Changes between Version 14 and Version 15 of TIMELINES
- Timestamp:
- 04/30/09 17:04:10 (16 years ago)
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TIMELINES
v14 v15 120 120 * Author wants to create an animation changing pages over time in one channel, starting and stopping movies in another channel at various times, and animating images in other channels at even other times. 121 121 122 !!!123 124 122 == Dan's thinking about timeline interface & visibility == 125 123 126 124 (''This is about some issues that came up in the Sophie 1 UI. Note that here I'm approaching things from how things appeared to the user. Not everything here will happen with the Sophie 2 model, but some of these basic issues will still be around.'') 127 125 128 === 1. How things worked in Sophie 1 ===126 === Dan.1. How things worked in Sophie 1 === 129 127 130 128 In Sophie 1, when a frame was dragged to a timeline it became an event: a rounded rectangle in a channel on a timeline. The edges of the event could be dragged back and forth to change how long the event stayed visible. In this diagram, Frame 1 would be visible from 1:00 to 2:00: … … 136 134 This behavior isn’t very important for audio on a timeline, because usually the visibility of the audio file’s image on the page isn’t very important. It’s worth focusing on in two particular cases of timelines & visibility: movies and interactions with links. (A third case, toggling visiblity via the page structure palette, also existed; however, I’m going to ignore that for now, assuming that the page structure palette will work differently in Sophie 2.) 137 135 138 ==== 1.1. Movies on timelines ====136 ==== Dan.1.1. Movies on timelines ==== 139 137 140 138 When a movie is dragged to a page in Sophie 1, it doesn’t start playing automatically: usually you see the first frame, a black rectangle which looks like other frames. This frame can be dragged around the page; in a finished book, this black rectangle may indicate that there’s a movie that can be played, especially if it has controls underneath it. When a movie is dragged to a timeline, the movie behaves in the same way that a regular frame does: it becomes invisible when the movie is not playing. … … 144 142 Another problem with the way movies were handled on timelines was that the interface confused visibility with duration. The author would often want to clip a movie (i.e., if the have a 10 minute movie, they want to show from 2:00 to 5:00); the timeline seems like the logical place to do this. When you dragged your 10 minute movie to the timeline, dragging the edges of the clip would allow clipping from the back (making it play from 0–8:00 rather than from 0–10:00) but not clipping from the front (making it play from 2:00–10:00 rather than from 0–10:00). The problem was trying to include too much functionality with too few controls. Eventually, the ability to clip movies and audio that were on timelines was added to the time-based media HUD on the frame on the page; this probably wasn’t the most obvious place to put it. 145 143 146 ==== 1.2. Links and show/hide actions ====144 ==== Dan.1.2. Links and show/hide actions ==== 147 145 148 146 Visibility on timelines was also complicated if there were links with show/toggle/hide actions. These links would do the following: … … 154 152 '''Show''' and '''toggle''' worked the same way as dragging an event to a timeline: making a frame the target of one of these links would make it invisible by default. This is where the conflict with timelines arises: if a frame that is shown or hidden by a link appears on a timeline, the timeline’s display of the frame’s visibility will not necessarily be correct. 155 153 156 ==== 1.3. Show/hide via page structure palette ====154 ==== Dan.1.3. Show/hide via page structure palette ==== 157 155 158 156 Because of these conflicts, a checkbox for frame visibility was added next to each frame’s entry in the page structure palette. When a frame was added to a timeline, it was unchecked because the frame became invisible; when a frame was made the target of a show/toggle link, the visibility checkbox was also unchecked. In addition, the user could manually uncheck frame visibility. … … 160 158 In practice, this didn't end up working very well. Users tended to make frames invisible so that they could work on other frames on the page (the way that layers are hid in Photoshop or Illustrator); they were confused when the visibility changes were persistent. Probably visibility for frames and visibility for authoring should have been separated. 161 159 162 === 2. Ideas for how things could work ===160 === Dan.2. Ideas for how things could work === 163 161 164 162 Channels in Sophie 1 weren't specific: an event could be in any channel that the author wanted, and could be moved from channel to channel. It might make sense in Sophie 2 to have a channel for each event on a timeline. This would allow more specific controls for visibility: a channel for video could have a control specifying whether the frame was always visible or not. 165 163 166 ==== 2.1. Changing the representation of the event on the channel ====164 ==== Dan.2.1. Changing the representation of the event on the channel ==== 167 165 168 166 It also might make sense to get rid of the idea of using a draggable rectangle as the signifier of the event's visibility - maybe it should be limited to representing clipping of audio and video. GarageBand on the Mac creates a sub-channel if you want to adjust the volume of a clip; there's a draggable line that can be moved up and down to adjust the volume: … … 172 170 Something like this could be done to adjust visibility rather than to adjust volume - if it could be implemented like this, we could even imagine using this to create fadeins and fadeouts. When visibility is separated from the movie's representation, the movie could be clipped separately from adjusting its visibility. 173 171 174 ==== 2.2. Noting interactions with links ====172 ==== Dan.2.2. Noting interactions with links ==== 175 173 176 174 It might make sense to have the timeline check for interactions with links on the page. If a frame on the page is the target of a link that changes its visibility and that frame is also on the timeline, it might make sense to put a small warning (maybe on the channel), indicating that there might be a possible conflict. We can't fix all of the user's problems - it's the author's responsibility to make a book or page that works for the reader. 177 175 178 !!!179 180 176 == Comments == 181 177 ^Write your comments here.
