Hi all,
I think we should discuss the design of the Audio/Video
assistant page where a user gets to choose his audio
source/sink devices... a good design of that page is
important I think...
Here is my initial idea :
http://kakaroto.homelinux.net/~kakaroto/amsn/fs.jpg
you notice that I removed the text saying that farsight is
an audio/video framework and it allows SIP calls... reasons
:
1 - will confuse users because of the 'video' word
2 - saying SIP calls, people will think they can do a SIP
call to an external phone
I also removed the 'details' button because I think it's
completely useless (and would eat up space) if farsight
succeeds.. I think that it should only be there if Farsight
fails, because if it succeeds, you don't need to see the
details...
Also the link to the wiki is only useful if it fails, so i
also removed it...
now about the design of when it works :
I see it like I show in the above screenshot/MSPaint.. have
two sections, one for the source and one for the sink, first
line is a label saying Choose audio source, second is a
combobox with all audio sources so users can choose one.
third is containing the devices IF available ("/dev/dsp0,
/dev/dsp1" or "hw:0,1 or hw:0,0" for example).. IF the
devices are not available (pulsesrc or audiotestsrc...) then
"Autodetect" should be the only choice.. notice also that
Autodetct should be there even for sources/sinks that are
probe-able (have a list of available devices).
Oh, we also need "Autodetect" for the sources
(autoaudiosrc/autoaudiosink)
On the right, we'd have the description of the source/sink
as multiline, the name, the short and the long description..
also have a Test button that allows to test the audio sink
by playing some file and show the level on the right to show
that audio is actually being played...
For the source, the Test button would play in loopback and
the level would guarantee that sound is being recorded...
Note that we need descriptive information on each page now
that say that webcam config is for the 'webcam' feature
(especially since we'll add another webcam config for video
conferences) and the audio config is for snack which is only
for voice clip support.. then say that farsight is for the
audio conversation feature... so that people don't get
confused on why they have to setup their audio devices
twice...
humm.. in my screenshot, I've put the source above and the
sink below, I think we should change the order, since you
want to configure your speakers before configuring your mic
(since you can't test the mic if the speakers aren't
working).
Another thing, we should probably not say "source" and
"sink", we should say "Audio output" and "audio input"
because people don't understand what a gstreamer 'sink'
is...
finally, in the audio sources and audio sinks, we need a
"Custom pipeline" entry which when chosen will disable the
'devices' combobox, will ADD a new entry next to the Test
button, and the description will say that this is only for
extremely expert people and will allow you to set up a
gstreamer pipeline for the source/sink...
For info, the "audio source" option will correspond to
::Farsight::Config option "-audio-source" the Autodetct will
mean the option will be an empty string ""
The device is for "-audio-source-device", autodetect is also
the empty string.. The custom pipeline would result in the
option -audio-source-pipeline.
The same goes for the sinks...
Any comments? Any ideas? a better design? something more
user friendly/ I know i'm bad at designing UIs, so don't
hesitate to bitch about my design! :)
KaKaRoTo
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