Membranophonist’s Ramblings

A few comments for Many Tricks’ yFlicks, a video player and organizer for Mac OS X.

1. A first-launch-only prompt to import the user’s movies (searching based on UTIs or whatever magic is required) and perhaps user-selectable locations would help them immerse themselves in the application. Creating groups from folders might help them orient themselves by carrying over their existing arrangement.
2. An option to set up folders to monitor for new videos would be nice. Sensible defaults could include ~/Movies and the user’s Safari Downloads folder and whichever other folders the user picks at first launch (should such an option be presented).
3. Allow drag-and-drop to the main pane; it is usually a much easier target because of its size (Fitts’ Law).
4. Group renaming is quirky. Double-clicking quickly does not engage the rename mode, but single-clicking a selected group does. The Enter key should also activate rename mode.
5. Command-Left Arrow and Command-Right Arrow should be bound to opening and closing the group folders.
6. The active group’s name should be displayed in the window titlebar. This is particularly useful if the Library pane is hidden, leaving no visual indication of which group is active.
7. Display metadata embedded in QT files. At least Title! Please! Director and Performers would also be nice.
8. Center the movie thumbnails within the right pane.
9. Retain the main window’s size across launches (ideally, in a relative way so that it can adapt to different screen setups, but I don’t know if that is feasible with available OS X technologies).
10. Allow multi-select and contextual menu star rating assignment. Having to rate videos individually is tedious if you have a large existing collection.
11. Clicking the Hide Library button in the lower left moves the right pane over, triggering the preview playback of the bottom left movie. This seems to be a bug with calculating the position of screen elements.
12. I dig the mouseover video previews, but I think the delay should be increased by a wee bit to prevent them from starting unintentionally.