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Now, Plasma Media Center on Desktop as well as Plasma Active!

Mon, 03/05/2012 - 23:39 — sinny

Hi!
I know that all of you are excited to know the current status of Plasma Media Center. This blogpost is about various exciting features and improvements. For quick update, scroll to the end of page contains the video of PMC running on plasma Active on an ExoPC.

One of the great news is that PMC is now touch optimized. By seeing the current demand and use of tablets , we thought that it would be great if we make Plasma Media Center running on tablets too. With a discussion in IRC meeting (on #active), I took up the task of making PMC usable with Plasma Active.

Features Added recently:

  1. Option to display All Music, All Pictures, All Videos available in filesystem without browsing it. If the user doesn’t want to browse through the filesystem, he can use these options which show All Music/ Videos/ Pictures available in filesystem together in a single click. This is achieved by using Plasma Active datamodels which in turn use Nepomuk.
  2. Music has been categorised on the basis of Artist, Album, etc. So, now users can listen to their favourite artists songs at one place. Thanks to Vishesh Handa who helped to understand how to use Nepomuk queries.
  3. Now, user can control volume by clicking over volume icon in controller and changing the pop down slider value and seeking now works properly.

To get real feel of how PMC is working now, please watch this video. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8yV2NKiADM


But we are not done yet, still lot of work to do (though its progress is little bit slow because only a couple of people are working on it). So, please give your precious feedback to improve it and to make Plasma Media Center rock.

Cheers! :)

Comments

Looking good!

Anonymous - 03/06/2012 - 09:13

Looking great! Thanks for all your effort / progress on this! I'm hoping we'll see some kind of system to look up album covers from online, which would let all of the generic audio / video icons be replaced with something more distinctive (like what XBMC does). Could I also suggest having the volume bar on the same row as everything else? That way it would take less vertical space and also remove the risk of accidentally clicking on seek above it. Anyway, it's looking great. I love the fact that you've kept it optimised for touch. It just makes for such a nice experience. Can't wait to try this out on a Sparc!

Thanks!

sinny - 03/07/2012 - 00:29

Hi!

Thanks for your great suggestion :)

We will be working further on this feature. Will arrange volume slider at appropriate position. 

Great news PMC is working in

Anonymous - 03/06/2012 - 02:39

Great news PMC is working in Plasma Active. Last week I created a rpm package for PMC, but it needed some changes to really work in PA. Have you created a rpm package for it? If not then you can use the .spec and .yaml files I used:

https://build.pub.meego.com/package/show?package=plasma-mediacenter&project=home%3Alamarque

Great!

sinny - 03/07/2012 - 00:37

It's nice to hear that you have tried packaging of PMC. I couldn't do yet. I guess you are Lamarque. If so, Will discuss with you on IRC channel. It will be great!

I think that the most

Anonymous - 03/06/2012 - 02:39

I think that the most important thing for media center is proper keyboard navigation. Everything should be binded. 

For a "TV" media center the libaries etc should be listed vertically. It just feels much more natural that way.

It would be nice if there were some GSOC projects for PCM as it could help boost its developement.

Thanks for your work. I can't wait for the day when I can use PCM as my only media center.

Thanks!

sinny - 03/07/2012 - 00:40

Thanks for the suggestion:)

We are working on making Media Center working on TV too.

Is it me...

Anonymous - 03/06/2012 - 02:17

...or is this very sluggish. 

I think the project is interesting but it needs polishing and tweaking. 

kinda

Shantanu Tushar (not verified) - 03/07/2012 - 12:12

yes, there are rough edges, mostly because playing a medium-large-ish video on makes the CPU pretty busy and the UI becomes sluggish. I am pretty sure the PMC people will polish it.

Congrats

Anonymous - 03/06/2012 - 01:57

Hey!

Seriously congratulations to making the Media Center work and maintaining it :) I'm eager to try it out already :)

Lukas

Thanks!

sinny - 03/07/2012 - 00:42

Thanks:)

I am feeling so happy and getting encouragement for making Media Center better and better...

User interface fluency?

Anonymous - 03/06/2012 - 01:16

It looks nice!

One question, though: is it a limitation of the software, or of the hardware, that the user interface animations (and also when you tried swiping a photo at 0:42 for example) is not so fluent sometimes?

I saw such moments more often in other Plasma Active movies (for example, when swiping through the "activity caroussel") and I was wondering what the reason is.

The user experience would improve if such things would "feel" more fluent.

For the rest, keep up the good work!

Thanks!

sinny - 03/07/2012 - 00:48

Thanks for the comment:)

I agree that sometime UI is little bit slow, but no worries. Lots of work are still to be done. Will fix this problem soon:)

It looks nice! One question,

Anonymous - 03/06/2012 - 01:13

It looks nice!

One question, though: is it a limitation of the software, or of the hardware, that the user interface animations (and also when you tried swiping a photo at 0:42 for example) is not so fluent sometimes?

I saw such moments more often in other Plasma Active movies (for example, when swiping through the "activity caroussel") and I was wondering what the reason is.

The user experience would improve if such things would "feel" more fluent.

For the rest, keep up the good work!

Like it!!

 



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