'it should be able to do this, this and this', the more the work done by the computer means more decisions made a by a computer, wrongly. What decisions have to be made when compressing a video?
Preprocessing: deinterlacing, resizing, denoising, sharpening
Encoding: Speed vs. quality, size vs. quality, portability vs. time and quality
Format: A seemingly arbitrary decision based on tools and target
So far, AutoGK has gone the furthest to automating these decisions, but the results of that mean that it's quality is often far worse than what a patient human can achieve. Let's look at how it makes its desicions and what problems they cause:
Deinterlacing: AutoGK uses a detection algorithm which is pretty advanced (for a long time, the best free one, until my very own ;)), and good enough for most sources. However, as it is inevitably wrong occasionally (being only a computer), sometimes the results can be very poor.
Resizing, speed vs. quality: AutoGK uses a compressibility check to determine the compressibility of the source, and then adjusts the resolution and encoding parameters to make the 'best' quality, given the target filesize. This method is severely limited, because of the unpredictable nature of compressibility, and this is even more so with codecs like x264.
Format: AutoGK has a very simply algorithm for this: no choice whatsoever. len0x simply asserted that it would be easier if only XviD was supported.
Don't get me wrong: AutoGK is the best of its type, but I'm trying to point out the problem with automated solutions like this: they are too tempting. The computer does it all for you, and so you are inclined to think, 'oh, it's a computer, it must be right', whereas, without careful planning and lots of experimentation, it will be much the opposite. Problems then arise when the results are much worse than a human could produce. That's why we still need humans at the moment.

Why would simple-sue know what rate she should use for MP3 audio coding?Because at the current stage in technology, with only a small bit of reading and listening, anyone can already be a better judge than the computer.

IMHO the next generation of tools need to be much less geek like.Not for the geeks. You'll find that MeGUI is already very simple to use, because the tricky stuff like deinterlacing and video codec settings is already done by the auto-deinterlacing and sharktooth's profiles respectively. But I certainly do not endorse removing the control for power users.

Possible ways to make encoding more n00b-friendly:
More automation, eg of denoising, resizing, and bitrate/codec settings.
Distribution of more profiles for encoding.
Add a sort of interactive, question-based, walkthrough of video encoding setup, like 'Is your video recorded from TV', 'Does your video have grain that looks like this?', 'How bad would you rate the grain?', 'Select the image that looks the best', 'How much time do you want to spend encoding?' This is pretty much an advanced implementation of Microsoft's Inductive User Interface philosophy, which makes it easier for the users.
I think the last option could be the most powerful, because it combines the knowledge based of the experienced user (which can be embedded into a program) with the human judgement skills of a perhaps inexperienced user.

[DarkZell666]

Add a sort of interactive, question-based, walkthrough of video encoding setup, like 'Is your video recorded from TV', 'Does your video have grain that looks like this?', 'How bad would you rate the grain?', 'Select the image that looks the best', 'How much time do you want to spend encoding?' This is pretty much an advanced implementation of Microsoft's Inductive User Interface philosophy, which makes it easier for the users.

Exactly what I was thinking after reading a couple of posts in this thread (before I stumbled upon yours :D)
Something a noob would probably want to see when launching the app is a quick guide to recognizing the artifacts present in the movie (combing, ringing, blocking, rainbowing, dot-crawl, noise/grain etc ...) with screenshots. If he sees any of them, he would check the corresponding tickbox and click on "next".

[foxyshadis]

If this megui wiki thing gets off the ground it wouldn't hurt to have links between the program and the wiki to explain settings and tweaks. (Or simply an offline dump of it, like avisynth's.)

[weaver4]

Of course you read the manual. Read the Manual for MeGui or even AutoGK and highlight every word or acronym that your mom would not understand. The paper would covered in highlights.

All I am saying is that it does not have to be like that.

I am working now on a piece of very technical medical equipment that we need to make the interface easy enough that Nurses (without training) can understand how to operate it. This made me think of the same type of situation that exist in the Video Encoding world.

[check]

There are two different directions you can take a GUI:

Simple. Uncluttered and easy to use - but lacks power and functionality
Complex. Allows more functionality and a more powerful interface - but far harder for beginners to start using

These styles are pretty much mutually exclusive. You can't really create an interface that combines them (but you can certainly try ;)). In this case, two great examples are AutoGK and MeGUI.

If I wanted to get someone started on video encoding / DVD ripping / etc, I wouldn't start them with MeGUI, I'd start them with AutoGK My endorsement of AutoGK here in no way reduces my support for MeGUI and the 1Click encoder which will be awesome when someone gets around to making presets and it's moved out from wherever it's hidden into the limelight and once they get the general idea of ripping, onto MeGUI. As I said, the two approaches to GUI design are mutually exclusive, but there's nothing to stop different programs being developed. Windows Movie Maker and Premiere both coexist happily :)

There was going to be a longish spiel here about how we shouldn't expect people to RTFM and lowering the bar for entry into video editing can only be a good thing - but it turned out far too long and jumbled, so I cut it out :P.
In short: the OP has a good point - we do need simple products, but they should not exist to the exclusion of complex products, or vice versa.

[Jacquers]

You could have a simple and complex product in one:

Have a "Simple" section / tab with the minimum settings for end-users.
Also Have an "Advanced" section where expert users can change all the advanced settings like they want.

Now combine that with profiles and ship some default profiles that already have the advanced settings tweaked. Let the end-users load the profiles in the basic section so they dont have to worry about advanced settings, and let the experts be able to tweak the profiles to their liking. A fairly decent compromise imo.

[berrinam]

The compromise which MeGUI already aims to reach. Especially the One Click Encoder. Profiles are missing, though, and the other thing to remember is that designing a GUI for novices isn't as simple as just dumming down an advanced GUI: that'll give you a still-advanced GUI, but without the control.