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Old 16th July 2010, 00:08   #1  |  Link
GreenEyez
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MPC-HC GUI Discussion Thread

While MPC-HC is the best player on the market, getting the latest features first (PGS support comes in mind), the GUI is outdated. At it beginnings that was done to minimize sistem resource usage, on today`s modern sistems (P4 and above mostly) the impact of a new modern GUI would be minimal.

Also, a lot of people have started using MPC-HC as a external player from 7MC/MB & XMBC (my HTPC Software Guide for Windows 7 Media Center also recommends MPC-HC as an external player for MKV), and the look of MPC-HC doesn`t really go to well with these modern HTPC front-ends.

I`ve done a mock-up (In Adobe Illustrator) of my ideea of a revamped GUI, with added buttons and menus for subtitle/audio tracks and chapter selection, the things a lot of people use the most.

If the developers are willing to start redesigning the GUI, i`ll be more than happy to do the entire design, everything from top to bottom, as they say.

Mock-up removed, V2 added

Last edited by GreenEyez; 17th July 2010 at 13:42.
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Old 16th July 2010, 01:02   #2  |  Link
dbone1026
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GreenEyez View Post
While MPC-HC is the best player on the market, getting the latest features first (PGS support comes in mind), the GUI is outdated. At it beginnings that was done to minimize sistem resource usage, on today`s modern sistems (P4 and above mostly) the impact of a new modern GUI would be minimal.

Also, a lot of people have started using MPC-HC as a external player from 7MC/MB & XMBC (my HTPC Software Guide for Windows 7 Media Center also recommends MPC-HC as an external player for MKV), and the look of MPC-HC doesn`t really go to well with these modern HTPC front-ends.

I`ve done a mock-up (In Adobe Illustrator) of my ideea of a revamped GUI, with added buttons and menus for subtitle/audio tracks and chapter selection, the things a lot of people use the most.

If the developers are willing to start redesigning the GUI, i`ll be more than happy to do the entire design, everything from top to bottom, as they say.

Here`s how it looks (and the Illustrator file can be downloaded from here ):
I do like the idea of a more modern look. I understand that when all is said and done playback functionality reigns king over looks, but would be nice as time permits amongst the developers to see a more modern/functional look
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Old 16th July 2010, 01:29   #3  |  Link
Inspector.Gadget
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IMO that's exactly the wrong direction to take the GUI in. MPC-HC, and before it MPC, have always featured clean design that integrates well with Windows. A look that's mainly "OS X circa 2000, as drawn in MS Paint, with some blue patches and an overweight font added" will only alienate a huge segment of the userbase, and isn't "modern" in any sense of the word. People that like the glitzy look already have an abundance of things to choose from.
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Old 16th July 2010, 02:09   #4  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GreenEyez View Post
While MPC-HC is the best player on the market, getting the latest features first (PGS support comes in mind), the GUI is outdated. At it beginnings that was done to minimize sistem resource usage, on today`s modern sistems (P4 and above mostly) the impact of a new modern GUI would be minimal.

Also, a lot of people have started using MPC-HC as a external player from 7MC/MB & XMBC (my HTPC Software Guide for Windows 7 Media Center also recommends MPC-HC as an external player for MKV), and the look of MPC-HC doesn`t really go to well with these modern HTPC front-ends.

I`ve done a mock-up (In Adobe Illustrator) of my ideea of a revamped GUI, with added buttons and menus for subtitle/audio tracks and chapter selection, the things a lot of people use the most.

If the developers are willing to start redesigning the GUI, i`ll be more than happy to do the entire design, everything from top to bottom, as they say.

Here`s how it looks (and the Illustrator file can be downloaded from here ):
While your idea and intention is good, you're obviously not an interface designer... what you did is horrible from a designer's view, as accessibility, functionality and whatever else i can think of
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Old 16th July 2010, 02:16   #5  |  Link
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Originally Posted by Inspector.Gadget View Post
People that like the glitzy look already have an abundance of things to choose from.
That's it! The only thing that I don't like in MPC-HC's GUI is the position of the MRU list, which should be at the bottom of the File menu, and above the Exit command. And no, G.U.I. doesn't stand for "Gay User Interface".
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Old 16th July 2010, 02:42   #6  |  Link
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GUI? Meh, it is should be known already that there is no chances to see new customizable interface in mpc-hc. No big deal! Let's hope that current GUI "that integrates well with Windows" will integrates well with something newer than windows98. What rally integrates well is WMP.Some non-players examples probably will be Firefox4 and Chrome. Also personally I'd like to see FULL matroska support (like in Haali splitter but even better) and for other containers too of course. I'd like to see subtitle renderer (internal and vsfilter) to be 50% faster than now. And some other things...
But unlikely this will happens until I became a grandfather so I will be happy if at least someone will look at small things like why "default style" option for subtitles acts weird... and why no subtitles is selected if the ones in container set to be disabled by default but external subtitles is present.

Last edited by Keiyakusha; 16th July 2010 at 02:57.
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Old 16th July 2010, 04:26   #7  |  Link
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I like GreenEyez' design, especially for my family members. It would autohide anyway.

The current design isn't attractive, and not very functional. It is a list of advanced options to control playback of the current video.

And how can anyone defend the full-screen interface "green bar" slider?
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Old 16th July 2010, 04:31   #8  |  Link
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I think if somebody would replace the current seekbar with Windows' progress bar (or a look-alike, since I guess the Windows' progress bar does not support clicking) then it would be enough to make MPC-HC integrate well with Windows within a foreseeable future. Maybe a scroll bar will work as well? Of course I do realize that saying "replace" does not mean it's that simple in the code otherwise it would have been done already.
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Old 16th July 2010, 04:34   #9  |  Link
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Oh God no..

This image might explain a few things:
http://www.infocellar.com/win98/medi...s/image009.jpg

* crosses fingers for hotlinking

...and I wouldn't mind seeing VSFilter being faster than now like Keiyakusha.

Maybe the right-click menu in full-screen could have an option for a short version with perhaps just navigation, possibly filters and full screen toggle (and another option to hold shift and right-click to see the long version, i guess).

Last edited by namaiki; 16th July 2010 at 04:41.
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Old 16th July 2010, 04:41   #10  |  Link
Hypernova
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Oh God no..

This image might explain a few things:

http://www.infocellar.com/win98/medi...s/image009.jpg

* crosses fingers for hotlinking
..You're right namaiki. I hide all the control bar so I didn't realize that that part is where it looks so Windows 16&32bit. I always wish that somehow someone could slap WMP's control overlay onto MPC-HC, but I think that's asking too much so I kind of hope replacing only seeking has higher chance, but now..

Well, I can live with the old school GUI as long as the features are there
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Old 16th July 2010, 04:54   #11  |  Link
namaiki
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^Unhide the seekbar and in fullscreen mode, if you put the cursor to the bottom of the screen, the seekbar will appear?
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Old 16th July 2010, 05:06   #12  |  Link
Hypernova
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^Unhide the seekbar and in fullscreen mode, if you put the cursor to the bottom of the screen, the seekbar will appear?
Yes. I didn't hide or have any problem with the current seekbar though. Maybe I'm not clear on that part. I only hide the control bar i.e. playback, pause, etc. buttons.
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Old 16th July 2010, 05:11   #13  |  Link
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Oh I c.. I get that, but are you really wanting to make the seekbar green or blue?
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Old 16th July 2010, 05:42   #14  |  Link
Hypernova
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Oh I c.. I get that, but are you really wanting to make the seekbar green or blue?
No. Not really. I just think that if the seekbar could be replace with Windows' progress bar (whatever the version that it's running on), then it will feel more "integrated" with the system.
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Old 16th July 2010, 07:20   #15  |  Link
nevcairiel
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The problem is that MPC-HC uses the very old MFC components to render the UI, and MFC is not really skinnable.

For modern-looking UIs, you either render them yourself (which is A LOT of work), or you use the new UI toolkits that come with the .net environment. Changing the UI toolkit is basically a rewrite of the whole frontend part of the player, however, which is also alot of work, and has no developers to do it - also MPC-HC has other issues that don't allow this kind of change.

If one were really to write a new GUI, it would basically be a new project. Then once the GUI is done, you could merge all the playback components, renderers, filters and whatnot from the old project into the new.
But then, we already have other players that look "modern", and we can easily use the MPC-HC filters in them. I don't see the big requirement to rewrite it, imho.

PS:
imho, GreenEyez design is really ugly. Rather have the current WMP interface or the default XBMC skin.

PPS:
Also, if you like the default XBMC skin (or any XBMC skin), there is work going on to write a DirectShow based player backend for XBMC (the DSPlayer project). Its shaping up quite nicely so far, and once its rather stable, it can fill all your needs for a nice looking and capable playback GUI.

Last edited by nevcairiel; 16th July 2010 at 07:23.
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Old 16th July 2010, 12:26   #16  |  Link
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Who gives a damn about GUI? I thought the oldschool minimalistic looks are intended.
I would much rather see the devs spending time and energy on understanding the code and fixing stuff, than adding new features or even reworking the GUI.
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Old 16th July 2010, 13:26   #17  |  Link
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Well, i think the classic and clean design is one of mpc's major pro's, but it's understandable, when some users ask for a bit of modernization, it just looks aged here and there.

Replacing the seekbar, volumecontrol and the buttons with some more 2010 looking ones would'nt hurt. Actually i think even skin-support would'nt hurt anyone, if its done right.

While the gui still works good enough in windowed mode, it really does'nt does well in fullscreen mode, i think thats the only real drawback of mpc's current design. Even VLC with ts customizeable controlbar looks better here... ;-)
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Old 16th July 2010, 18:17   #18  |  Link
GreenEyez
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It was a MOCK-UP ffs, or a scetch, done in 30 minute. Just a plan on were to put the new buttons and menu styles.

Here`s a evolved version, i did today. As for integration, this one should integrated better with windows 7 (depends on the win color theme) . The classic MPC look, as someone stated above, integrates with Win 95 at the moment.

Mock-up 2 removed, V3 added

Last edited by GreenEyez; 17th July 2010 at 13:43.
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Old 16th July 2010, 18:18   #19  |  Link
Mercury_22
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Just a thought: wouldn't be nice to leave everything as it is except make the controls bar autohide in windowed mode too and make it transparent, ( the background not the buttons aka controls ! WMP 12 "style")?

And, my dream, replace Favorites with (add) a Library ! Media Player Classic Home Cinema Center !

P.S. I'm just asking ! is it difficult to apply the autohide function to the windowed mode too?
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Last edited by Mercury_22; 16th July 2010 at 18:33.
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Old 16th July 2010, 19:05   #20  |  Link
Inspector.Gadget
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That latest sketch-up is still completely the wrong direction. It looks like someone tried to skin Winamp classic to look like WMP11. Bright colors, glossy everything, a million buttons just interfere with usability.
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