Enhance/Streamline the Category/Platform/Playlist Theme Video Downloader dialog.

Issue #4573 new
EazyCheeze1978 created an issue

Currently, the theme video downloader dialog is great for showing us all the videos that can be downloaded for the various categories (platform, category or playlist, or even platform category most recently!) at a glance. However, this glance is becoming an increasingly long one as we add more categories, playlists or platforms to the list of those accessible by LaunchBox, as a particularly full load can take up to 30 to 45 seconds or longer to populate this dialogue. (Actually I just measured this, and population for me takes about 29 seconds.)

Thus, I propose that you divide this dialog into four sections, which can be selected by either tabs, or the newer (relatively speaking for graphic user interfaces) method which you do use for the options dialog, text off to the left side which when clicked leads to the various different sections. The sections will be for, as expected, platform category, category, platform and playlist respectively (I believe that for brevity's sake, I'll refer to these four collectively as a video target going forward).

There should be toggle buttons (radio buttons) which allow us to select to populate and display either only those video targets that do not currently have videos, or those that do already have videos in case we want to replace or update the videos that we have currently. This would have the effect on greatly cutting down on the time required for video target population, and faster downloading overall of the videos desired. The default each time the dialog is opened, then, should be showing the videos that we do not have for each video target.

Additionally, there might be able to have a CRC or other file identification check in place for each video, so that the dialog can actively identify which video is currently in possession of the user, to avoid duplicating downloads unnecessarily. (An improvement of the preview feature, which starts up VLC but, usually, does not correctly stream the selected video (this may actually be a server issue and beyond the scope of LaunchBox itself), might also aid with not duplicating downloads or downloading an undesired video accidentally.)

Well, that's it. I think that I've covered everything with this feature that I'd like to see. I hope that at least some of it is feasible, and that this helps improve the front end going forward! I absolutely love it, and will use it forever! Take care, Jason and everyone.

Comments (5)

  1. EazyCheeze1978 reporter

    This becomes much more salient upon the introduction of auto-generated playlists, which greatly increase the time required to populate this Download Theme Videos dialog box.

  2. EazyCheeze1978 reporter

    I have populated quite a few of my emulated platforms with their own auto-generated playlists, genres and play modes all... probably, judging from the number of folders in Images/Playlists, 175 to 180 or so playlists have been auto-generated... the time to populate the Download Theme Videos window is now at... a minute and 12 seconds.

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