Video Hub App 3

[whyboris]

I'm working on the next major release of Video Hub App version 3.0.0 🎉

The intended release date is "when it's ready" 😅 -- probably in a few months once I'm done adding the features, polishing UI, and making sure no bugs are around.

The large bulk of changes to the extraction functionality came in through #443 ✅

Two key features:

• More than one 'root' folder per hub 🎉
• Monitoring of folders (auto update hub when folder changes) courtesy of @cal2195 🙇

This will be a breaking change:

• v2 hubs will open in version 3 without a problem
• v3 hubs will open in version 2 but with limited functionality (not recommended)

I intend to keep .vha2 file name (rather than create .vha3 file name -- though I'm open to a discussion.

Various TODO are sprinkled across comments below. Additionally, a short list here:

• make the installed app size smaller Installer installs unnecessary (other platform files) #513
• check defaults for settingsButtons (whether hidden and/or toggled)
• check keyboard shortcuts (whether need changing and or grouping)
• check button grouping (maybe rearrange order inside the settings tabs)
• create a "welcome" tutorial to show on first app start
• check renaming works from modal, meta, and details views
• update all missing translations for all languages All language translations updated to match English #583
• make sure double-click opens app with no errors Hubs' opening mechanism not working correctly in v3 #546
• create new VHA website (with Gatsby) 🚀 - done: https://github.com/whyboris/video-hub-app-gatsby-website

Feedback and ideas welcome 🤝

[whyboris]

I'll be adding comments to keep track of things to do before v3 release. Others are welcome to discuss anything here too.

• Allow sorting by creation time #454 (comment) - make sure Default sort makes sense (with the new indexing system?) and when re-opening the app, the previous sort order shows up in the dropdown 😅

[TheTacoScott]

I think there is wisdom considering these (in whole or in part) for consideration in v3.x

#474
#475
#476

[whyboris]

Thank you @TheTacoScott -- I looked over these, but am not yet sold on the benefits (especially considering the immense cost in time of development). Please feel free to let me know more reasons in favor of any of the proposals in their respective Issue pages 👍

[whyboris]

I renamed master to main and merged in #443 😅 maybe the largest PR ever 🎉

Now it's time to clean things up, add a few minor features (closing the various small issues remaining) and get 3.0.0 released 🎉 🤞

There's still leftover things to do -- at least a month or two of work:

• implement Cal's blocks idea
• address Cal's backlog
• consider video player command-line arguments

[whyboris]

Also, the release is blocked by a problem with scanning remote directories:
paulmillr/chokidar#895 😓
I've identified the problem in chokidar and proposed a solution:
paulmillr/chokidar#895 (comment)
I hope it will get resolved 🤞

update: was resolved ✅ paulmillr/chokidar#1025

[whyboris]

I have a PR that may fix the problem with network folders 🤞 paulmillr/chokidar#1025

[whyboris]

Reminder to self:

• The sort filter shows "Default" on start-up even though it might be displaying a different sort order 😅 - must fix ⚠️

update: fixed with 2e46d46 😅 with #537

[whyboris]

Possible TODO: #355 (comment) <-- some items on this list

[orkomlosh]

Possible TODO: #355 (comment) <-- some items on this list

so we won't get confused this item was already done:
The HTML & CSS for the layout is rather hack-y, but it works well enough for now. One UI (user interface) problem I'm facing is the import indicator (doughnut progress bar on top-right). It stays even when the top ribbon (with folder & file name) gets collapsed, thus overlapping with the settings button (the gear). I'm unsure how to handle this with the UI 🤔

[whyboris]

Thanks for that fix again @orkomlosh 😁 -- I'm adding a short summary of #355 (comment)

• move the ImageElement[] to a dedicated service
• update children components to update a video properties, no need to emit and communicate back to home.component
• import indicator (doughnut progress bar on top-right) should hide when top bar is collapsed (fix by @orkomlosh 🎉 hide donut when ribbon is collapsed #498)
• Clean up (click) emits  #420 cleaning up the click-emissions

The above are maybe worth fixing before 3.0.0 - not required 👍

[lighthunt]

@whyboris In 3.0.0, hub may contain multiple "root" folders. When "show folders" is enabled, I believe they should be shown on the root level. At the the current versions, I see all of the sub-folders of "root" folders mixed in one view, there should be one level above showing root folders. Is it a bug/not implemented or intended to not show root folders?

[whyboris]

Thanks @lighthunt 👍 I've been thinking about the "root" folders when in "show folders" view too.

I'm unsure about my final decision (at least for now, prior to releasing 3.0.0). At the moment it's easiest to not change anything - the code works 🤷 but I agree that it would make conceptual sense to see the root folders first.

There is a nice aspect to not having root folders -- if you have two hard drives with similar folders, I believe the folders will be combined. So C:/movies/comedies and D:/movies/comedies will show up as a single folder "comedies" and show contents of both 🤔

I'll have to look at the code and see if it's easy to implement the change. If it's super easy, I might even have a toggle button in the settings. Most likely though, the code is complicated and won't be easy to change. It took me at least a day of work to get the algorithm right: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App/blob/main/src/app/pipes/folder-view.pipe.ts#L101 😅

We'll see - and thank you for the comment. Please feel free to share more thoughts on this or anything 😁

[lighthunt]

@whyboris "root" folders view -> I see what do you mean with the combination...
I guess if both approaches sounds reasonable and depends on data, a toggle for the user to choose would be the right thing to do (if the time/priority allows).

I think the motivation for seeing root folders from my POV (apart from being more logical in the way how my data are structured) was to be able to distinguish and browse only folders that are online/mounted .. I made a separate feature request for your consideration here #508

[orkomlosh]

move the ImageElement[] to a dedicated service
update children components to update a video properties, no need to emit and communicate back to home.component.

i think i covered most of it in my 3 recent PR's.
let me know if you think it's not cover yet

[whyboris]

I'm thinking of just releasing version 3.0.0 in the next month. All that's left is checking for extraction and watch folder bugs 😅 and it's ready to go 🚀

I'll need to think through how/whether it should be possible to cancel / stop the chokidar scan (currently no - but there is an indication that the scan is happening). Perhaps I should prevent some app interactions while chokidar is running 🤔 -- stuff to think about.

[kevinseelbach]

@whyboris Would it be a good idea to add a keyboard shortcut "adding" feature where, say you right click an action button, for example the "shuffle videos" icon in the menu/navbar, and a context menu comes up allowing you to assign a keyboard shortcut to the action? Does that make sense?

[whyboris]

@kevinseelbach -- this seems like a cool feature, but feels like it would take a lot of effort to write / add. The code addition wouldn't be trivial, and the UI would be a challenge.

ps - For many features, one of the big challenges is the UI (user interface) -- communicating clearly to users what is possible ("affordance") and how it can be done, preferably without resorting to large explanatory text. I'm not saying I've succeeded with this goal with all the features in my app - it's just something I'm striving towards 😅

[whyboris]

Thank you to @martincaron for the excellent investigation of the various combinations of searches across tags, folders, files, etc:

#403 (comment)

Even though I closed that issue, I think it's worth having a discussion about whether to change anything going forward.

I suspect we'll leave everything as is until after 3.0.0 is released (omg I've been trying to get this released for so long 😓 )

@martincaron -- feel free to chime in here, or if you prefer we could start another Issue dedicated to what you're proposing 🙇

[whyboris]

🤞 hoping to release 3.0.0 before Thanksgiving 😁

• make sure demo is limited to 50 videos without bugging out 👌 - done with Make demo work #582

[whyboris]

Closing and transferring the remaining issues to #574 ✅