Full Screen Interface with 10.5 Enhancements?

dbfreq13 · Post by **dbfreq13** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 8:50 am

Conor,

You've hinted at a Leopard-only version of DVDpedia with OS X.5 enhancements and Core Animation. Have you given any thoughts to when you might release this? I understand you don't want to force existing users to upgrade to X.5, but I'm wondering if you've decided when you think it would be wise to release this.

Thanks.

Brad

ScottH · Post by **ScottH** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 10:58 am

With previews of the 3-years-in-the-making update of that other wood-grain collection application starting to surface (it's Leopard-only), I would think the one and only thing that Bruji should be working on is improving the bar-code iSight scanning. I've read the "preview" of DL on AppleInsider, and there isn't much there to impress me over the current DVDpedia. EXCEPT for working bar code scanning. I've had arguments with friends who go with DL, despite its many, many flaws, simply for that one reason.

Full screen, Leopard animation, all that other stuff--should wait. If the pedias don't have easy, functioning, smooth iSight barcode scanning working when DL 2.0 ships, they'll lose their chance to overtake the market leader blowhard "master genius developer" or whatever else the fawning media are calling Shipley and his crew these days.

dbfreq13 · Post by **dbfreq13** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 12:15 pm

Wow, that's a response.

Respectfully, I disagree. The full-screen DVD browsing feature is aimed at a different market that is woefully under-served on the Mac side of the fence -- those looking for a 10' front-end interface for their HDD-based movie and music collection. DVDpedia has nearly everything in place to make it the only reasonable choice for this application. A slick full-screen UI would put it over the top. Integration with AppleTV would be even better, allowing users to integrate the collection of movies they own with the rentals available on iTMS.

Bar code scanning is nice, but, given all the other benefits of DVDpedia, I have no problem having to type in the UPC code.

ScottH · Post by **ScottH** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 12:18 pm

Just to clarify, it's a response from a DVDpedia user, not from anyone at Bruji. Conor or Nora are from Bruji. I was just voicing my opinion as a longtime customer who wants to see the company succeed and the software's market share grow.

Post by **Conor** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 1:27 pm

We haven't yet come across or thought off an incredible Core Animation feature that would justify dropping Tiger support. Core Animation is really exciting and there's a ton of flourish and astonishing effects we have thought of, but nothing that would add to the programs' usability. The obvious example is cover flow in full screen, apart from the image orientations and the smother animation it's roughly equivalent to the current view. One of the main advantages is the ease of implementation and less code, we can then spend our time doing animations, adding new features and more customizability. Leopard is full of wonderful technologies (the search animation with the QuickTme videos that Steve Jobs showed at the WWDC last year using Core Animation, that was well done) we are itching to jump in and test them out, but there is no time frame. Don't hesitate to let us know what you would like to see from the Pedias.

On the iSight front this week I finally got rid of the old sequence grabber code and adopted the new QTKit. This brings all the new advantages like 64 bit support and native capture but it's also a new framework missing a lot of functions. So we are trying to work around those right now.